Redesigning an association’s website without breaking its old links

In September, we redesigned the website of Théâtre Edelweiss, an association in Frangy where children can start acting from age 3. The full project is described in the case study.

Here we come back to something that is easy to forget during a redesign: the website’s old addresses.

Why it matters

An association’s website has often been around for years. Its pages have been shared on Facebook, emailed to families, and Google knows them. If the redesign changes the addresses without a plan, every one of those links leads to an error page, and most visitors don’t look any further.

What we did for Edelweiss

The existing pages kept their addresses: home, theatre, music awareness, workshops, shows and gallery. For the ones we removed, the blog and the newsletter, we set up redirects. Someone who clicks an old blog link today lands on the shows page.

How to check your own site

Before a redesign, ask for the list of current pages and what each one will become. After launch, open a few old links, for example from your Facebook page or an old email. If they hit an error, some redirects are missing.

For a law firm, where search rankings matter even more, we covered the same question in Redesigning your law firm's website without losing search visibility.