Can I keep my website address when I redesign?

Yes, you can keep your website address when you redesign, and in almost every case you should. Your domain is registered to you, separately from the website that currently shows on it. Getting a new website means changing a setting at your domain's registrar so the address points at the new site instead of the old one. Your customers type the same address, your business cards still work, and your email can carry on unchanged. All you need is access to the account where the domain is registered.

Your address and your website are separate

Owners often think the website and the address come as one, because they bought them together years ago. They are two separate things:

The domain, such as smithroofing.com, is a yearly registration at a company called a registrar: GoDaddy, Namecheap, Network Solutions, Squarespace Domains, Cloudflare and many others.
The website is a set of pages stored on hosting somewhere.

The domain holds a few settings that say "when someone visits this address, send them to that hosting". Change those settings and the same address shows a different website. That is all a redesign switch is. If you want the background, DNS explained for small business owners covers how those settings work.

Why keeping your address matters

Your address is printed on your vans, invoices, yard signs and business cards. It is saved in customers' phones, linked from directories, your Google Business Profile and your suppliers' sites. Google has learned it over years. Changing it would mean redoing all of that. Keeping it means the redesign is invisible from the outside, apart from a better site.

There are rare good reasons to change a domain, such as a new business name. Changing your domain name: when it's worth it covers those. A redesign on its own is not one of them.

Step 1: find where your domain is registered

You need to log in to the registrar to change the settings. If you are not sure which company it is:

Go to ICANN Lookup and type your domain.
Look for the "Registrar" line. That is the company.
Search your email for that company's name to find the account and login email.

If the domain is in a former designer's or employee's account, sort that out first; you cannot point the domain without access. Who owns my domain? How to check helps with that.

Step 2: choose how to point it

There are two common ways to point a domain at a new site. Whoever builds the new site will tell you which one they need.

Change a few records (usually the safer choice). You log in to the registrar's DNS page and change only the records for the website. These are usually an A record for the bare address (smithroofing.com) and a CNAME record for the www version (www.smithroofing.com). Everything else, including the records that deliver your email, stays exactly as it was.

Change the nameservers. Nameservers decide which company manages all of your domain's settings. Changing them hands the whole set to the new provider. This is fine if the new provider copies across every existing record, including your email ones, but if they do not, your email stops. Ask before you agree to it.

For most small businesses that just want a new website, changing only the website records is simpler and leaves less to go wrong. Step-by-step guides for the common registrars are at pointing your domain at a new site, including GoDaddy and Namecheap.

Step 3: wait for the change to spread

Once the records are changed, the internet picks up the new setting gradually. It often takes minutes; it can take up to a day or two in some cases, depending on a setting called TTL that tells the internet how long to remember the old value. During that window, some visitors see the old site and some see the new one. Both work, so nobody is turned away. How long does it take for a domain change to work? explains the wait.

Step 4: check everything after the switch

Once the new site shows on your address:

Visit both yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com. Both should open the new site.
Check the padlock next to the address. The new site should be secure from the start.
Open a few of your old page addresses and confirm they land on the right new pages.
Send an email to your business address from an outside account and confirm it arrives.
Send a test message through the new contact form.

Special cases

Your domain was bought through Wix, Squarespace or another builder. You still own it and can point it elsewhere. Builders let you either change the records in their domain settings or move the domain out to another registrar. There are step-by-step guides for Wix and Squarespace.

Your domain is at a registrar you dislike. You can keep it there and just point it, or transfer it to another registrar. Transfers take about a week and are best done before or after the redesign, not on the same day.

Your domain is about to expire. Renew it first. A domain that lapses during a redesign can take the old and new sites, and your email, offline.

You want a new domain as well. Keep the old one, renewing every year, and forward it to the new address. Never let an address customers know lapse.

What you do not need to do

You do not need to buy a new domain.
You do not need to move the domain to a new registrar.
You do not need to change your email address.
You do not need to tell customers a new address, because there is none.

What to do this week

Look up your domain and note the registrar and expiry date.
Log in to the registrar and make sure the account is in your name.
Screenshot your DNS settings.
Ask whoever builds your new site which records they need changed.
Turn on auto-renew for the domain.

A new site can be built and checked on a temporary address before your domain is touched at all. You can see your site rebuilt first at a preview address and point your own domain at it only when you are ready.