Website redesign: how much it costs and when it is worth it.

How much a website redesign costs

A redesign costs what a new site of the same type costs, plus a layer of work that only exists when there is already a site: migration. In practice: landing pages from €800, brochure sites from €1,500, online shops from €3,000, web apps from €5,000. On top of those bases, expect to see in the quote the migration work: inventory of pages and content, transfer of texts and images, and the redirect map that preserves the Google ranking.

What moves the price is the same trio as always: scope (how many pages change), functionality (what the new site must do) and who builds it. And there is a variant that matters to anyone with an acceptable site: the partial redesign (renewing the presentation while keeping the structure), which costs less than a full rebuild and is not always possible; it depends on the technical base in place, and the audit tells you which case is yours.

Anyone searching for "a new website" because the current one aged should read both bills side by side: redesigning the existing one with migration, or starting from zero with fresh content. The full table per site type is in the website pricing guide.

When a redesign is worth it (and when it is not)

A redesign pays off when the problem is in the base:

• The site does not work on mobile. Reason number one: most customers arrive on a phone, and a fixed site from a past decade loses them before it loads.
• The site no longer represents the company. Services, positioning and image changed. The old site sells a company that no longer exists.
• The technical base blocks growth. There is no way to add pages, languages or functionality without rebuilding.
• The metrics confirm it: the audit returns structure and speed problems that adjustments cannot solve.

A redesign is NOT worth it when the problem is in the layer: old content in an acceptable design (update it), a slow site because of heavy images (optimise it), or an absence of enquiries on a healthy site (the problem is content and visibility, and the money goes there, see the SEO for websites guide). Redesigning to solve a content problem is painting the house because the plants are dying.

Does a redesign lose your Google ranking?

It can, and that is reason number one not to do a redesign with anyone who does not ask about it. What protects the ranking is no secret, it is method:

1. Inventory first: a list of every page receiving visits today (Search Console gives that for free).
2. Redirect map: every old address points to its new equivalent; without it, Google sees pages that vanished and traffic drops.
3. Ranking content does not get thrown away: pages that bring visits migrate with their text; improve them, do not delete them for aesthetics.
4. Titles and descriptions preserved or improved, never rewritten from zero without a criterion.

Done this way, a redesign usually gains ranking, because search engines weigh speed and mobile adaptation. Done without it, it is the fastest way to throw years of organic work away; the build and maintain cost guide covers the domain and access part that also changes hands in these migrations.

What a redesign looks like from the inside

The process is a new site build with two extra phases at the start:

1. Audit and inventory: what exists, what works, what receives visits, what dies.
2. Scope decision: what migrates, what gets rewritten, what gets dropped (almost every redesign is also a cleanup).
3. Design and development: the new presentation, already responsive, on a modern base.
4. Migration and redirects: content transferred, old addresses pointed to the new ones.
5. Launch and verification: Search Console, device testing, and confirmation that traffic survived the change.

Timelines follow those of a new site of the same type (landing 2 to 3 weeks, brochure 4 to 6, shop 6 to 10), with migration adding time at the front, not the end. The detail per phase is in the timeline guide.

Redesign, maintenance or subscription: which bill is right

Three answers for three situations: if the site is healthy and only needs to not rot, maintenance (€150 to €400/month, see the maintenance guide); if the base is old, a redesign; if the company wants to stop managing any of these decisions, the monthly subscription (from €49/month) renews and maintains the site on the same invoice, with the terms published on the plans page.

The expensive mistake is the reverse order: paying maintenance on a site whose base is already dead, or redesigning a site that only needed content. Half an hour of auditing avoids both.