What is a Website Relaunch?

When we talk to teams about a relaunch, we often hear first: "We need a fresh design." And yes: First impressions count. But a relaunch is not the moment you just change colors – it's the moment you reorganize the whole house.

Definition as we use in projects: A website relaunch is the comprehensive reimplementation of a website – usually with changes in structure, content, design, and technology. A redesign is often just a visual overhaul. Many guides draw this line as well: During a relaunch, there's a "reintroduction in all areas." Ramoser Webdesign

The difference is practically relevant because it determines how much risk and how much impact you bring to the project. A pure redesign can be cautious. A relaunch can be a fresh start – and it can be great if you know what you're doing.

The Relaunch is a Translation Project

We see relaunches as a translation: You translate your current business, brand, and offering into a digital form that people immediately understand. This involves things like information architecture, texts, interactions, forms, load time, tracking – and also Google.

An easy guiding question that we ask in almost every project helps us (our Method 1): "What should be easier for users after the relaunch than before?" If you don't have a clear answer to that, the relaunch quickly turns into a matter of taste.

And something else that's often underestimated: The website is the most important marketing channel for many companies. 91 percent of companies say exactly that. Digital Silk If the website is so important, then a relaunch is not cosmetic – it's a strategic decision.

There is a moment we almost always experience in relaunch pre-discussions: Someone in the team says, "The site still works." And someone else says, "Yes, but it's working against us." The truth lies exactly between these two sentences.

A relaunch rarely pays off because something is "old." It's worth it when costs, risks, or missed opportunities outweigh the investment.

Signals We Take Seriously

A strong signal is conversion: Many relaunches start because the website doesn't close enough deals. In a survey, 80.8 percent stated that a too low conversion rate was the trigger. Sixth City Marketing In practice, this shows as: Traffic is there, but inquiries are missing. Or inquiries come, but they are the wrong ones.

A second signal is patience. If a page takes longer than three seconds to load, about 40 percent of visitors leave it again. Sixth City Marketing This is not a "performance issue," but a trust and relationship issue. Nobody likes to wait.

Then there are the silent signals: editorial work takes forever because the CMS is cumbersome. Tracking is unreliable. The site is not accessible, even though since 2025 many sectors have been much more obligated due to the European Accessibility Act (even if details vary depending on the offering and target audience).

Our Decision Aid: Repair or Rebuild?

Here comes our Method 2, which works surprisingly well in many projects: "Keep what works – renew what slows you down." It sounds simple, but it's a real antidote to activism.

We look with you at three things: What demonstrably brings leads or trust (e.g., pages that organically sustain over years)? What continuously causes friction (e.g., load time, maintenance, bounce rates)? And what no longer fits your brand (e.g., tonality, images, positioning)? From this, a clear plan often emerges: Sometimes it's a relaunch. Sometimes it's a focused redesign plus technical renovation.

What's important is: A relaunch is not a mandatory program every two years – but many companies revise their websites in 2–3-year cycles. Walker Sands If you wait significantly longer, it usually doesn't get cheaper, but more confusing.

Design is visible – but the reasons relaunches falter are usually invisible: unclear goals, missing data, too many opinions, too little responsibility.

Before we move into implementation, we need a shared vision of what "good" actually means. And in such a way that you can check it after the launch.

Success Criteria That Really Help

We like to work with a small selection of KPIs that together form a complete picture. Not because numbers are everything – but because they relax discussions.

First: Business Impact. These can be inquiries, demo bookings, newsletter opt-ins, or sales. Many teams start relaunches for conversion reasons; this is measurable and legitimate. Sixth City Marketing

Second: Visibility. Which pages currently bring organic traffic? Which search queries are valuable? For this, Google Search Console is worth gold.

Third: Experience. We don't mean "Do we like it", but: Do people find what they are looking for faster? Do they have fewer interruptions? Do they stay longer? Qualitative signals such as support tickets, feedback from sales conversations, or small user tests also help here.

Fourth: Trust. 75 percent of users judge a company's credibility based on web design. Sixth City Marketing Trust is reflected in contact rates, repeat visits, and willingness to share data.

Our "Before-and-After" Routine

So you don't just hope it will get better, we use a simple routine in relaunches (Method 3): We create a Baseline before the project starts. Load times, top landing pages, conversions, visibility, frequent search queries, technical errors. After the relaunch, we measure the same points again – after 1 week (find errors), after 4 weeks (stability), and after 12 weeks (trend).

This takes pressure off the launch day. And it ensures that you don't experience the relaunch as a one-time event but as a starting point for controlled improvement – that's where long-term impact is created.

The SEO fear is real. Not because Google "punishes relaunches," but because a relaunch changes many things that Google has learned as stable over the years: URLs, internal links, content focus, technical signals.

When you introduce new URLs during a relaunch and let old ones disappear, it's initially a loss for Google. Without clear relocation logic, 404 pages appear, signals run empty, backlinks lose their impact. It happens faster than you think.

A prominent example is Frankfurt.de: Despite long planning, the site lost around 50 percent visibility after the relaunch in 2020. factor.partners Our point is not glee, but humility: If such a project can stumble, any can.

What's Behind It

Google evaluates pages URL by URL. Each URL collects signals: relevance, links, user signals. If you rename everything, you force Google to learn anew.

And even if you do everything right, it can wobble short-term because a new structure needs to be re-crawled and categorized. That's normal. It's dangerous if the wobbling doesn't stop.

The Biggest SEO Trap Isn't Technological

In practice, we see the hardest SEO trap not in server configs but in content: During a relaunch, "clean-up" occurs – and suddenly, the pages that carried organically are missing. Or texts are simplified so much they look nice but no longer answer what people searched for.

Our countermeasure is simple but effective: We treat SEO not as a checklist at the end, but as inventory at the start. Which pages bring traffic? Which search queries bring the right people? If you know this, you can consciously decide what stays, what is combined, and what gets a new, better page.

And yes: A relaunch can also have a positive effect. The domain move from real.de to kaufland.de was executed cleanly and led to growth of over 20 percent. factor.partners This shows: SEO is not fate. It's craftsmanship.

If you take only one "technical" issue seriously in a relaunch, it's this: Movements must be traceable. For people – and for search engines.

For this, we use a practice we internally like to call "URL Accounting." Not because we love numbers, but because they prevent chaos.

Our Approach in Four Steps

1) Crawl everything that exists. With Screaming Frog, export all old URLs, including status codes and metadata.

2) Every important URL gets a destination. That's redirect mapping. Old service page to a new service page, old blog article to a new article or a thematically fitting overview page. We avoid "Everything on the homepage," as that's rarely useful for users and Google.

3) Implement and test 301 redirects server-side. Without 301s, the damage can be brutal: A documented case shows a 66 percent visibility loss and 37,000 euros revenue loss per week caused by missing redirects. SageMedia

4) Monitor closely after launch. In Google Search Console, we check indexing, crawl errors, and sitemaps. In Analytics, we check if conversions and events fire cleanly. And we keep an eye on important keywords – not hourly, but regularly.

What Many Forget: The "Side Links"

SEO migration doesn't only concern Google. A relaunch also breaks links from ads, newsletters, PDFs, social profiles, and partner sites. We therefore compile a brief "link maintenance" list: the 20 most important external locations that need updating post go-live.

A Quiet Launch Is Often the Best

We like to plan relaunches so that you don't go live in the middle of the biggest campaign window. A "soft launch" in a quieter week gives you room to catch unexpected effects.

If you consistently follow these four steps, the likelihood is high that your relaunch won't end as an SEO shock but as a clean transition. That's exactly what it's about: no magic – just diligence.

At Pola, when we talk about performance, we don't just mean "better scores." We mean: less frustration, fewer drop-offs – and less digital waste.

A number we like to use as a reality check: On average, about 6.8 grams of CO₂ are mentioned per page view. analytik.news Whether the value is higher or lower in individual cases depends heavily on data weight, device, and hosting. But the direction is clear: Heavier pages cost energy.

Why This Is a Relaunch Topic

In everyday life, a website often grows unnoticed: new tracking scripts, larger images, additional fonts, embedded videos. Every little request seems harmless. Together, it becomes heavy.

During a relaunch, you have the rare opportunity to consciously reduce. Our approach is very specific:

• We check the data weight per page type (homepage, landing page, blog) and set a budget.
• We question scripts: What do we really need? What's just habit?
• We choose modern image formats (AVIF or WebP) and pay attention to real responsive images.

And: We talk about hosting. If you're moving anyway, it's often a good time to switch to an eco-power or green hosting model. This is not the only adjustment screw – but one that's easy to do when everything is being rebuilt anyway.

Core Web Vitals as a Common Language

For teams, it's helpful to make performance tangible. For this, the Core Web Vitals and tools like PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse are suitable. The effect is not just "SEO." It's human: If a page responds noticeably faster, it's perceived as more reliable.

And here's a fresh perspective that's rarely found in relaunch checklists: Performance is also an attitude. You decide whether your website respects attention – and whether it respects resources.

The most underestimated part of a relaunch is rarely the design – it's the question: What do we keep, what do we delete, what do we rewrite?

We've seen relaunches that were technically clean but still didn't perform. Not because Google was mean, but because the new content suddenly didn't provide a clear answer anymore.

Content is Not Mass, But Orientation

Many teams have "accumulated" over the years: old landing pages, duplicate service pages, news posts, PDFs. The reflex during a relaunch is then: delete everything, start anew.

Our experience: that's risky. Google often rewards precisely the content that has built trust over time. When you remove these pages, you also remove their signals.

Our Method: Three Classes Instead of Gut Feeling

To prevent content decisions from sinking into discussions, we use a simple classification:

1) Carriers: Pages that demonstrably bring traffic, inquiries, or trust. These are migrated and improved with priority.

2) Misleaders: Pages that raise false expectations or are unclear. These are rethought.

3) Ballast: Content without a purpose or outdated offering. These may go – but not without a trace. They need a clean redirect or a conscious "farewell" strategy.

You can support these classes with data: In Google Search Console, you see which URLs are visible for which queries. In GA4, you can see which pages appear in journeys leading to conversions.

Information Architecture as Brand Work

Here's a perspective that we as a branding and product team find particularly important: Structure is language. If your website is just a list of menu items, the red thread is missing. If it, however, has a clear dramaturgy, it becomes digital brand leadership.

A relaunch is often the moment when you decide: Do you just want to store information – or do you want to guide people? For purpose brands, this is particularly noticeable: Values don't have to stand in a paragraph, they have to be visible in decisions. For example, in how transparently you speak about impact, how clearly you explain offers, how little distraction you allow.

That's the point where a relaunch truly becomes "new": not just new pages, but new clarity.

Launch day is emotional. For weeks everything is "almost ready," and suddenly it's public. Exactly then the mistakes happen that you'd later prefer to undo: a form that doesn't send. A tracking that counts nothing. A robots.txt that accidentally blocks everything.

To prevent this, we treat the launch like a small, consciously planned handover – not like a moment when you just press "Publish."

A Test Plan That Does Not Balloon

We like to keep testing lean but consistent. A good plan doesn't have to be 80 pages long. It just needs to cover the few things that support your business:

1) Test critical journeys (contact, purchase, booking, newsletter) in at least two browsers and on mobile.

2) Verify tracking: Do events align in GA4? Are conversions coming in? Are consent settings correct? A quick check with the browser debugger or the Tag Assistant often helps here.

3) SEO checks after go-live: Crawl, 301 chains, 404, canonicals, sitemap submission in Search Console.

4) Performance spot-check with PageSpeed Insights on the most important page types.

Follow-up is No Luxury

We always plan a stabilization phase after the relaunch. Why? Because rankings may fluctuate, because users do things no team foresaw, and because real use is different from staging.

This attitude is underrepresented in many guides: A relaunch isn't "complete" when it's online. It's complete when it's stable.

And if you want to take some pressure off: Perfection isn't a sensible launch standard. What's important is that the foundations are set. Everything else improves if you measure, observe, and iterate.

This way, a relaunch isn't a torturous effort every two years – but a step towards a website that can live and grow with you.