What a website rebuild is, and who it is for
A website rebuild replaces the platform, code and structure of a site rather than restyling what is there. It is for businesses whose site is slow, hard to edit, tied to a page builder, or no longer matches what the company does. Evolve rebuilds sites for UK businesses with the URLs, content and search rankings preserved.
The site that was quick to build becomes the site nobody dares change. That is the pattern behind most of the rebuilds we do, and it has nothing to do with how the site looks.
Rebuild, redesign or refresh
A refresh changes how the site looks. A rebuild changes what it is made of. Most businesses are sold the first when they need the second, and a few are sold the second when the first would have done.
Refresh
Enough when: the design is dated but the structure is sound, the platform is supported, and the office can already edit it.
What changes: typography, colour, imagery, a handful of templates.
What stays: everything underneath.
Rebuild
Needed when: the site is built in a page builder, weighed down by plugins, edited by one person who is afraid of it, or its forms and tracking have quietly stopped working.
What changes: the platform, the code, the templates, the CMS.
What stays: the URLs, the content worth keeping, and the rankings.
Redevelopment
Needed when: the site has to start doing something it never did: taking bookings, serving customers a portal, selling.
What changes: a rebuild plus the system behind it. See bespoke systems.
What stays: the public pages, launched first in their own phase.
What goes wrong with template and page-builder sites
None of these are the fault of the person who chose the template. They are what happens to any site that was built to be launched quickly and then had to live for five years.
The plugin stack
Thirty plugins, each with its own update cycle and security patches. One of them breaks the site every few months, and nobody knows which one is safe to remove.
Page weight
A page builder ships every option it offers whether the page uses it or not. The result loads slowly on a phone, and slow pages rank and convert worse.
Editing fear
Changing a headline moves a column. So nobody changes the headline, and the site says what the business did in 2021.
One person who knows how it works
Usually a freelancer, sometimes an ex-employee. When they go, the login goes with them.
The licence that lapses
The theme, the builder or a premium plugin stops renewing, and the site keeps running on a version that will never be patched.
Forms and tracking that stopped
The contact form has been failing silently since a plugin update. The analytics tag was removed in a redesign. Nobody noticed because nobody was watching.
Platform choices
We will recommend WordPress when it is the right answer, and it sometimes is. The question is who edits the site, what it has to connect to, and how long it has to last.
Next.js with a headless CMS
Right when: the site has to integrate with anything (booking, payments, a portal, a CRM), or it will grow into a system.
What you get: fast pages, no plugin stack, a CMS the office edits, and one codebase for the site and whatever sits behind it.
WordPress, kept and cleaned up
Right when: the content and structure are fine, the office knows the editor, and the problem is the theme and the plugins.
What you get: a lean theme, a short plugin list, managed hosting, and a site that updates without breaking.
Webflow or Squarespace
Right when: it is a brochure site with no integrations and a small team that wants to own the editing entirely.
What you get: a hosted platform with no code to maintain. We will set it up and step away.
Migration and redirects
Rankings are lost in the redirect map, not in the redesign. This is the part of a rebuild that agencies rush and the part we do first.
URL inventory
Every address the old site answers to, from a crawl and from Search Console, including the ones nobody remembers publishing.
Redirect map
A mapped destination for every old URL before launch. Permanent redirects, no chains, and a decision recorded for every page that is being retired.
Content export
Pages, posts, images and documents pulled out of the old platform into the new CMS, with the formatting cleaned rather than copied.
Forms, tracking and consent
Every form tested end to end. Analytics and conversion events rebuilt and checked. A consent banner that does what the privacy policy says.
Search Console and structured data
The new sitemap submitted on launch day, structured data for the organisation and each service, and the old sitemap retired properly.
Launch-day checks
Every old URL fetched. Every form submitted. Every event fired and seen in analytics. Then, and only then, the old site is switched off.
What we have rebuilt
A tour operator selling holidays that cost thousands of pounds a person, on a WordPress and Elementor site with JavaScript errors in the console and every enquiry filtered by hand. Rebuilt with a CMS the office edits, an uploader that turns a lodge listing into a page in minutes, and an assistant that reads incoming enquiries and routes them with the context attached.
A marine recruitment firm whose site had to do two jobs: say what the company does, and feed a vacancy pipeline behind it. The public site launched first in its own phase, then the system it talks to. The clients are not named here; the work is described so you can tell whether yours is similar.
How a rebuild runs
Scoping
A site inventory, the analytics, a content audit and a conversation about what the site has to do next. From this comes a written scope and a fixed price.
Build on a staging address
A demo every week on a private URL. You click through the real site as it grows, and what you say steers the next week.
Launch checklist and handover
Redirects checked, forms tested, events firing, sitemap submitted. Then the repository and the CMS login are yours, with a session on how to use them.
What it costs
Every rebuild is a fixed price agreed before it starts, with no day rates. What moves it:
- Page templates. Not the page count; the number of different kinds of page.
- Integrations. Booking, payments, a CRM, a newsletter tool, a portal.
- Content migration. Fifty pages come across differently from five hundred posts with images.
- Custom functionality. Anything the site has to do beyond showing pages: calculators, configurators, member areas.
- Copy. Whether the existing words stay, get edited, or get rewritten.
We wrote up what drives the cost of any build, and the same logic applies here.
Why an AI-native studio rebuilds faster
What AI does in a rebuild
- Builds the redirect map from the crawl and flags the URLs with no obvious destination
- Writes the migration scripts that move content out of the old platform
- Drafts alt text, meta descriptions and structured data for review
- Scaffolds the page templates and components from the agreed design
What AI does not do
- Decide the information architecture, or which pages should die
- Write the positioning, or tell you the old copy was better
- Sign off the launch checklist
Questions people ask about rebuilds
What is a website rebuild?
A rebuild replaces the platform, code and structure of a site rather than restyling what is there. The content and the URLs usually survive; the thing underneath them does not.
Do we need a rebuild or a redesign?
A redesign changes how the site looks and is enough when the structure is sound and the platform is supported. You need a rebuild when the site is slow, hard to edit, tied to a page builder, or no longer matches what the company does.
Will we lose our Google rankings?
Not if the redirect map is done properly. Every old URL gets a mapped destination before launch, and we fetch every one of them on launch day to check. Rankings are lost in the redirect map, not in the redesign.
Can you move us off WordPress or Elementor?
Yes. The content comes out, the design is rebuilt, and the plugin stack goes away. Where WordPress is the right platform for you, we will say so and clean it up instead.
Can we edit the site ourselves afterwards?
Yes. Every rebuild ships with a CMS the office can use without a developer, and a short session showing how. If you can edit a document, you can edit the site.
How long does a website rebuild take?
A brochure site in a single phase, usually live within eight weeks of sign-off. Sites with booking, payments or a customer portal are split into two phases so the public site can launch first.
What does a website rebuild cost?
A fixed price per phase, quoted after a scoping engagement. What moves it is the number of page templates, the integrations, the volume of content to migrate, and whether you want the copy rewritten.
Do you write the copy?
We draft, you decide. Often the existing copy is better than you think and the problem is the layout around it. We will tell you which.
Send us the URL
We will look at the site, the analytics and the console, and tell you on a free call whether it needs a refresh, a rebuild, or nothing at all.