An architecture website redesign should not begin with a color palette or a font choice. It should begin with a question: what is not working today, and what does the next five years of work demand?
Most redesigns restart from scratch because they never answered the harder questions: who is the audience, what should they remember, and how should the work evolve over time.
The Audit
Before choosing a template or writing a brief, audit the current site against three criteria: technical performance, content organization, and user behavior. This reveals not what looks outdated, but what actually fails.
The Redesign Audit Framework
- 01
Traffic Analysis
Which pages perform, which bounce, and what visitors do before leaving.
- 02
Content Gap
What information exists in spreadsheets but not on the site.
- 03
Mobile Performance
How the site feels on the devices your visitors actually use.
- 04
Load Speed
How image size and format affect the time to first meaningful paint.
- 05
Search Visibility
Which keywords the site ranks for, and which it misses entirely.
- 06
Competitive Positioning
How peer firms present themselves online — and where the gaps are.
The Starting Point
Every successful architecture website redesign starts with one constraint: design everything before touching the keyboard. The wireframe, the photography plan, the content structure — all decided in advance.
Redesign: Common Mistake vs Better Approach
The best architecture website redesigns are evolutionary, not revolutionary. They take the firm's strongest existing assets — a logo, a particular way of photographing work, a tone of voice — and refine them, not replace them.