A website rebrand is the moment your new brand meets everyone who knew the old one: customers with your old address bookmarked, buyers searching for a name you no longer use, finance teams paying invoices made out to it. The new logo is rarely the problem. The gap between what people expect to find and what they actually find usually is.
That gap is manageable if you plan for it. In short: match the website work to what is actually changing, finish the brand before the build starts, tell customers before launch day, redirect every old URL, and sweep for the old name afterwards. If the brand itself isn’t settled yet, start with our guide to website branding.
Brand refresh vs rebrand: how much website work you need
The size of the website job depends on what is changing, not on how big the announcement feels. Most projects fall into one of three situations, or combine two.
A brand refresh: usually a reskin
A refresh keeps the name, positioning and audience, and updates how the brand looks and sounds: a redrawn logo, a new palette or typeface, a tighter voice. On the website, that means new global styles, logo files, images and a few reworked headlines.
How much work that is depends on the build. If colours and fonts are set once as global styles, a reskin is contained. If they were typed into hundreds of page-builder widgets, every page needs touching, and the cost can approach a redesign.
Check before you commit. New colours still have to pass contrast: WCAG 2.2 at level AA asks for at least 4.5:1 for normal text, and 3:1 for large text and for the visual cues that identify controls, such as form field borders. A new typeface has to be licensed for the web and cover every language you publish in.
A full rebrand: usually a redesign
A rebrand changes what the business says about itself: new positioning, audience, offer or voice. That changes the homepage message, navigation, service pages and proof, and new styling on the old structure won’t carry it. Treat it as a redesign with new content throughout, following a clear website redesign process.
A name or domain change: add a migration
A new name touches every page that mentions the old one, plus email templates, documents and profiles outside your site. A new domain turns the launch into a site move, with redirects and search consequences of its own.
| At a glance | Brand refresh | Full rebrand | Name or domain change |
|---|---|---|---|
| What changes | Look, feel and some wording | Positioning, audience, offer and voice | The name people search for, perhaps the web address |
| Website scope | A reskin: global styles, assets, key headlines | A redesign: structure, templates and content | Name updates everywhere, plus a site move for a new domain |
| Search risk | Low, if addresses and content stay | Moderate: rewritten pages can lose rankings | Highest with a new domain: every URL needs a redirect |
A quick test. If a loyal customer would describe what you do in the same words afterwards, it’s a refresh. If they would describe it differently, it’s a rebrand. If they would have to look you up under a new name, plan the migration too.
One caution: a new logo won’t fix a site that is slow, awkward on phones or short of enquiries. These signs your website needs a redesign help you tell.
Get the order right: brand, system, content
A common reason rebrand launches slip is that the website work started before the brand was finished. This order avoids designing everything twice.
1. Finish the brand assets before the build starts
The web team needs final logo lock-ups (including small sizes), a screen colour palette, web-licensed fonts, photography direction and a tone-of-voice guide with examples. Our guide to brand guidelines for websites lists what to hand over.
The exception to “finish first”: test the identity on screens before you sign it off. A website uses the brand across dozens of templates, so it exposes what a presentation hides: a logo that turns to mush at favicon size, an accent colour that fails contrast on white, a font missing characters in one of your languages. Found before sign-off, these are quick fixes. Found mid-build, they mean rework.
2. Change the design system, not individual pages
Apply the new brand at system level: colour and type tokens, spacing, buttons, cards, forms and navigation. Change it once and it flows everywhere. If your site lacks that layer, build a small one now; our explainer on website design systems shows how much a business website needs.
Then chase the long tail that page-by-page reviews miss: favicon and share images, form confirmation emails, downloadable PDFs, the 404 page and cookie banner, the sender name on system emails, and alt text that still mentions the old name.
3. Rewrite the content in the new voice, in every language
A new voice means a rewrite, not a find-and-replace. Start with the pages that do the most work (homepage, main services, about, contact), then decide page by page whether to rewrite, update or retire the rest.
On a multilingual site, have writers who know each language adapt the voice rather than translate the new copy word for word; taglines and wordplay rarely survive translation. If the name is changing, check early what it means and how it sounds in every language your customers use.
Keep what ranks. Change the tone freely, but keep the topics, search terms and page addresses that already bring in traffic unless your data says otherwise.
How to tell customers you’ve rebranded
Existing customers need three answers: what has changed, what hasn’t, and whether they have to do anything. Good rebrand customer communication answers all three before anyone asks.
Publish a rebrand announcement page
Give the change a permanent page, linked from a homepage notice during the transition:
- What’s changing: name, logo, web address, email addresses.
- What isn’t: the people, services, contracts, warranties and phone numbers customers rely on.
- Why: one honest paragraph, not a manifesto.
- What to do: usually nothing. If customers must update anything, say exactly what and by when.
- Who to ask: a clear contact route.
It doubles as the rebrand announcement for partners and press, and answers anyone searching “old name new name”.
Warn people before email arrives from a new domain
Email from an unfamiliar domain can look like phishing. Warn customers in advance from the old address, keep old addresses receiving and forwarding for a long time, and set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the new domain before sending from it, or messages may be rejected or land in spam.
If your bank details change too, take extra care: fraudsters often pose as suppliers announcing new payment details. Ask customers to confirm any change through a channel they already trust, such as calling a number they already have, never by email alone.
Use “formerly known as” wording for a while
After launch, pair the new name with the old one where people look for reassurance: homepage, about page, footer, Google Business Profile and social bios. A line such as “New Name (formerly Old Name)” tells returning visitors they’re in the right place and helps search engines and AI assistants connect the two names. Your Organization structured data can list the old name as an alternateName too.
How long? There is no fixed rule. Watch searches for the old name in Search Console’s Performance report; when they become rare, drop the wording from prominent places but keep a line on the about page.
Update everything that carries the old name
List every place the old name appears and give each one an owner:
Name and domain changes: the SEO essentials
Changing your company name on the same domain carries little search risk: update titles, headings, logo alt text and structured data, and keep the “formerly” wording so searches for the old name still find you.
A new domain is a site move. Our website migration SEO checklist covers it in full; these are the essentials:
- Redirect every old URL to its closest new equivalent with a permanent (301) redirect, not everything to the homepage.
- Keep URL paths the same where you can. If
/services/fit-out/stays/services/fit-out/, one simple rule can redirect every page. - Verify the new domain in Google Search Console before launch, and keep the old property to watch traffic move across.
- Submit Search Console’s Change of Address once the redirects are live.
- Keep the old domain registered and redirecting indefinitely. Google’s site-move guidance says to keep redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year, but old links, bookmarks, QR codes and email addresses rely on the old domain far longer. A lapsed domain can be bought by anyone.
Google notes that visibility in Search may fluctuate temporarily during a move. Search engines and AI assistants have years of pages using your old name; consistent wording and lasting redirects help them catch up. If the move also changes hosting or email, plan that separately with our guide to moving to a new host.
The post-launch sweep
Launch is when the old brand turns up somewhere you missed. Sweep in the first days, then again a few weeks later:
- Search the site for the old name, including page titles, alt text, PDFs and email templates.
- Test redirects from a sample of old URLs, including the old homepage with and without
www. - Submit every form and check what arrives: sender, domain, logo and signature.
- Search for both names in a private window, in each language you use.
- Watch Search Console and analytics for 404 errors, indexing on the new domain, queries for both names and weekly enquiries.
- Ask whoever answers the phone and inbox what customers are asking. Repeated questions show what the announcement didn’t make clear.
For the technical checks every launch needs, use our website launch checklist alongside this one.
The website rebrand launch checklist
Before the build
Before launch
Launch day and after
Plan the website side of your rebrand early
A website rebrand goes smoothly when the website joins the brand project early, and when every detail, from share images to the old domain’s renewal, has an owner before launch day.
If your rebrand needs more than a reskin, our website redesign service covers the whole job: structure and content planned around the new brand, and every old URL redirected so customers and search engines can follow you to the new name. Not sure how much of your current site can carry the new brand? Talk to us about what your website needs, and we’ll help you scope it before you commit.