Website Renewal

If even one of these applies, it is worth considering a renewal. If three or more apply, we recommend acting soon.

1. On a smartphone, the text is tiny or the page scrolls sideways
2. The address does not start with https
3. You cannot update the site yourself, even to post a short notice
4. The site is more than five years old and still runs an outdated WordPress or PHP
5. Your services, prices or company details no longer match what is on the site
6. Pages take several seconds to open
7. Enquiries do not come in, or the ones that do are off target
8. You cannot reach the agency that built the site, or the website builder you use is shutting down

Typical costs and each sign are explained in detail in our article How much does a website renewal cost? (in Japanese).

The two most common renewal failures are losing search traffic because URLs changed, and company email that stops arriving after the domain settings were changed. We include the following work in every quote from the start.

URL redirects (301)

We list every URL on your current site and make sure each one either opens at the same address on the new site or redirects automatically to its new address. We check the list before and after launch. Without redirects, your search rankings are not carried over and bookmarks and links from other sites break.

Domain and email (DNS)

If your company email runs on the same domain as your website, changing the domain settings (DNS) can stop email from arriving. We review your current email setup, leave the email-related settings untouched and switch only where the website points. If you are not sure who holds the domain or server contract, or you do not have the login details, we can help you find out.

Contact forms

The destination address, the automatic reply to the sender and spam protection all work the same way on the new site. On launch day we send a real test message to confirm it arrives.

Analytics and search

Google Analytics (GA4) and Search Console continue under the same accounts so that you can compare before and after the renewal. We also check that the website URL listed on your Google Business Profile and social media opens correctly.

In October 2026 we rebuilt our own website, moving from WordPress to an Astro-based CMS (EmDash). We take the same approach with client sites to keep search rankings intact while making pages faster.

• All 274 URLs on the old site (pages, media articles, news, works, author pages, attachments and more) were carried over: each one opens at the same address or redirects to its new page
• We built an automated check that confirms all 274 URLs either load or redirect to the right place, and run it after every change
• In a simple test simulating a smartphone, the home page went from 58 files to 12, from about 4.9 MB to about 1.7 MB of data, and from about 8.5 seconds to about 3.1 seconds to finish loading (October 2026)
• The contact form (input, confirm, complete), Google Analytics (GA4), Search Console and the view counts behind our popular-articles ranking were all carried over

The steps and measurements are described in our article Moving our website from WordPress to an Astro-based CMS (in Japanese).