Redesigning a website after a business changes hands

When you buy a business, the website tends to come along as an afterthought, and that is where the trouble starts. Before you change a single word on it, get the domain, the website account and the email into your own name and onto your own card. Then redesign in a way that keeps what customers already know, removes what belonged to the seller, and corrects every fact that changed with the sale.

What you actually bought: the website is several separate things

"The website" is rarely one thing. It is usually five or six accounts, each with its own login, its own bill and sometimes its own owner:

• The domain name, the address like smithheating.com, held at a registrar (the company you rent the name from, such as GoDaddy or Namecheap).
• The website itself, on a builder like Wix or Squarespace, or on a hosting account where a designer installed it.
• The email mailboxes on that domain, often at Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, sometimes at the hosting company.
• The Google Business Profile, the listing that shows on Google Maps with your hours and reviews.
• The extras: Facebook page, Yelp listing, booking tool, payment links, a call-tracking number.

Any of these can sit in the seller's personal email account, on their personal credit card, or in the name of a nephew who set it up years ago. If you do not take them over deliberately, the first sign of trouble is the site going dark when a renewal fails on a card the seller has since cancelled.

Get the accounts before closing, or as soon after as you can

Ask the seller for a written list: each account, the login email, who pays, and the renewal date. If you are still negotiating, ask your attorney to name the domain and the online accounts in the purchase agreement as assets that transfer with the business. That one line saves arguments later.

Then take them over one at a time:

1. Domain first. Look the domain up at lookup.icann.org to see which registrar holds it. The simplest route is usually for the seller to move the domain into an account you open at the same registrar (most have an "account change" or "push to another account" option). The other route is a transfer to a registrar of your choice using an authorization code. Either way, the domain ends up in an account with your email, your password and your card.
2. Website account. Change the login email to one you control, set a new password and turn on two-factor sign-in (a code sent to your phone).
3. Email. Decide what happens to the seller's old mailbox. Customers and suppliers will keep writing to it for months. The usual answer is to keep it, or forward it to you, rather than delete it. Agree with the seller what happens to their personal messages in it before you read anything.
4. Google Business Profile. Have the seller add you as an owner, then hand you primary ownership. Do not create a second listing for the same business; duplicates confuse customers and are hard to clean up. Who controls your Google listing explains the roles.
5. Everything else. Replace the seller's card on every renewal, and write the dates in your calendar.

The full list of what to ask for is in the domain and hosting checklist for buying a business.

What customers need to stay the same

The reason you paid for an existing business is that customers already know it. The website should not make them wonder whether they have the right place.

Keep the business name, the phone number, the logo and the domain if you kept them in the sale. Keep the page addresses too: the old site's pages may be linked from Google, from directory listings and from bookmarks on customers' phones. Keep the reviews and testimonials. They belong to the business, and customers trust them because they are old.

If the services and the crew are the same, say so. A line like "Same crew, same phone number, new owner since 2026" reassures the regulars who worried when they heard about the sale.

What has to change because the owner changed

Some things on the old site were true about the seller and are now wrong. Go through every page with a pen:

• People. The seller's photo, their personal cell number, their signature on the about page, a "message from the owner" written in their voice.
• Licenses and insurance. In many trades the license belongs to a person, not to the company. If the license number on the site was the seller's, replace it with yours or with whoever now holds it. The same goes for insurance certificates and bonding.
• Claims. "Family-owned since 1987" may still be true about the business, but "owned by the Miller family" may not. Awards are fine to keep with their year.
• Prices, hours and service area, if you have changed any of them.
• The about page. Rewrite it honestly: who started the business, when you took it over, and what you are keeping. Customers do not need your life story, just enough to know a real person is in charge.

Should the website say the business changed hands?

It depends on the reputation you bought. If the seller was well liked and the business ran well, a quiet line on the about page is enough; a big "under new management" banner can make regulars wonder what went wrong. If the business had slipped, with slow callbacks and bad reviews, then saying so plainly and naming what you have fixed can win people back.

Either way, do not hide it. Customers find out, and a website that still shows the old owner's face a year later reads as careless.

When to redesign

Not in the first week. In the first month, take over the accounts and correct the facts that are wrong: phone, license, email, the owner's name. Then redesign once you know what the business will be under you, for example whether you are adding a service, dropping one or covering new towns. Waiting a few months is fine; waiting a year with the seller's photo on the home page is not.

When you do redesign, start from what the old site already says. Most of the service descriptions, photos of finished work and reviews can carry over, so the job is correcting and modernizing, not starting from a blank page.

What to do this week

• Ask the seller for the list of accounts, logins and renewal dates.
• Look up the domain's registrar and start moving it into your account.
• Change logins and payment cards on the website and email accounts.
• Get added as owner on the Google Business Profile.
• Mark every page where the seller's name, photo, phone or license appears.
• Decide what the about page will say about the change.

Once the accounts are yours and the facts are right, you can see your site rebuilt first from what is already on it, with the seller's details taken out, and judge the new version before you commit to it.