The Website Redesign That Gave a Tired Bike Shop a Second Wind

Before. Gus's bike shop website had been built by his cousin in a different decade. It had a spinning gear animation on the homepage, a "Latest News" box whose latest news was about a sale that ended years ago, and a phone number set in a font so thin it looked like it was being whispered.

The shop itself, in Minneapolis, was wonderful. Wooden floors, a shop dog named Pretzel, mechanics who could hear a bad bottom bracket from across the room. But fewer new customers were coming in, and Gus had a hunch the website was partly to blame.

He was right. What follows is the story of his website redesign, told as a before and after, along with what any small business owner can take from it.

Signs your business needs a website redesign

Gus didn't wake up one day and decide to redesign. The signs piled up slowly:

• Customers kept calling to ask about opening hours, which were on the site, just hard to find.
• His teenage employee said the site "looked kind of abandoned."
• On his phone, the menu covered half the screen and wouldn't close properly.
• He couldn't update anything himself. Every change meant emailing his cousin, who was now busy with twins.
• When he searched "bike repair Minneapolis," his shop didn't show up near the top, even though his reviews were great.

If two or three of those sound familiar, a website redesign is probably worth thinking about. Not because the old site is ugly, but because it's quietly working against you.

Before: what the old site got wrong

When Gus sat down with a designer, they went through the old site page by page. The problems weren't dramatic. They were small, and there were lots of them.

The homepage talked about the shop's history before saying what it offered. The repair services were listed on a page called "Workshop," which nobody thought to click. There was no way to book a repair online; you had to call, and the phone was often busy because Gus was, well, fixing bikes. And photos were tiny, blurry and mostly of bikes no longer sold.

The old site wasn't a disaster. It was just tired. And tired websites send a message: maybe this business is tired too.

The redesign plan: start with what customers want

Before talking about colours, the designer asked Gus a question: "Why do people come to your shop?"

Gus thought about it. Mostly three reasons: repairs and tune-ups, buying a new bike with real advice, and getting fitted properly. Everything else was a sideshow.

So the redesigned site was built around those three things. Each got its own clear page, with a simple explanation, real photos and a clear next step: book a repair, visit the shop, schedule a fitting.

After: what changed

After. The new homepage opened with a single line: "Repairs, new bikes and expert fitting, in the heart of Minneapolis." Under that, three big buttons, one for each reason people visit.

Some of the other changes:

1. Online repair booking. Customers could pick a service and a drop-off day without calling.
2. Hours and address everywhere. In the header and footer of every page, readable and tappable.
3. Mobile-first layout. Big buttons, short sections and fast-loading photos.
4. Real photography. The mechanics at work, the wooden floors and, of course, Pretzel.
5. Pages built for search. Clear titles and content about bike repair, tune-ups and fitting in Minneapolis, so search engines could understand what the shop does.
6. An easy editor. Gus could update hours and post a sale himself, no cousin required.

Just as important was what got removed: the spinning gear, the stale news box and three pages nobody had visited in years.

What a redesign can (and can't) do

It's tempting to think a website redesign will transform a business overnight. It won't. If the product is poor or the service is rude, a nicer site just helps more people discover that.

But when the business is good and the website is the weak link, a redesign often fixes a leak you didn't know you had. The logic is simple: more people who visit understand what you offer, trust you, and find it easy to take the next step. Some will book who would have given up before.

For Gus, the most noticeable change was that the phone rang less with basic questions and more with actual bookings. His mechanics noticed it before he did.

If you're curious what a refresh like that might look like for your business, you can see our website design services and what each package covers.

How to plan your own website redesign

A few lessons from Gus's project that apply to almost any small business:

• Write down the top three reasons customers contact you. Build the site around those.
• Keep what works. Pages that already rank in search or get lots of visits should be carried over carefully, not deleted.
• Use real photos. Even a phone photo of your actual team beats stock imagery.
• Make the next step obvious. Book, call, visit, buy. On every page.
• Make it easy to update. A site you can't change will be outdated again before you know it.

Give your website the second wind your business deserves

If your website feels like it belongs to an older version of your business, you're not alone, and it's very fixable. Web Design Studios redesigns and builds websites, landing pages and online stores for small businesses, keeping what works and fixing what doesn't.

👉 Explore our website packages and choose the right redesign for your business →

Pretzel, for the record, now has his own photo on the About page. He has not let it go to his head.