Finish a template for every page type before launch, or switch the whole site over on one day. Many visitors arrive on inner pages, so a new home page alone changes little of what they see.

Half a new website

The home page is new: large photographs, a clean menu, the current logo. One click on a service, and the visitor lands on a page with an older logo, another typeface and a different menu.

Nothing is broken and every link works. But as far as the visitor can tell, they have left one business and arrived at another.

This is where many staged redesigns stop. The home page went first because it mattered most, the rest was to follow, and then the busy season arrived.

Months later the site is still half new, and the unfinished half is where the services, prices and contact form live.

Where the old design survives

The third is the one owners forget. A blog at your own address looks like part of the site, but it often runs on separate software with a theme nobody touched in the redesign.

What the visitor concludes

People judge a business they have never dealt with by small signs, and consistency is one of them. A sudden change of design reads as a change of owner, or as a site somebody stopped maintaining.

The old pages also carry what the old design carried: last year's prices, a former phone extension, staff who have left. The new home page cannot vouch for any of it.

On phones it is often worse. The new home page fits the screen, and the old inner pages need pinching and zooming, which is exactly the experience the redesign was meant to end.

Many visitors never see the home page

Owners judge a redesign by the home page because that is where they start. Visitors arriving from Google usually start somewhere else.

A search for a particular service leads to the page about that service. Ads point to inner pages too, and so do links customers share.

The Landing Pages report in Analytics shows where visits actually begin. On many small business sites, a large share start on exactly the pages left in the old design.

Google also judges mobile-friendliness page by page. A new responsive home page does nothing for an old service page that fails the test on its own.

A design is a set of templates

A website is not really a collection of pages. It is a handful of templates, one for each type of page, filled with different content.

Ten service pages share one service template. Design it once, and all ten change together. That is why finishing a redesign means finishing every template, not every page.

Most small business sites need between five and ten: home, service, gallery or project, about, contact, blog post, blog list, and a plain page for policies. Shops add product and category templates.

The less obvious ones matter too: the thank-you page after a form, the search results page, and the page shown when a link is broken.

A worked example

A houseboat rental company on a large Interior lake rents out its fleet by the week each summer, and most bookings for the following year arrive between October and March.

Last autumn the owners paid for a new home page in time for the booking season: a wide photograph of the fleet at the dock, the new logo, three clear choices and a button to check availability.

The boat pages, the rates and the booking request form stayed in the 2010 design, with the old logo and a blue menu that matched nothing. They were to be finished in the spring.

Spring went to readying the boats. By summer, searches for the larger houseboats were landing on the old fleet pages, which were not built for phones, and a returning family asked whether the company had been sold.

Their developer stopped treating the job as pages and treated it as templates. Five covered the whole site: home, boat, rates, booking and a plain page for policies.

Each was built in the new design, the text moved across with light edits, and the whole site switched over on one evening last week, before next summer's bookings open.

Launch everything at once

The cleanest approach is a single switchover. The new templates are built on a private copy of the site, the content is moved and checked there, and the live site changes on one day.

Visitors then meet one design wherever they arrive. Nothing needs explaining, and nobody has to remember which pages are finished.

It also forces the decisions that staged work postpones: which old pages to keep, merge or retire, and where their addresses should redirect.

And it should take in the pieces nobody browses to: form confirmation emails, PDF price lists and the booking page a supplier styles for you.

If it has to be done in stages

Sometimes budget or season makes one launch impossible. Staging can work, provided the order is right.

Start with the shared frame: header, menu, footer, typefaces and colours applied to every page, old and new. That alone stops the site looking like two businesses.

Then rebuild the pages that bring work (services, booking and contact) before anything decorative. Leave the home page until last if necessary, since fewer visitors start there than owners assume.

The counter-case

Large sites with hundreds of pages are often rebuilt section by section, and that is reasonable when each section is complete and the shared frame matches across the site.

A modest change, such as a new logo or colour, can be applied to old templates cheaply. And an archive of old news may wait, provided it carries the current header and menu.

The rule is about what visitors meet. Finish a template for every page type before launch, or switch the whole site over on one day.

Before the next stage

  1. List every page type the site uses.
  2. Check the Landing Pages report in Analytics.
  3. Open each type on a phone as well.
  4. Build a template for each type before launch.
  5. Apply the new header and menu to old pages meanwhile.
  6. Restyle forms, PDFs and emails to match.
  7. Switch everything over on one day.

Step two is the one that settles the argument. It shows how many visitors start on pages still in the old design, and they are usually the pages that bring the enquiries.

A generic phone version can cause the same mismatch, as covered in a mobile plugin bolted onto an old site.

Frequently asked questions

Why do redesigns stop after the home page?

The home page is done first because it matters most to the owner, the rest is planned for later, and a busy season or a tight budget gets in the way.

Do visitors notice a mismatched design?

Yes. A sudden change of logo, typeface and menu reads as a different business or an abandoned site, and the old pages often carry outdated details too.

Which page do most visitors see first?

Often not the home page. Searches, ads and shared links lead to inner pages, and the Landing Pages report in Analytics shows where visits on your site begin.

What is a page template?

The design for one type of page, such as a service page or a blog post. Every page of that type uses it, so designing it once changes them all.

Can a redesign be done in stages?

Yes, if the shared header, menu, footer and typefaces go on every page first, and the pages that bring enquiries are rebuilt before anything decorative.

What else needs the new design?

Form confirmation emails, PDF price lists and order forms, booking and quote pages styled by suppliers, and any blog or shop on separate software. Include them in the switchover.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

New home page, old everything else?

Tell us the address, and we will name each page type still in the old design and what finishing it involves.

Start a Conversation