Website redesign in Toronto, without losing the rankings you already paid for
Most redesign enquiries start with “the site looks dated”. That is rarely why it underperforms, and never a number you can put in a business case. CANDIMA has no Toronto office — we work with Ontario clients remotely from Burnaby, BC.
How you know the current site is costing you
Taste is not evidence. These are:
A redesign earns its cheque when you can name the figure it should move: enquiries per month, mobile conversion rate, cost per booked call. No figure means you want a refresh.
Refresh, redesign, replatform — three different jobs
They get quoted as one thing. The gap between them is most of the price.
| Job | What changes | Ranking risk |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh | Type, colour, imagery, tightened copy. Same pages, same URLs, same platform. | None |
| Redesign | Structure, navigation, templates, the route to enquiry. Some URLs move. | Real, manageable |
| Replatform | New CMS. Content, URLs and integrations all move at once. | Highest |
The pattern in Toronto quotes: the third priced, the first delivered. Ask which one is being proposed.
What actually happens to your rankings during the move
This is the fear that keeps profitable businesses on sites they dislike. Rankings do not fall because a site got a new look — they fall for two mechanical reasons: URLs moved and nothing told Google where the page went, or the new layout deleted the copy that was doing the ranking.
The work therefore starts before anyone opens a design tool: crawl the live site, record every indexed URL with its traffic and positions, and write a one-to-one redirect map from it. Run a content parity check so pages earning organic visits keep their headings, their substance and their internal links.
Then watch it — crawl errors and index coverage daily for a fortnight, enquiries measured against the same weeks last year, not last month. Expect flat for four to eight weeks, then gains from speed and structure rather than decoration.
The Toronto redesign numbers, read properly
“Website redesign toronto” reports 3,600 searches a month at $16.85 a click — and so do “web design toronto” and “website development toronto”, identical figures, because Google groups them as one close-variant cluster rather than separate audiences. So 3,600 is the ceiling for the whole design cluster here. The redesign slice is smaller and better qualified: those people already have a site and a budget.
| Search term | Monthly | Cost per click |
|---|---|---|
| website redesign toronto | 3,600 | $16.85 |
| web design company toronto | 2,400 | $15.27 |
| website designer toronto | 880 | $18.02 |
| website design cost toronto | 30 | $6.85 |
Note the last row: barely anyone here searches on price. Toronto buyers shortlist on evidence, then ask cost in the meeting — and against agencies on large retainers, evidence is the only ground worth competing on.
Finished builds you can open before committing
Three live sites, not mockups. Open each on a phone and judge what a redesign buys: whether the structure carries a visitor to an enquiry. None are in Toronto — we work with Ontario businesses remotely and claim no office there.
What owners ask before signing off a redesign
Will a redesign hurt our Google rankings?
Only if URL continuity or on-page content is lost, and both are avoidable. Expect flat rankings for four to eight weeks while Google re-crawls, then improvement.
What happens to our existing URLs?
Every indexed URL gets a destination written down before design starts. Nothing is redirected to the homepage in bulk — Google reads that as a soft 404.
Do you have a Toronto office?
No. We are in Burnaby, BC and work with Ontario clients remotely. Redesigns are reviewed on staging links you can open from anywhere, so we would rather say that than rent a Bay Street address.
How long does a Toronto redesign take?
Six to twelve weeks for a structural redesign of a twenty to forty page site. The crawl, redirect map and content audit take the first two.
Find out whether you need a redesign before you pay for one.
We crawl the current site, pull what ranks and what converts, and tell you which of the three jobs above yours needs — including when the answer is to fix two pages instead.