A merger or acquisition can make a healthy business look broken online. Customers see two names, salespeople send different links, old forms reach departed employees, and Google keeps showing pages nobody plans to maintain.
The website work often gets reduced to “change the logo.” That is rarely enough. Your site sits between the legal transaction and the people affected by it: customers, prospects, employees, vendors, and search engines. Each group needs clear answers without reading a press release written for investors.
These nine updates will help you keep leads moving and reduce confusion while the businesses come together.
1. Publish a Plain-English Transition Page
Create one permanent page that answers the questions customers are already asking. State which company acquired or merged with which, the effective date, what is changing, what is staying the same, and where people should go for help. Link it from both websites, customer emails, social profiles, and support replies.
Do not make a press release do this job. A release announces the deal. A transition page explains whether existing contracts, contacts, products, warranties, billing details, and service areas still apply.
When T-Mobile completed its merger with Sprint, it maintained a dedicated merger information page that addressed customer-facing changes instead of relying only on corporate news. A local accounting firm can use the same idea on a smaller scale: “Your engagement letter remains valid, your current accountant is unchanged, and invoices will use our new name beginning October 1.” Specific answers stop unnecessary calls and give every employee one reliable URL to share.
2. Decide the Brand and Domain Architecture
Choose the destination before moving pages. Will both brands remain independent, will one become a division, or will everything move under one name? The answer determines whether you need two active sites, a subdirectory such as /brands/acme/, or a full domain migration.
Write the decision down in a one-page map showing the primary brand, domains, product names, location names, and expected retirement dates. This prevents the marketing team from changing navigation while IT still routes email and sales still quotes the old company name.
FedEx kept several acquired operating-company names for years before announcing a phased move to one FedEx brand. That structure affected far more than design. A regional manufacturer buying a specialty shop may likewise keep the acquired name as “A division of” for 12 months because customers know it. Make that choice deliberately, then use the same language on the website, proposals, invoices, signage, and profiles.
3. Build a Page-by-Page Redirect Map
Never point every old URL to the new homepage. Match each useful page to the closest new destination: service to service, product to product, team bio to team page, and location to location. Retire pages with no replacement only after checking traffic, backlinks, leads, and contractual value.
Google recommends permanent server-side redirects such as 301 or 308 during a site move and advises keeping redirects in place for at least a year (Google Search Central). Build the map in a spreadsheet with old URL, new URL, status, owner, and test result.
For example, if an acquired commercial electrician has a strong /hospital-generator-testing/ page, sending it to the buyer’s generic homepage throws away the visitor’s intent. Move or rebuild the relevant content, then redirect to the exact replacement. Crawl the old domain after launch and test every high-value URL before announcing that the migration is finished.
4. Rewrite the Homepage for the Combined Customer
The new homepage must explain the combined offer, not celebrate the transaction. Start with what the customer can now buy, where the business serves, and what action to take. Put the acquisition story lower on the page or link to the transition page.
A common mistake is stacking two old homepages together. That produces a long catalog with overlapping services, inconsistent terminology, and competing calls to action. Interview sales and service teams from both businesses before rewriting. They know which customers overlap, which capabilities are truly new, and which promises the operation cannot yet support.
After Salesforce acquired Slack, Slack’s homepage continued to lead with the product and its value, while the relationship appeared as supporting context rather than the main pitch. You can see the current product-first approach on Slack’s website. A merged HVAC company should do the same: lead with residential and commercial service coverage, not “Two great legacies, one exciting future.” Customers came to solve a problem.
5. Rebuild Forms, Routing, and CRM Ownership
Inventory every quote form, contact form, booking tool, chat widget, phone number, and downloadable form across both sites. For each one, identify the recipient, backup owner, CRM pipeline, confirmation message, response-time expectation, and source tracking. Then send a real test submission.
Acquisitions create silent lead failures because an old form can still display a success message after its mailbox or automation has stopped working. Structured fields also need alignment. One company may call a lead source “Website,” while the other uses “Inbound Web,” splitting reports that should be combined.
HubSpot’s guidance for merging duplicate CRM records shows why data ownership and field behavior need review, not blind import. A roofing group buying a neighboring contractor might route leads by ZIP code, but warranty requests should still go to the team that completed the original job. Use explicit rules, assign an owner to exceptions, and monitor the queue daily during the first month.
6. Create a Name-Change and Trust Block
Customers may wonder whether the business they hired still exists. Add a short trust block to high-intent pages such as contact, pricing, service, warranty, and payment pages. It can say, “Formerly Smith Electric. Same local team, now part of Jones Group,” with a link to transition details.
Keep the wording factual. Do not claim combined years in business, customer counts, certifications, or locations unless the math and legal basis are defensible. Reviews and testimonials also need proper attribution. The FTC’s endorsement guidance says advertising must not mislead consumers and material connections should be disclosed (Federal Trade Commission).
Marriott keeps acquired hotel brands visible within its brand portfolio, helping travelers connect familiar names to the parent company. A small business can be just as clear. Preserve useful recognition while stating who now owns the promise. Trust grows from continuity customers can verify, not from pretending the old identity never existed.
7. Update Local Listings, Schema, and Business Details
Audit every place the old identity appears: Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, industry directories, map listings, social accounts, licensing pages, and chamber profiles. Match the website’s business name, address, phone, hours, and URL to the real-world operation.
Do not rename a Google Business Profile simply to stuff both company names into it. Google’s business-name rules require the profile name to reflect how the business is consistently represented in the real world (Google Business Profile Help). If locations close or combine, follow the platform’s move and closure process instead of creating duplicates.
Update Organization and LocalBusiness structured data as well. Google’s organization markup documentation supports details such as the legal name, alternate name, logo, address, and contact information. A bank acquiring two branches should validate each location page separately, then check that map pins, lobby hours, drive-through hours, and phone routing agree everywhere customers look.
8. Protect Email, Analytics, and Paid Campaigns
A domain change touches systems that are easy to miss. Keep old email addresses forwarding, authenticate the new sending domain, update form notifications, and test password resets and transactional messages. Record access to analytics, ad accounts, tag managers, call tracking, consent tools, and search platforms before employees or agencies lose access.
Google Ads requires ad destinations to work and match the user’s expected destination (Google Ads Policy Help). Update final URLs, display paths, call assets, logos, business names, conversion actions, and remarketing audiences. Do not let ads keep sending prospects through slow redirect chains or to discontinued offers.
When Twitter became X, the company kept twitter.com links redirecting while moving visible branding and core destinations to x.com. The scale is different, but the operational lesson applies: domains, identity, and tracking rarely switch in one instant. Run both old and new paths in parallel long enough to catch failures, and annotate the change date in analytics so later reports have context.
9. Run 30-, 60-, and 90-Day Cleanup Reviews
Treat launch as the start of the cleanup period. At 30 days, review broken links, form tests, call routing, search indexing, ad destinations, and the most common support questions. At 60 days, examine traffic and leads by old versus new brand terms. At 90 days, decide which temporary banners, pages, phone numbers, and email forwards still earn their keep.
Use Google Search Console’s Change of Address tool when an entire domain moves, and monitor both properties throughout the transition. Crawl the websites again because old links often survive inside PDFs, job posts, privacy pages, and automated emails.
Create a simple issue log with the problem, business impact, owner, due date, and resolution. A distributor might discover that customers still search the acquired product line by its old name. Instead of deleting that language after 90 days, keep an “formerly called” reference on the relevant product page. Let customer behavior decide what remains, not an arbitrary brand deadline.
Make the Website Reduce Merger Friction
Customers do not need every deal detail. They need to know whether you still provide what they buy, who will answer them, and what they should do next. Start with the transition page, brand architecture, redirects, and lead routing because those prevent the costliest failures. Then tighten trust signals, listings, tracking, and cleanup.
If your merger has left you with two websites and no clear path forward, talk with Your Web Team. We’ll help you turn the combined business into a website customers can understand and use.
