A website redesign costs about what a new website of the same size would cost, minus whatever you can genuinely keep, plus the work of not losing what the old site has already earned. That last part is the one most quotes leave out, and it is the one that hurts most when it is missing.
This guide explains what moves the figure up and down, what to ask before you accept a quote, and when a redesign is the wrong thing to buy.
Is there an average cost of website redesign?
Not one that helps you. Any figure quoted as the average cost of website redesign is averaging a five-page brochure site with a shop holding thousands of products, and a freelancer’s weekend with an agency’s six-month project. The middle of that range describes nobody’s project.
What you can compare is scope: how many pages, how much of the content survives, what the site has to do, and who handles the move. Two quotes that differ by a wide margin are usually two different jobs described in the same word.
What keeps a website redesign cost down
A redesign is cheaper than a first build only when the existing site gives the new one something real to start from:
- The text is still true. Pages that describe what you sell today can be carried across and tidied rather than written again.
- The structure makes sense. If customers can already find what they need, the pages can stay roughly where they are.
- You have a brand to apply. A logo, colours and photos you are happy with remove a whole stage of decisions.
- The site mostly informs. Pages that people read are far simpler to rebuild than pages that have to do something.
What pushes it up
The same list, in reverse, is where the money goes:
- Content that has to be rewritten. If the business has changed since the site was written, you are paying for new writing as well as a new design.
- The number of pages. Twenty pages take longer to move, check and redirect than five, even when each one is simple.
- Anything the site has to do. A shop, a booking system, customer accounts or a connection to your accounting software all have to be rebuilt and tested with real orders or real bookings.
- A second language. A French version for Quebec customers is a second set of pages to write, build and keep current, not a switch you turn on. The forms, emails and terms of sale need French too, as our guide to bilingual websites for Quebec explains.
- A site that cannot be exported. A Wix site cannot be moved to another host, so its pages are rebuilt rather than carried across; what that means for the cost of Wix against WordPress has its own guide.
- Nobody has the keys. When the old login, the domain account or the hosting details are lost, recovering them comes first, and it is rarely quick.
The cost that does not appear on the quote
Every page on your current site has an address, and search engines and other websites point at those addresses. If the new site moves or renames a page and the old address is not redirected to the new one, that visitor gets an error, and whatever standing the page had built up is thrown away.
This is why a cheap redesign can be the expensive one. The new site looks better on launch day, then enquiries quietly fall over the following weeks, and by the time anyone connects the two, the old site is gone. Redirecting every old address costs a little effort before launch. Rebuilding lost search visibility afterwards costs far more, and sometimes it does not fully come back.
When a redesign is the wrong thing to buy
Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need one. If the design is fine and the site is slow, the problem may be the hosting or the images. If the site looks good and nobody calls, the problem may be the wording or a contact form that does not work on a phone. Those are smaller jobs than a redesign, and a redesign will not fix them unless someone deliberately sets out to.
A redesign earns its price when the site looks dated beside your competitors, breaks on a phone, cannot be updated by anyone, or no longer describes what your business actually does. If you are unsure which kind of problem you have, our guide on whether you need a designer or a developer sets out how to tell the two apart.
How to read a redesign quote
Put these questions to anyone quoting for the work. The answers tell you more than the total does:
- Will my existing text and images be moved across, or do I supply everything again?
- Will every old address be redirected to its new one, and who checks that after launch?
- Will I see the new site on a working copy before it replaces the old one?
- What happens to my email, if it runs on the same domain?
- Who owns the finished site, and can I take it elsewhere?
- What will it cost each month after launch, if anything?
That last question matters more than it looks. A low build price paired with an open-ended monthly fee can cost more within a year or two than a higher price paid once. Our guide to what a professional website costs goes through how the one-time and monthly parts fit together.
How we handle a redesign
Most of the businesses that come to us already have a website, so a redesign is ordinary work here. It starts with a review of your current site: which pages bring in traffic, which ones convert, and which should not survive the move. You choose a design from the catalogue, we build it around your business, your existing pages are carried across, every old address is redirected, and the new site is finished on a working copy before it replaces the old one in a single switch.
A redesign is covered by the same one-time Launch plans as a first build, and every price is on the pricing page. Which plan fits depends on how much of your content and branding has to be rebuilt rather than carried over. Send us the address of your current site and tell us what is wrong with it, and we will tell you which kind of job it is.