A website redesign is one of the few marketing investments that can quietly cost you rankings and revenue instead of improving them, if it's approached as a design project instead of a business one.
The single most common cause of a post-redesign traffic drop is changed URLs without proper 301 redirects. Every page that previously ranked needs a mapped redirect to its new location, or the search authority built up over years is simply lost.
Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and interaction responsiveness are now direct ranking factors, not just nice-to-haves. A visually striking site that loads slowly on mobile will underperform a plainer, faster one in both rankings and conversion rate.
The right platform, WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, or custom code, depends less on features and more on who will actually update the site day to day. A non-technical marketing team needs a different platform than an in-house engineering team.
It can, primarily if URLs change without proper 301 redirects, or if page speed regresses. A properly planned migration with redirect mapping typically preserves or improves rankings.
A marketing website with 5 to 10 pages typically takes 3 to 6 weeks depending on content readiness. Ecommerce builds with catalog migration usually take longer.
It depends on who maintains the site afterward and what functionality you need. WordPress suits teams wanting flexibility and a large plugin ecosystem; Webflow suits teams wanting design control without code; Shopify suits ecommerce-first businesses.