Planning Website Integration After an Acquisition

The Moment Two Businesses Become One

You bought a business. Or you and a partner merged. Or you bought the smaller company that used to sit down the road from yours.

The customers did not notice, and that is the point. What they did notice, in the weeks that followed, is a strange inconsistency: two websites, two logos, two phone numbers that both still work, and a price list that says one thing on one site and another on the other.

The pattern is familiar to anybody who has watched two businesses merge: the combined result usually falls short of what everyone hoped for, and the reason is rarely the product. It is the work of combining two organisations that were built separately and never expected to meet.

The website is where that work becomes visible. It is the first place a customer goes to check whether the combined business is real, and it is the first place they decide whether it is.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     THE TWO WAYS INTEGRATION GOES WRONG                     │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ MISTAKE 1: THE BIG BANG                                                     │
│ You try to merge everything at once: the invoice systems, the customer      │
│ records, the email, the website. Six months becomes two years, and          │
│ nothing the customer sees improves while the back office is arguing.        │
│                                                                             │
│ MISTAKE 2: THE FREEZE                                                       │
│ You are afraid of disrupting live sales, so nothing moves. Now you run      │
│ two brands, two sets of logins, two hosting bills and two websites that     │
│ contradict each other on price, hours and what you actually sell.           │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Neither of these is about technology. One is a sequencing error and one is a decision to postpone.

1. Why the Website Gets Left Until Last

Here is the trap: after an acquisition the website is not on the critical path of the merger, so it slips.

The accounts have to be combined, because invoices have to be issued. The inventory has to be reconciled. The staff have to be told what is happening and when. All of that is real, dated, urgent work with a person responsible for it.

The website has no such date. So it becomes “later”, and “later” arrives in month seven, by which point the business has spent seven months telling customers two different stories.

The other reason it slips is that it is bigger than it looks. Two sites that share a brand, a product range and a set of customers is not a copy-and-paste job. It is a decision about which pages survive, what the combined offer actually is, and how the old URLs are carried across without losing the search results and the printed links that bring people in.

Decide that early, while the people who know both businesses are still paying attention.

2. The 100-Day Website Plan

The plan below is deliberately front-loaded: everything that needs a decision from both owners happens in the first fifty days, while the rebuild starts only once the decisions are made.

┌─────────────┬──────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                          THE 100-DAY WEBSITE PLAN                           │
├─────────────┼──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ PHASE       │ DAYS             │ WHAT HAPPENS                               │
│ Phase 1     │ Days 1 - 25      │ Look at every site, account and cost       │
│ Phase 2     │ Days 26 - 50     │ One brand, one look, one set of pages      │
│ Phase 3     │ Days 51 - 75     │ Rebuild the main site, page by page        │
│ Phase 4     │ Days 76 - 100    │ Point the old addresses at the new site    │
└─────────────┴──────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Phase 1: Take stock (days 1 - 25)

Write down every website, domain, hosting account, email inbox, social account, analytics property and content library that belongs to either business. Include the ones nobody remembers: a page built for a trade fair four years ago, a store on a platform nobody has logged into since 2022, a Google Business Profile owned by a former employee.

Then look at each one for three things: what does it earn, what does it cost, and who holds the accounts.

That last question decides everything else. An account in the previous owner’s name is not an asset you have inherited; it is one they can take back, and they will not be around to hand it over.

Phase 2: Decide the shape (days 26 - 50)

Now the arguments, and they need both owners in the room.

• One brand or two? If the businesses have genuinely different customers, keep two names and give them two clear sites. If they serve the same customer, one brand and one site will earn more than two half-hearted ones.
• Which pages survive? Write the list of pages the combined business actually needs. Everything not on that list is retired, deliberately, with a redirect and a date.
• What is the combined offer, in one sentence? The site has to say it on the home page, and both owners have to be able to repeat it without wincing.

Phase 3: Rebuild the main site (days 51 - 75)

Build the surviving site. Move the content that still earns its place, cut what does not, and write the pages that the combined offer needs but neither site had. This is a normal project, and a small one: a business website of this kind is usually in the region of $1,200 to $1,900 at Aura Logic, the range the studio publishes on its own website service page.

Do not try to keep every old page alive by importing it wholesale. A merged site with forty pages says nothing in particular, and the old pages were written for the old business.

Phase 4: Redirect, and check (days 76 - 100)

Point every old address that still has a search result, a printed link, an email in somebody’s archive, or a mention in a directory at the right page on the new site, using permanent redirects. Keep the old domain and keep paying for it; a domain is cheap, and it is often the thing that brings a customer back for years.

Then do the checks a customer will do: open the new site on a phone, submit the contact form, and follow one of the redirects from the old site.

3. What the Four Phases Produce

┌─────────────────────────┬────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│                        WHAT THE FOUR PHASES PRODUCE                         │
├─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ THE LEVER               │ BEFORE                 │ AFTER                    │
│ Websites to maintain    │ Two or three           │ One                      │
│ Monthly site costs      │ Two hosting bills      │ One                      │
│ What the customer sees  │ Two brands, one offer  │ One business, one price  │
│ Old addresses           │ 404 after a move       │ Point to the new pages   │
└─────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┘

The last row is the one people skip, and it is the one that costs money. Every old link that lands on a dead page is a customer who assumed the business had closed.

Conclusion: Do the Site While Everyone Is Still Watching

The back office will take as long as it takes. The website does not have to wait for it.

A hundred days is enough to replace two sites with one, to point the old addresses at the new pages, and to give a customer who Googles you tomorrow a single, coherent answer about what you sell and how to reach you.

Do it while the people who know both businesses are still paying attention, and while the combined offer is still something you can argue about.

Combining two businesses, or taking over a site that needs sorting out? Model the scope with our estimator or tell Jorge what you are planning.