Questions to ask when considering a website refresh
Your website plays a valuable role in the success of your business—but slow load times, outdated content, and unappealing designs can significantly affect conversions, lead generations, and sales. If your website isn’t getting the results for your business, it may be time to consider a website refresh for 2026.
Improving your site design, performance, and functionality can lead to boosted sales, higher conversion rates, improved consumer trust and satisfaction, and the overall success of your business.
- 47% of users expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less, and 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
- A well-designed UI can increase conversion rates by up to 200%, with comprehensive UX strategies potentially doubling that impact.
- Globally, 57% of eCommerce sales came from mobile devices in 2025.
Concerned about costs? Choosing to refresh your website rather than undergo a complete redesign has the benefit of achieving many of these goals without breaking the bank.
Read on! In this blog, we dive into what a refresh is and how to determine if 2026 is the time to consider one.
Website Refresh vs Website Redesign
A website refresh is a more cost and time-effective way to change the whole look or just a specific element on a website. Some parts are updated, while others remain the same. It can enhance user experience, improve SEO, update design features, and make other targeted updates while keeping the existing function and structure.
A website redesign is a larger-scale, more extensive process that involves a complete content, design, and structure/backend overhaul and can include switching to—or adding—a new content management system (CMS). Often, a website redesign goes hand-in-hand when it’s time to rebrand.
If your website looks outdated or some content needs a touch-up, you likely need a website refresh. Let’s dive into what a website refresh entails and how to decide if now is the time for your site.
What is a website refresh?
Think of a website refresh like repainting the exterior of a house. It may drastically impact the visual appearance, but the physical structure remains the same. The house might look different—brighter and more modern—but it wasn’t demolished and rebuilt from the ground up (that would be a redesign).
Changes made during a website refresh can be as simple as switching to a more modern font or as complex as overhauling the design, layout, and content to better SEO. Refreshing your website every 2-3 years will help maintain website security and protection against vulnerabilities. However, updates should be strategic and address a specific area of concern.
For example:
- Improve the user experience by simplifying your homepage.
- Boost customer connection and SEO by creating custom content via blogs and video.
- Improve lead generation and conversions by streamlining navigation and removing user “friction.”
According to HubSpot, personalized calls-to-action, known as CTAs, convert 202% better than generic versions.
Five Questions to Ask About Your Website
Your website is a sales tool. Changes to your website should improve some aspects of the site with the end goal of converting visitors into leads and leads into sales. If you’re not seeing the sales, conversions, or activity you want, it’s time to identify the problem. Is it a systemic problem, or something else?
The following are the first things to ask yourself when considering a website refresh.
Is Your Website Responsive?
A responsive web design ensures your site functions optimally on all types of devices. Simply having a website that performs well on a desktop computer is no longer sufficient.
In general, over 62% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. Check your website analytics to see the devices the majority of your traffic uses. If it’s tablets and smartphones, you should be optimizing for mobile. If it’s traditional desktop or laptops, you might choose a different user experience. Either way, your site needs to be responsive, meaning that it changes to best perform on the tech device used by the individual visitor.
Numerous benefits come along with having a website built with a responsive design.
- Improved user experience (UX)
- Consistency across devices
- Increased reach and accessibility
- Better website rankings
- Faster load times
These benefits improve your online presence and make it easy for users to access and utilize your site.
Is your website accessible?
Web accessibility ensures that your website is usable for all visitors, including those with disabilities, impairments, and limitations. Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that all public areas be ADA-compliant, including your website.
Don’t leave yourself open to lawsuits—meeting accessibility standards fosters an inclusive environment and protects against website accessibility lawsuits. Websites that do not comply with the ADA and EAA standards can face massive legal and financial exposure. In the first half of 2025 alone, 2,014 ADA website accessibility lawsuits were filed–a 37% increase from 2024, according to a report by EcomBack— with nearly 60% of those filings targeting eCommerce websites. Adding an accessibility widget or overlay to your website is not a comprehensive solution, with 22.64% of accessibility lawsuits filed against sites using widgets and overlays to fix accessibility errors.
Unsure about your website accessibility and compliance? Accessibility tester programs evaluate your website, flag accessibility issues, and provide feedback on any potential concerns found within your site.
Is your website optimized for search engines?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method used to increase traffic to your website through search engine results.
A recent Google search for “website refresh” garnered 887 million results. Of those, only 15 ranked in the first set of results, and five of them were paid ads. And, research shows that only 0.63% of people click on the second page of Google search results. Sites with great SEO showed up on the first page.
By optimizing your SEO you can:
- Drive organic traffic to your site
- Enhance online visibility
- Increase site visits
- Build trust
- Convert more users into customers
- Boost brand awareness
- Make more sales
A well-optimized website is a must for all businesses. While it may be tempting to handle your SEO in-house, working with a professional who understands SEO’s complex ins-and-outs can build a strategy customized to your goals and is often a better use of your budget.
Is your website performant?
A performant website functions well, delivering a satisfactory user experience in terms of speed, responsiveness, and other key performance metrics. If your website isn’t meeting a minimum level of performance standards, it’s not performant, which means it’s very likely driving away customers.
Here at Dogwood, we like our clients’ websites to be even better than performant: we want them to be high-performing.
High-performing websites don’t just happen. They’re tested for usability and performance to engage a specific target audience. This type of website is effective in many ways—leading to more satisfied customers, higher sales, increased trust, and website conversions.
Are you utilizing AI-driven personalization?
An AI-driven approach to your website allows for personalization, improved SEO, and content optimization, increasing engagement and conversion rates, and building a lasting relationship with consumers. Integrating AI-powered personalization strategies and platforms into your website assists with operational efficiency, with real-time analytics, managing content optimization, and identifying high-performing pages, saving your marketing team time and money.
AI personalization has been extremely effective with eCommerce websites, by analyzing a user’s search history, location, and shopping trends over time to curate an effective “For You” page and adapting the landing page to the user’s preferred brands, sizes, and products. AI personalization or AI plugins, like CleverTap, Dynamic Yield, or Klevu, can tailor emails, SMS and notifications, website pop-ups, and customize deals for the user.
With AI rewriting the web, it’s imperative that your website integrates AI personalization, uniquely tailoring your website to users in real time, keeping up-to-date with the ever-changing digital world.
When all signs point to a refresh
Updating your website can feel like another task on your workload and to-do list. We get it. However, statistics show that 94% of users will leave a website due to a low-quality design, slow load times, and/or outdated content. So, while revamping your website will incur a cost, NOT keeping your site up-to-date may cause you to lose sales and money. Don’t stress yourself too much, because Dogwood Solutions can help.
If you answered “No” to one or two of our questions, it’s time to refresh.
If you answered “No” to all five, you should consider a redesign.
If your answer was “it’s time to refresh,” or “consider a redesign,” then contact us!
