We once watched a company spend nine months and a six-figure budget rebuilding a website that performed worse than the one they replaced. It is a common story, so we wrote down what went wrong — and the fixes that would have saved them.
Mistake 1: Redesigning instead of rebuilding
They wanted a new look and ended up changing the information architecture too. Every old URL broke, and years of accumulated ranking vanished in a weekend.
The fix: Keep URLs and structure stable during a redesign. Change the look first; restructure later, with redirects planned for every changed path.
Mistake 2: Content as an afterthought
The design phase ate five months. The content phase — writing, translating, uploading — got two weeks and a panic.
The fix: Start writing on day one. Content is the project, not a phase at the end of it.
Mistake 3: No one owned the data
Product specs lived in spreadsheets, emails, and one intern's memory. Migration became archaeology.
The fix: Audit and clean the data before touching the design. Garbage in, garbage online.
Mistake 4: Zero testing with real users
The new site was approved in a boardroom. Actual buyers could not find the inquiry form.
The fix: Test with five strangers before launch. Ask one question: "how would you ask for a quote?"
Mistake 5: No success metrics
Nobody defined what "better" meant. The team argued about opinions instead of numbers.
The fix: Write down three metrics before the rebuild starts: inquiries, time-on-site, conversion rate. Measure the same way before and after.
Mistake 6: Launching on a Friday
Yes, really. The inevitable bugs surfaced over a weekend with nobody on call.
The fix: Launch on a Tuesday morning with the whole team available for 48 hours.
The company eventually recovered — after a second, quieter rebuild that followed these fixes. The first one bought them a very expensive lesson.
