What does a website rebrand touch?
A rebrand touches your website in three layers: identity, content and technical. Work through them in that order and check each one off before you announce anything.
The identity layer is what people see: logo, colours, fonts, favicon and share images. The content layer is what the site says: the company name in every paragraph, the about page, legal pages and the PDPA privacy notice. The technical layer is what machines read: the domain, redirects, structured data, email and business listings.
This checklist is for the switchover itself, whether you are renaming after a merger, moving upmarket or taking a Thai company name into English for regional buyers. If you only want a fresh layout with the same brand, that is a website redesign, which has its own planning steps. One point up front: we build and update websites, we do not design logos or brand identities. Your brand designer or agency supplies the brand; we apply it across every page.
Before you start
A common cause of rebrand delays is starting the website before the brand is finished. Collect these from your brand designer first:
- Logo files in SVG plus a square version for the favicon and social avatars, with a light and a dark variant.
- Colour values as hex codes, including which colours are allowed for text on white so contrast stays readable.
- Fonts with web licences, and a Thai typeface that pairs with the Latin one if your site is bilingual. Many display fonts have no Thai glyphs, and the fallback can look out of place.
- The new legal name and, if the entity changed, the new registration details your lawyer or accountant confirms.
- The go-live date, agreed with sales and customer service, so the site, invoices and LINE greeting messages switch together.
Then make an inventory. Export a list of every URL on the current site, every PDF, every email template and every place the old name appears. A simple spreadsheet works. If you are also restructuring menus, now is the time to decide how to plan a website structure rather than after the new logo is live.
Visual identity on the site
The visible layer is where old branding hides longest, because it lives in files as well as in the theme.
Logo and favicon
Replace the header and footer logo, the favicon in every size, the Apple touch icon and the logo in structured data. Browsers cache favicons stubbornly, so test in a private window and on a phone.
Colours and typography
On a well-built theme, colours and fonts are set once as variables, so the change is quick. On a page builder site they are often set per block, which means opening every page. Check buttons, links, form focus states and hover colours, not only headings.
Images and share previews
Replace OG images, the pictures shown when someone shares a page on LINE, Facebook or WhatsApp. Old share images stay attached to URLs in chat history, so also refresh them through each platform's link preview tool where one exists. Then search the media library for photos with the old signage, uniforms or vehicles, and banner images with the old name baked into the pixels.
If the page layouts are changing along with the look, sketch a website wireframe for the key templates before anyone restyles them, so the new colours land on a structure you have agreed.
Content and legal pages
Search the whole site, including the Thai version, for the old name, old abbreviations and old taglines. Check the page titles and meta descriptions too, because those are what people read in Google results.
- About page: explain the change in one or two plain sentences, for example "formerly known as" with the old name. Customers searching the old name should land somewhere that tells them they are in the right place.
- Contact page and footer: new name, email addresses on the new domain (with the SPF and DKIM records that keep its mail out of spam), and any change of address.
- Terms, refund and shipping policies: update the business name and any entity details.
- Downloadable files: brochures, price lists and company profiles in PDF usually carry the old logo on every page.
The PDPA privacy notice
Under Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act, your privacy notice tells people who the data controller is and how to contact them. If a merger or restructure created a new legal entity, the notice must name it, and your lawyer should confirm how personal data moves from the old company to the new one. Update the cookie banner text, the consent wording on forms and the contact details for data requests at the same time. We apply the wording your adviser approves; we do not give legal advice.
How do you change your domain without losing traffic?
A new name does not force a new domain. If the old domain has years of links and search visibility, some companies keep it for a while and change only the visible brand. If you do move, treat it as a site move, not a find and replace.
- Map every old URL to its new URL and set up permanent (301) redirects page by page, not all to the home page.
- Verify both domains in Google Search Console, then use the Change of Address tool once the redirects work, as Google's site move documentation describes.
- Update internal links, canonical tags and the XML sitemap so the new site does not point back at the old one.
- Keep the old domain registered and the redirects running for the long term. Letting it lapse breaks every old link and lets someone else buy it.
- Move email carefully. Set up mailboxes on the new domain, keep the old addresses forwarding, and update SPF and DKIM records so invoices do not land in spam.
The ranking side of a move has more steps than fit here; our guide to an SEO website redesign covers redirect mapping and what to monitor in detail.
What needs updating outside the website?
Customers often meet your brand before they reach the website, so the off-site layer matters as much as the pages.
- Structured data: update the Organization or LocalBusiness schema with the new name, logo URL, website and any alternate name, so search engines connect old and new. Our guide to local business schema markup lists the fields.
- Google Business Profile: edit the business name to the new real-world name, update the website link and replace the logo and cover photo.
- Directories and marketplaces: Thai business directories, industry associations, Lazada or Shopee shop names, booking platforms for hotels and clinics.
- Social profiles: names, handles where the platform allows it, profile pictures, cover images and bio links, including your LINE Official Account profile.
- Email signatures and templates: staff signatures, order confirmations, e-Tax invoice templates and automated replies.
Keep a column in your inventory for who owns each account. Rebrands often stall because nobody remembers the login for an old directory listing.
The rebrand checklist
Use this as the order of work. Announce the change on the site with a short news page on launch day, and send the same message to existing customers by email and LINE so nobody mistakes the new name for a scam. After launch, watch Search Console for crawl errors, run a broken link check, and compare search traffic for the old brand name against the new one for a few months. Our website launch checklist covers the general go-live checks that apply here too.
- Brand assets receivedLogo files, colour codes, licensed fonts including Thai, legal name and go-live date.
- Inventory doneEvery URL, PDF, template and account that shows the old name, with an owner for each.
- Visual layer updatedLogo, favicon, colours, fonts, OG images and photos with old signage.
- Content updatedOld name removed from pages, titles, meta descriptions and both language versions.
- Legal pages updatedTerms, policies and the PDPA privacy notice naming the correct data controller.
- Domain move done301 redirects mapped, Search Console Change of Address used, sitemap and email updated.
- Off-site updatedSchema, Google Business Profile, directories, social profiles, signatures.
- AnnouncedNews page live and customers told by email and LINE.
- MonitoredCrawl errors, broken links and branded search checked after launch.
Getting it built
If your rebrand also needs new templates, the visual work follows our design process: we take the brand guidelines you already have and turn them into page layouts for desktop and mobile, in English and Thai. Many rebrands are a good moment to move off an old page builder theme, since the change means touching every page anyway.
For a site of up to 15 pages in two languages, our Business package starts from THB 30,000 as an indicative one-time price, with the final figure set in your written quote. A typical project takes around 15 days from the agreed brief to launch, so have the new brand assets ready at the start. If you are comparing agencies, writing the scope down with an RFP template makes quotes easier to compare. When you have the brand files and a go-live date, send us your brief and we will reply with scope and price.
Further reading
Sources
- Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes
- Search Console Help: Change of Address tool
- PDPC Thailand: Personal Data Protection Committee
Builds and ranks the websites: the systems behind the 17 client sites whose Search Console numbers we publish. This guide was written by the Website Development Bangkok team. More about us