Website redesign: from WordPress to a website that works for you

I'm Yassine Seghrouchni, founder of Your Tech Club in Amsterdam. For now, we call this offer the WordPress switch. You get a custom site with Next.js and Strapi, in which your editors work themselves. Every old URL gets a redirect. Forms land directly in your CRM. And a first AI employee gets to work. For an international company with an office in the Netherlands, that often means a site in English and Dutch, with one place where both languages are managed.

We saw why a new design is often not enough at a European data and AI consultancy. They asked for a redesign. The technical discovery, however, showed that the bottleneck was the CMS, not the look: the content structure did not scale and maintenance got heavier every quarter. So it became a new platform with Strapi and Next.js. You can read about it in the case study on a headless CMS with Strapi and Next.js.

When should you redesign your website?

Redesign your website when it costs you work instead of saving it. You can tell from four things: changes that need a developer, plugins without updates, leads that never reach your CRM and a server you don't dare to upgrade. If your site only looks a bit dated, however, a new design is often enough.

Still, the difference between those two matters. A dated design is a cosmetic problem. A site that holds your team back, on the other hand, is a business problem.

These are signs you come across on many WordPress sites:

• Your marketer asks a developer to move a block of text.
• Some plugins have not had an update in ages.
• Forms send an email, and that is where it ends.
• Your hosting wants to move to a new PHP version, but then your theme breaks.

Annoyingly, a new WordPress version does not fix that. On 8 December 2026, WordPress 7.2 comes out, the last major release of this year, with a new default theme (make.wordpress.org, WordPress 7.2, accessed November 2026). That is good news for WordPress. For your plugins, though, it mainly means another round of testing.

What do you get with the WordPress switch?

You get five parts that work as one: a custom site, a headless CMS for your editors, redirects for every old URL, forms that land in your CRM and a first AI employee. After that, we look after the site with a website agent and an SLA.

Not every company needs all five, or all at once. Which parts go into your switch, we decide together after the baseline check.

Why a headless CMS and not just a new WordPress theme?

Because the problem with WordPress sites is rarely the design. A headless CMS separates your content from the website your visitor sees. Your editors work in Strapi, and the site fetches the content and displays it. That way your team can publish on its own, while the site stays fast and secure.

A headless CMS is a content system that only manages the content and delivers it to your website through an API. In WordPress, the admin, the plugins and the front end all sit in one system. As a result, every plugin update also touches your front end. With Next.js and Strapi, however, those two are separate. So an update in the admin does not suddenly break your homepage. For a plain explanation, read what a headless CMS is.

What I would not do: choose a headless CMS because it sounds modern. If you have a five-page site that you change twice a year, it is overkill. It only pays off when your editors publish every week, or when your site hangs off other systems.

At the consultancy from the introduction, publishing a new case study or insight is now a matter of filling it in in Strapi, instead of a task for a developer. Want to know how we work with Strapi? Then have a look at Strapi development.

How do you keep your Google rankings during a website redesign?

By sending every old URL to the best matching new page with a permanent redirect. Google recommends a 301 or 308 redirect, per URL to the closest new page, and keeping those redirects in place for at least a year. Sending everything to the homepage is the classic mistake.

In fact, Google is clear about this. If you send lots of old addresses to one page that doesn't match them, Google may treat that as a page that doesn't exist. Moreover, for a medium-sized site it can take a few weeks or longer before Google shows the new addresses (Google Search Central, Site moves with URL changes, updated August 2026). So expect some ups and downs in the first weeks.

That is why we make a list of all old URLs before we build anything: pages, blog posts, images and PDFs. Each line then gets a new address. After launch, we check whether every old URL ends up in the right place. You will find every step in our website migration checklist.

We did it ourselves too. Our own Dutch site, yourtechclub.nl, moved from WordPress to a custom Next.js site in 2026. According to its sitemap of 19 September 2026, the old site had 168 indexed URLs, and 115 of them no longer had a page of their own. Each of those addresses got a redirect to the page closest to it in content, so not to the homepage. Even so, an Ahrefs check at the end of October still found three old addresses ending in a 404. On top of that, old URLs with a trailing slash went through two redirects instead of one. We fixed that. The lesson: check again after launch, even if the list was right.

How do you connect a CRM to your website?

You connect a CRM to your website by having every form write directly into your CRM, through that CRM's API. An enquiry then becomes a contact or a deal straight away, along with the page the visitor came from. No email that someone has to retype, and no lead left waiting.

On many WordPress sites, a form goes to a mailbox. Someone reads the email, types the details into HubSpot or Pipedrive and hopes nothing goes wrong. That works, until it gets busy or someone is on holiday.

Connecting your forms to your CRM sorts out three things at once. First, the lead is in the right place immediately. Second, you see which page or campaign brought it in. And finally, your AI employee can pick it up right away. We connect the CRM systems you already use, such as HubSpot and Pipedrive. Which other systems we connect, including Dutch packages your finance team may use, you can see under integrations. No CRM yet? Then start with choosing a CRM system.

What does an AI employee do on your new website?

An AI employee is AI that carries out a clearly defined task in your company, with a person keeping an eye on it. On a new website it usually starts with the leads: qualifying enquiries, preparing a quote or answering customer questions. Your team decides. The AI employee does the groundwork. There is more background in what an AI employee is.

Tasks that suit a website well:

• A lead follow-up assistant that enriches and scores every enquiry.
• A quote assistant that prepares a draft quote for your account manager.
• A support assistant that sorts questions and answers the simple ones itself.

Of course, which one pays off most differs per company. For that reason, this part often starts with the AI Opportunity Audit. You get the result within five working days, the report is yours, and it also says where AI is not a good idea.

How does a WordPress website redesign work?

In six steps, from baseline check to ongoing management. First we look at where your current site stands, often through our WordPress maintenance. Next we design the new site and the content model, build it, redirect every URL and go live. After that, we look after the site under an SLA.

1. Baseline check. Plugins, forms, load time and every URL. If you don't have a maintenance provider yet, we can do this through WordPress maintenance, which starts with a takeover check.
2. Design and content model. Which pages, which blocks and what your editors need to be able to do themselves.
3. Build. Next.js for the site, Strapi for the admin, integrations with your CRM.
4. Migration. Copy, images and the redirect list. We test every old URL.
5. Launch. Preferably on a quiet day, with someone keeping a close eye on Search Console for the first few days.
6. Management. Updates, monitoring and a website agent, under an SLA. See website maintenance with an SLA.

How long a switch takes depends on the number of page types, the amount of content and the integrations. After the baseline check, you know.

When do I advise against a website redesign?

When your current site simply works and nobody is bothered by WordPress. In that case, good maintenance is enough. A redesign costs money and time. So it has to deliver something: less manual work, more leads from your site or a team that can publish on its own.

Take, for example, a ten-page site with no integrations that gets an update twice a year. I would change nothing there except the maintenance. Or a company that is changing its name or direction next year. Then you are better off waiting until the story is settled. Still in doubt? The comparison WordPress or a custom website helps.