Guide

Website rebuild after a rebrand

A rebrand is the moment the current site becomes indefensible. The mistake is treating the new site as a design job and leaving the platform, URLs and integrations as an afterthought.

The brand has moved. The website has not.

New name, new positioning, new materials — and a site that still looks and behaves like the previous firm. Leadership wants the public site to match. Marketing wants to publish without a developer. Nobody wants to throw away the URLs that already rank.

What is usually behind it

The old site was a brochure for a different company

Information architecture, services and tone were built around a previous offer. A skin change will not fix a structure that no longer matches how you sell.

The CMS cannot support the new system

New templates, components and brand rules need a content model. A page builder held together by plugins will not hold them.

The rebrand budget did not include the platform

Design and naming were scoped. Migration, redirects and integrations were assumed. That is how rebrands launch late, or launch on a site nobody can maintain.

What a rebuild involves

Keep the content, rankings and systems that still work. Replace the front end and the content model so the new brand can actually be run by your team.

  • IA and content model mapped to the new offer, not the old sitemap copied forward
  • Design system as templates your editors can use, not a set of mockups
  • URL strategy for renamed services and retired pages, with redirects tested before launch
  • Integrations and tracking carried through so the new site is measurable on day one

What it costs to find out

The Headless Assessment separates brand work from platform work and prices the rebuild against the current stack. £1,500, no obligation to build with us.

Common questions

Can we keep the current CMS?

Sometimes. If the editors already work in WordPress and it is not the thing that is failing, we can put a new front end in front of it. If the CMS cannot support the new templates, the assessment will say so.

What happens to old service names in the URLs?

They are mapped. If a service was renamed, the old URL redirects to the new one. If it was retired, it redirects to the closest living page — not to the homepage by default.

Does the assessment include design?

It includes whether the current platform can carry the new brand, and what a rebuild would involve. Visual design for the new site sits in the build that follows, scoped from that document.

Find out what you are actually dealing with.

The Headless Assessment separates brand work from platform work and prices the rebuild against the current stack. £1,500, no obligation to build with us.

No lock-in. No obligation.