Most redesign conversations start with “we need it to look modern”. That sentence has burned more East Midlands budgets than a bad colour palette ever did. Looking modern is not a brief. It is a mood.
I am Harry Ashton. Hashton is a Nottinghamshire studio — the same process whether you found us through website design in Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, or a cold search for “someone who will not disappear after launch”. This is how I decide whether a site needs a redesign, a fix, or a new URL — and what I want in writing before anyone opens Figma.
A brief is a list of decisions, not a mood board. Photo: fauxels / Pexels.
Redesign, fix, or new page — pick one on purpose
Three different jobs get lumped under “redesign”:
- Fix. The host is wrong, the form fails, Core Web Vitals are embarrassing, or Search Console is full of soft 404s. The information architecture can stay. You need engineering, not a brand refresh.
- Redesign. The structure is wrong for how you sell now. Services hid under “What we do”. Contact is a mailto. Proof is a PDF. You need new templates and clearer paths — and you will still reuse a lot of copy if it is honest.
- New page (or pages). You added a town, a service, or a case study. Search still needs a document. A footer tweak is not a location page. I have written that fight before in If it has no URL.
If you cannot say which of those you are buying, you will pay for all three and ship none of them cleanly.
What I refuse to treat as a brief
These show up in almost every first call. They are not useless. They are incomplete.
- “Make it look like X.” Reference sites are fine for taste. They are not a sitemap, a conversion path, or a content plan.
- “We need better SEO.” Without naming the URLs you want to rank and what each page is for, that is a wish. Technical SEO ships in the build. Content programmes need addresses.
- “Can you just refresh the homepage?” Homepages are where unresolved arguments go to hide. If services, proof, and contact are unclear, a prettier hero will not fix the funnel.
- “Our competitor’s site is nicer.” Competitors do not pay your invoices. Your customers do. Steal their clarity, not their gradients.
The brief I actually want before design starts
Write this down. A short Google Doc beats a twelve-slide deck.
- Who you sell to, in one sentence. Not “everyone in the East Midlands”. The person who books, buys, or shortlists.
- The one action that means you won. Book a call, request a quote, buy, apply. Secondary links are fine. Two primary CTAs usually means nobody decided.
- The pages that must exist on day one. Home, services (or one service page each if they sell differently), proof, about, contact. Location pages only if you will maintain them.
- What stays and what dies. Old URLs, blog posts, PDFs, booking tools. List redirects you already know you need.
- Who owns domain, hosting, CMS, analytics after launch. If that is blank, read what good looks like after a website launch before you pay for another pretty handoff.
- Proof you will put on a public URL. Names, outcomes, constraints. If nothing can be public, say so — do not invent case studies later.
- Constraints that are real. Brand colours that must stay, legal copy, a booking tool you will not replace, a deadline that is actually a deadline.
If you cannot answer those, we are still in discovery. That is fine. Calling it a redesign already is not.
Signals the current site is fine — and you are bored of it
Boredom is not a metric. These are:
- Search Console shows queries you care about, and the landing pages are the ones you meant.
- The contact path works with JavaScript off and someone reads the inbox.
- You can change a price or a phone number without waiting for a freelancer’s holiday.
- Core Web Vitals are not embarrassing on a mid-range phone on 4G.
- Proof exists as pages, not as a Drive folder.
If those are green and you still hate the look, a visual refresh with the same URLs can be enough. Burning the IA because the palette feels dated is how you lose rankings you already earned.
Signals you should redesign (or rebuild)
- Services are buried, or every service shares one vague paragraph.
- You rebranded, moved town, or changed how you charge — and the site still sells the old offer.
- The stack is a page builder you cannot leave, with no export path.
- Mobile is an afterthought: tap targets, sticky bars, or a form that fails on iOS.
- Nobody owns Search Console, or the property points at a leftover Wix / Squarespace host.
That last one is not a design problem. Fix measurement before you argue about hero videos. Instagram is still not a website — I wrote that for Nottingham firms in Instagram is not a website.
How I run the first two weeks when a redesign is real
Week one is decisions, not pixels.
- Confirm the primary host and canonical (www or apex — pick one).
- Inventory live URLs. Mark keep, redirect, or kill.
- Draft the IA as a list of paths, not a wireframe gallery.
- Agree who writes service copy. I will structure and edit. I will not invent credentials you do not have.
- Set analytics and Search Console access to a business email you control.
Week two is structure: templates, navigation, contact path, proof slots. Visual polish comes after the paths work. A beautiful dead end is still a dead end.
What “SEO” means in a redesign without the pitch deck
Technical SEO ships with the build: semantic HTML, titles, one host, a sitemap of real URLs, performance, accessibility. That is baseline, not a monthly package with no addresses.
If you want more organic traffic after launch, we list the URLs. A Leicester service page, a Derby comparison, a case study with a real outcome. Quantity without unique experience is how you end up with commodity pages Google’s AI features are happy to skip. I will not sell “SEO” as a feeling.
Questions people ask before they sign a redesign
Can we keep our blog?
Yes, if the posts are still true and the URLs can redirect cleanly. A blog full of thin “tips” from 2019 is optional. Keeping junk to “preserve SEO” often preserves embarrassment.
Do we need a CMS for a redesign?
Only if someone will edit often without me. Many brochure sites are cheaper as real pages until that need appears. A CMS nobody opens is another thing that breaks on a Thursday.
Will we lose rankings?
You can lose rankings by changing URLs without redirects, by deleting pages Google still ranks, or by shipping a slower, thinner site. You do not automatically lose rankings because the CSS changed. Redirects and a honest content map matter more than the logo mark.
How long does a redesign take?
Clear scope: weeks, not quarters. Fuzzy scope with five stakeholders and no primary CTA: longer, and that delay is the brief, not the stack. I will not publish a calendar I cannot honour on your URL.
What should we bring to the first call?
The live URL, Search Console access if you have it, a list of pages you know must exist, and one sentence on who buys. Screenshots of competitors are optional. Access to the domain registrar is not optional if you want to own the result.
Is a template enough?
Sometimes, for a throwaway landing page. If you need something leaveable, fast, and findable — especially against local competitors — custom code with a clear export path is what I default to. I compared that trade-off for Derby firms in Derby vs a template.
If your brief is still “make it modern”, we can turn it into decisions on a call. Bring the live host and the action you want a stranger to take. Everything else is decoration until those two are clear.
Nottingham independents — if the site describes the rooms (or care) but never books the visit, I’ll walk through a rebuild in 20 minutes. hashton.agency or 07545 850764.