By Bianca Frank, Creative Director · Bianca Frank Design, Anchorage
Originally published February 2025. Fully rewritten and updated October 2026.
Most redesign projects start with a feeling: the site is embarrassing, it’s hard to update, or a competitor just launched something better. That feeling is usually right. What goes wrong is what happens next, when the redesign becomes a fresh coat of paint on the same problems, or, worse, a new site that quietly loses the Google rankings the old one had.
I’ve rebuilt a lot of Alaska business websites since 2007, for clinics, contractors, tribal organizations and a surveying firm that grew from one person to a statewide team. The projects that paid off followed roughly the same sequence. This is that sequence, written as a checklist you can work through before you call anyone, including us.
In short:
- You need a redesign when the site is costing you business: it doesn’t work on phones, you can’t update it, it doesn’t match what you do now, or it loads slowly for customers outside Anchorage.
- Decide refresh vs. redesign first. Many sites under three years old need a few targeted fixes, not a rebuild.
- The step most redesigns skip is protecting search rankings: every old page needs a plan (keep, merge, or redirect) before launch.
- A custom redesign for an established Alaska business typically runs 8–14 weeks and sits in the mid-four to low-five figures.
- Plan for after launch from the start: who updates it, who hosts it, and when it gets reviewed.
1. Is it actually time? Signs a redesign will pay for itself
A site needs a redesign when it has stopped doing its job, not when it’s merely a few years old. These are the signs that matter, in roughly the order we see them:
- It’s bad on a phone. Over half of visits to most Alaska business sites come from mobile. If you have to pinch and zoom, or the menu doesn’t work, you’re losing those visitors before they read a word.
- You can’t update it yourself. If changing your hours means emailing someone and waiting, the site is working against you.
- It describes a business you no longer run. New services, new locations, a bigger team, a different kind of client. The surveying firm we worked with had grown from residential boundary work into ALTA surveys, construction staking and drone LiDAR mapping; the old site still read like a one-person shop.
- It’s slow. Check it on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, mobile tab. If the main score is under 50 or the page takes more than three seconds to show its first content, customers in Kenai or Bethel on weaker connections are giving up.
- People can’t find things. Customers call to ask something that’s on the site, or ask whether you offer a service you’ve listed for years.
- It looks untrustworthy. Stock photos of people who don’t work for you, a copyright date from 2019, a padlock warning in the browser. For a clinic or a contractor, trust is the whole sale.
- It isn’t bringing in inquiries. If you can’t remember the last lead that came through the website, the site has become a business card, and an expensive one.
Two or more of those, and a redesign will likely pay for itself. One of them, and you may only need a fix.
2. Refresh or redesign? Decide before you spend anything
A refresh keeps the structure and most of the content and fixes specific problems: speed, mobile layout, outdated photos, a broken form, a dated color palette. It typically takes two to four weeks. A redesign rethinks the structure, rewrites the content and rebuilds the site, usually on a current platform. It takes two to four months.
Refresh when the site is under about three years old, built on WordPress or another platform you can keep, and the problems are cosmetic or technical. Redesign when the business has changed, the structure no longer fits, the platform is dead-ended (an old builder nobody supports, a developer who disappeared with the logins), or you’d be fixing more than you’d be keeping.
We tell close to half of the businesses who ask us about a redesign that they need a refresh instead. It’s less revenue for us and the right answer for them.
3. Write down what’s wrong, in your customers’ words
Before anyone designs anything, collect the evidence. Pull up the site with someone who doesn’t work for you and watch them try to do three things: find your phone number, find a specific service, and figure out what you’d charge or how to get a quote. Note where they hesitate.
Then add what you already know: the questions customers ask that the site should answer, the pages nobody visits (your analytics will show this), the forms that get spam instead of leads. This list becomes the brief. A designer who starts from it will build you something useful; one who starts from a mood board will build you something pretty.
4. Decide what the new site has to do
Write three to five goals in plain terms, each one measurable:
- Get more phone calls and quote requests from the service pages.
- Let residential customers order a standard job online without calling. (That one was the center of the surveying firm’s rebuild: boundary and residential surveys became orderable from the page, with verified five-star reviews beside the order button, because surveying is a trust purchase.)
- Show up in Google for “[your service] Anchorage” and the surrounding communities you actually serve.
- Let your office manager update hours, staff and prices without help.
- Make it obvious within five seconds who you are and who you serve.
Every later decision about budget, features and content gets tested against these.
5. Audit the content you already have
You don’t start from zero. Go page by page and mark each one: keep as is, update, merge with another page, or retire. Note which pages bring traffic (Search Console shows this) because those are the ones that must survive the move intact.
For a typical Alaska small business this audit takes an afternoon and saves weeks. It also tends to reveal the real structure of the new site, because the pages worth keeping cluster into obvious groups.
6. Protect your Google rankings: the step most redesigns skip
This is where redesigns go wrong, and it’s rarely the designer’s fault; nobody asked. When a page’s address changes or a page disappears, Google treats it as gone. Every link to it, every ranking it had, evaporates unless you tell Google where it went.
Before launch, you need a simple spreadsheet: every current page address in one column, and what happens to it in the next. Three options:
| Old page | What to do | How |
|---|---|---|
| Kept, same address | Nothing | Confirm the URL doesn’t change |
| Kept, new address | Redirect | A 301 redirect from the old address to the new one |
| Retired or merged | Redirect | A 301 to the page that now covers that topic |
No page gets deleted without a redirect. On two of the larger redesigns we’ve handled, Alaska Geographic and a State of Alaska board, the redirect map ran to a large volume of old addresses that visitors, partner sites and search engines still relied on. Managing those redirects was as much of the project as the design, and it’s why neither site lost its footing in search when it relaunched. We’re doing this exact exercise on our own blog right now, consolidating years of overlapping posts, because the rule applies to us too. Our SEO team in Anchorage builds this map as part of every redesign; if you’re working with someone else, ask them to show you theirs. Ongoing search work after launch is covered in what’s included in an SEO quote.
7. Keep the structure simple
Most Alaska businesses need: Home, About, one page per service (not one page listing all of them), a page per location if you serve several, a portfolio or projects page, a contact page, and a blog if you’ll actually write for it. That’s it. Megamenus and nested sub-sub-pages make sense for a university, not a dental practice.
The one structural decision worth real thought is service pages. One page per service, each written for the person searching for that service, is what gets found in Google and what converts. The surveying firm went from a single “services” page to separate pages for boundary surveys, ALTA surveys, construction staking, platting and LiDAR mapping, each speaking to the homeowner or the developer who actually orders that work.
8. Plan for function before looks
Design matters, but these decide whether the site works:
- A phone number and a contact button visible on every screen, on mobile especially.
- Forms that go somewhere a person checks, with spam protection.
- Load time under three seconds on a mid-range phone. Mostly this means compressing images; most slow Alaska sites are slow because of 8 MB photos.
- Accessibility basics: readable contrast, alt text on images, keyboard navigation. Government and tribal clients often require this; everyone benefits.
- An editor you can use. Before you sign, ask to see how you’d change a price.
9. Gather visuals, or budget to make them
Real photos of your people, your work and your place outperform stock every time, and in Alaska they’re a differentiator because so few local sites bother. You’ll need a logo in vector format, your brand colors and fonts, current photos of staff and work, and any video. If you don’t have them, hire a local photographer for half a day; it’s the best money in the project.
10. Plan the launch and what comes after
A site is never finished at launch. Settle these before it goes live:
- Who tests every page, form and link before launch, and when.
- Who gets trained on the editor, and who keeps the logins.
- Who owns the domain and hosting (you should), and who manages updates, backups and security (a website management plan or someone on staff).
- When the site gets its first review: we suggest 90 days after launch, looking at Search Console and the inquiries that came in.
- Who adds new content. A site that never changes slides in Google within a year or two; even one update a month keeps it alive.
What does a website redesign cost in Alaska?
For an established business or organization working with a small Alaska agency, a full redesign typically runs from the mid four figures into the low five figures and takes 8–14 weeks. A refresh is a fraction of that. The variables are the number of service pages that need real content, custom photography, integrations (online ordering, booking, patient forms) and whether branding changes alongside the site. Our post on how much a website costs breaks the ranges down further.
Frequently asked questions
How often should a business website be redesigned? When it stops doing its job, not on a schedule. Well-built sites on a maintained platform last five to seven years with periodic refreshes. Sites on abandoned builders or with no maintenance often need rebuilding in three.
Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings? Only if pages disappear or change address without redirects. With a page-by-page redirect map done before launch, rankings usually hold and often improve within a few months because the new site is faster and better structured.
Can I keep my current content? Usually some of it. Audit each page: keep, update, merge or retire. Pages that bring traffic should survive with their content intact and their address either unchanged or redirected.
How long does a website redesign take? Eight to fourteen weeks for a custom site with a small agency. The most common delay is the client side: content, photos and approvals. Decide early who’s responsible for those.
Should I redesign or just update my website? If the site is under three years old on a platform you can keep and the problems are speed, photos or a few broken pieces, update it. If the business has changed, the structure no longer fits, or the platform is dead-ended, redesign.
Start with the checklist, not the quote
If you work through the ten steps above before talking to a designer, you’ll get better proposals and a better site, whoever you hire. If you’d like a second opinion on whether your site needs a refresh or a rebuild, tell us about it. We’ll look at the site and your Search Console and give you a straight answer, including when the answer is “not yet.”
Bianca Frank is the founder and Creative Director of Bianca Frank Design, an Anchorage agency that has designed brands and websites for Alaska businesses since 2007. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design and leads a small in-house team covering branding, web design, SEO and content strategy, with recent work for clients including Nalaquq LLC, the Native Village of Barrow, Solstice Psychiatry and Alaska Geographic. BFD was named one of Anchorage’s best web designers by Three Best Rated (2025) and received UpCity’s Local Excellence and Best of Alaska awards (2022, 2023).
