Many company websites were built years ago. They often still look tidy, but the world around them has changed fundamentally: customers no longer search only on Google – they increasingly put their questions directly to ChatGPT or Perplexity, or get their answers from the AI Overviews in Google Search. At the same time, expectations around speed, mobile usability, accessibility and privacy keep rising. If you are planning a relaunch in 2026, the conversation should not stop at a new design. The following eight points matter at least as much.
1. Speed: take Core Web Vitals seriously
A slow website costs enquiries – people leave before the page has even finished loading. Google describes the user experience of a page with the Core Web Vitals, which feed into its assessment of page experience. A page counts as “good” when at least 75 per cent of visits meet these thresholds:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): the largest visible element has loaded within 2.5 seconds.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): the page responds to clicks and input within 200 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): content barely shifts while loading – the score stays at 0.1 or below.
You get there with lean pages, optimised images, self-hosted fonts and as few third-party scripts as possible. Statically delivered pages, such as the ones we build with Next.js, have a clear advantage here.
2. Mobile first – for real
For many websites, most visits now come from smartphones, and Google generally assesses websites based on their mobile version. So “mobile first” does not mean squeezing the desktop page into a narrower column; it means thinking from the small screen upwards: short paths to getting in touch, legible text, buttons that are large enough and forms that are easy to use with a thumb.
3. Clear content for people and AI answer engines
AI assistants answer questions by reading content from the web, summarising it and, ideally, linking to it. You cannot force them to mention your company – but you can make it easy for AI systems to understand your offering correctly. The good news: almost everything that helps here also helps your human visitors.
- Clear facts in easy-to-find places: who you are, what you offer, for whom, where and how to reach you.
- A dedicated page for each service with meaningful headings instead of one catch-all page.
- Structured data based on schema.org, for example for your organisation, services, articles and frequently asked questions.
- FAQ sections that answer real customer questions directly, in a few sentences.
- An llms.txt file that gives AI systems a compact overview of your most important content.
The llms.txt proposal is still young, and it is not yet clear whether or how individual AI providers use the file. But the effort is small, and it forces a useful exercise: describing what you offer in a few clear sentences. This website provides an llms.txt of its own, by the way.
4. Get multilingual right
If you serve customers in Austria, Germany and internationally, you need more than a translate button. Each language version should have its own URL, ideally with translated paths; hreflang annotations tell search engines which pages belong together; and an x-default entry defines the fallback version. Just as important: content should not merely be translated but written for each market – including the terms people there actually search for.
5. Accessibility: a legal question since June 2025
With the European Accessibility Act, the EU has set accessibility requirements for certain products and services. In Austria, the Accessibility Act (Barrierefreiheitsgesetz, BaFG) implements these rules and has applied since 28 June 2025. Among other things, it covers e-commerce services – for example online shops or booking flows through which consumers conclude contracts. Exemptions apply to micro-enterprises that provide services.
Whether and to what extent your website is affected depends on the individual case and should be checked by a legal professional – this article is not legal advice. Either way, accessibility always pays off: good colour contrast, a logical heading structure, alternative text, full keyboard operation and understandable forms help everyone, search engines included. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at level AA have become the established technical benchmark.
6. Privacy: no tracking, no cookie banner
Cookie banners are annoying, and many visitors dismiss them by reflex. Yet they are only needed when a website stores or reads information on the device that is not strictly necessary for it to work – typically for tracking, advertising or embedded third-party services. If you do without these, you generally need no consent and therefore no banner.
- Self-host fonts instead of loading them from third-party servers.
- Load maps and videos only after a click.
- If you need analytics at all, use a cookieless, privacy-friendly tool.
- Limit forms and contact routes to the data you genuinely need.
This website, for example, uses no cookies and no tracking at all – and therefore needs no banner. You will of course still need a legal notice and a privacy policy.
7. Plan security and maintenance from day one
A website is not a one-off project but a system that needs looking after. That includes HTTPS, up-to-date software, regular backups, sensible security headers and monitoring that spots outages before your customers do. The fewer plugins, databases and moving parts a website has, the smaller its attack surface. So decide during the relaunch who will take care of hosting and maintenance afterwards.
8. Connect your website to AI
The biggest difference from the past: today a website can actively work for you. A knowledge assistant answers questions based on your own content and cites its sources. Enquiries from the contact form are automatically summarised, categorised and passed to your CRM together with a draft reply. A smart search understands what visitors mean, even when the terms do not match exactly. What matters is that such features deliver clear value and are transparently labelled, and that critical steps are approved by people. You can see what this looks like in practice on our page about AI integration into websites and software.
Checklist for your relaunch
- Set goals: which enquiries, sales or job applications should the website bring in?
- Review content: what stays, what goes, what is missing – and which questions do your customers really ask?
- Record existing URLs and plan redirects so that rankings and inbound links are preserved.
- Choose technology that is fast, secure and easy to maintain.
- Build in accessibility, privacy and multilingual support from the start.
- Prepare structured data, FAQs and an llms.txt file.
- Decide who will handle hosting, updates and further development.
- Check where AI features add real value – and start with one of them.
Conclusion
A relaunch in 2026 is more than a new design. A good company website is fast, mobile-friendly, accessible and privacy-friendly; it explains your offering clearly – to people and AI systems alike – and connects to the way you work. That is exactly how we build websites: web design and engineering from one team, with AI wherever it genuinely helps. Planning a relaunch? Get in touch – the initial consultation is free.