UX refresh
A UX refresh keeps the site you have and changes how it works for the people using it: what they see first, how they find their way and how easily they can get in touch.
Short answer
A UX refresh suits a site whose structure is broadly sound but whose visitors get lost, give up or ring to ask questions the site should answer. We review how people use it, fix the biggest problems in priority order and leave your platform in place.
What "UX" means here
User experience, or UX, is a broad term. On this page it means something specific: how easily a visitor can find what they came for and do the thing they came to do. On a plumber's site, that might be finding out whether you cover their suburb and how to book a call-out. On a clinic's site, it might be finding opening hours and the cost of a first appointment. A UX refresh focuses on those journeys.
The work does not change your platform, and it changes the visual design only where the design itself causes problems. A low-contrast button that people miss, for example, gets changed. A colour scheme that is simply a little old-fashioned does not.
Signs a refresh would help
You may not need a full redesign if most of these sound familiar:
- Customers ring or email to ask questions that are answered somewhere on the site
- Your menu has grown to a dozen items or more, some of them vague
- Important pages are three or more clicks from the home page
- The enquiry form asks for more than you need
- Staff tell you they send people direct links because the menu is confusing
None of these needs a new platform. They are problems of structure, labelling and page order.
How we work
Review
We start by looking at what visitors do. If you have analytics, we look at the pages people land on, the pages they leave from and the search terms they use on your site. We walk through your three or four most important journeys on a phone and on a desktop, noting every point where a visitor might hesitate. Where it helps, we ask you or your staff about the questions customers ask most often, because those reveal gaps.
Priorities
The review produces a short list of problems, each with a suggested fix and a rough effort estimate. We agree with you which fixes to make, starting with the ones that affect the most visitors for the least work. You stay in control of the scope.
Changes
Changes in a refresh can include rewriting menu labels in plain words, regrouping pages under fewer headings, moving key information higher on the page, adding short summaries at the top of long pages, simplifying forms and making buttons look like buttons. We make the changes on a staging copy first so you can try them before they go live.
Checks
After launch we compare the same measures we looked at in the review. Changes to menus and forms often show up quickly in where people click. We report what changed and what did not, without stretching the numbers.
Accessibility is part of usability
Many usability problems are also accessibility problems. Text that is hard to read against its background, links that only say "click here", and forms that do not explain what went wrong affect everyone, but they shut some people out completely. During a refresh we check the pages we change against WCAG 2.2 at level AA. Version 2.2 added criteria that are directly about usability, such as minimum target sizes for buttons and links, and not hiding the focus indicator behind sticky headers1. For a plain-language rundown of the standard, see the WCAG 2.2 guide.
What a refresh does not do
A refresh will not fix a site whose platform is failing, whose design breaks on phones, or whose structure no longer matches the business. If the review shows one of those problems, we will say so and explain the options, including a full redesign. We would rather tell you early than spend your budget on changes that will not hold.
A refresh also does not promise more enquiries or sales. It removes obstacles. Whether visitors then get in touch depends on your prices, your reputation, the time of year and much else.
What you receive
- A written review with the problems we found, ranked by impact and effort
- The agreed changes, tested on staging and then made live
- Before-and-after notes for each change
- A short comparison of the measures we tracked, a few weeks after launch
UX refresh questions
Will my site look different after a refresh?
Somewhat. Menus, page order and buttons may change, and some pages will be easier to scan. The overall look stays recognisable unless the design itself was causing problems.
Do you run user testing sessions?
For most small business sites we work from analytics, walkthroughs and the questions your customers already ask. If you want sessions with real users, we can include a small round and quote for it separately.
Can a refresh change page addresses?
It can, if pages are merged or renamed. When that happens, we add permanent redirects from the old addresses and test them before launch.
Sources
Each source was opened and checked against the sentence it supports on 3 November 2026.
- What's New in WCAG 2.2 Standards body
Ready to plan your redesign?
Tell us what your current site does well and what holds it back. You get a written, fixed quote in NZD before any work starts.