How to redesign a WordPress website with AI

The usual way to redesign a WordPress site without starting over is to keep your content and change the theme. WordPress stores your posts, pages, menus, and media separately from the theme that displays them, so when you switch to a newer block theme and restyle it in the Site Editor, most of your content comes along. The careful version of this happens on a staging copy of the site, so visitors don't see a half-finished design, and goes live once every page looks right.

The catch is that a theme only controls the look. If your pages were built with an older theme's custom layouts or a page builder plugin, those layouts often don't survive the switch, and you rebuild each one. Many dated WordPress sites also carry years of plugins that slow the site down, and a new theme doesn't remove them. That's why a lot of WordPress redesigns end with a developer or an agency, even when the owner only wanted a fresher look.

A good redesign does two jobs at once. It keeps what's already earning its place: the copy your customers respond to, your logo and colors, and the page addresses that search engines have indexed and other sites link to. And it changes what's holding the site back, which is usually the visual design, the page structure, and a path to signing up or buying that visitors can't find. If you only change the colors, the site still converts the way it did before.

Kite does that whole job for you. It reads the WordPress site you have now, keeps its content and brand, and rebuilds it in a new design, so you don't start from a blank page and you don't need a developer.

Start by telling Kite in Slack which site you want redesigned and what isn't working about it:

"Our WordPress site at example.com looks dated and the demo request is buried. Redesign it, but keep our content and our logo."

Or give Kite a goal and let it decide what the redesign needs:

"Redesign our website so more visitors book a consultation."

Kite is an AI marketer in your Slack. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. By the time you ask for a redesign, it already knows your positioning, your customers, your competitors, and how your current site performs, so it can propose what the new site should emphasize and which action every page should lead to. Confirm that plan or adjust it, and Kite starts. You can also start from Kite's web app by choosing to import an existing website and entering your site's address.

You don't need to give Kite access to your WordPress dashboard for this job. Kite works from the live, public site, the same pages your visitors see. When the new site is ready, you connect your domain to it.

Kite starts by reading your live WordPress site and capturing what the new one should keep. It reads the text of each page, collects the images that matter, such as product photos, team photos, and customer logos, and extracts your logo. It also records your brand's colors, fonts, and tone, and saves them so every design it builds uses the same palette and type.

Kite treats the facts on your site as fixed. Your prices, addresses, phone numbers, testimonials, and product details carry into the new site exactly as they appear now, and anything Kite can't read is left out rather than made up. Your logo is reused as it is, so the redesign never redraws a brand mark you already have.

Kite decides what the redesign should change before it designs anything. It works out who the site is for, what problem brings them there, and the one action the site should lead them to, such as booking a call, requesting a quote, or starting a trial. It also decides which pages you need, which sections each page should have, and what proof belongs where, such as testimonials near the call to action or customer logos near the top.

This is where a redesign stops being a re-skin. If your old homepage spends its first screen on a slideshow and hides the contact form at the bottom, Kite builds the new one around the action you want visitors to take, using the copy and proof you already have.

Kite builds three complete design options from the same plan, each in a distinct visual style. Every option uses your content, logo, colors, and fonts, so you're comparing real versions of your own site rather than templates. You get a screenshot of each one and a link where you can open them side by side.

You choose. Pick one as it is, ask Kite to change one design, borrow a piece from another ("use the hero from design 3 in design 1"), or ask for a new round if none of them feel right. If there's a site whose look you admire, you can point Kite at it, and it will base the design on that site's style while keeping your own content.

Once you choose a design, Kite builds the rest of the site in it. It carries over your pages and their content, writes or tightens copy where the plan calls for it, and makes every page work on phones. Each page gets a title, a description, a share image, and structured data that search engines and AI answer engines can read. Kite rebuilds your contact and signup forms on the new site, and it can send form signups to your connected Mailchimp audience with the tags you choose.

Every change Kite finishes waits on the site as an unpublished change, and you can preview each one before anything goes live. If you want something changed, reply in the Slack thread and Kite revises it.

Kite sets up a permanent redirect for every old WordPress address that changes, so the links and search rankings your site has built keep pointing somewhere useful. WordPress sites often carry addresses like /2021/06/our-new-service/. If the new site gives that page a cleaner address, a visitor or search engine that asks for the old one lands on the new page instead of an error. Kite points each redirect straight at its final page, so no visitor bounces through a chain of them.

Kite asks for your approval before the new site goes live. When you approve, it shows you the list of changes that will ship, publishes them together, and checks that the site displays correctly. Shortly after the site goes live, Kite checks its speed, search basics, and structured data, and emails the person who published it if it finds a problem.

From there, Kite tracks how the redesign performs. Its built-in analytics show visitors, your most visited pages, where traffic comes from, form submissions, and clicks on your calls to action, compared with the previous period. If a page isn't converting, Kite can propose a change and test it against the current version, then ask you before making the winner permanent.

When Kite finishes, you have a redesigned website that keeps everything your WordPress site was doing right and is built to do more of it.