A website redesign usually costs less than building a new site from scratch, because part of the existing content, structure and sometimes code gets reused. How much less depends mainly on whether you’re changing the look or the technical foundation underneath it — and that’s the first decision to make before requesting quotes.
Signs you need a redesign
- The site looks dated next to competitors, and visitors notice it too.
- It renders poorly on mobile or loads slowly.
- The design hasn’t changed in 4-5 years while the business or offering has.
- Conversions (enquiries, sales) are dropping while traffic stays flat or grows.
- The site runs on an outdated platform or custom code nobody maintains anymore.
- You need new functionality (a shop, bookings, multiple languages) the current structure can’t easily support.
Redesign or a brand new website?
This is worth answering directly, since it’s genuinely a separate decision from “how much”:
| Redesign | New website | |
|---|---|---|
| Makes sense when | Structure and content are solid, the problem is mostly the look and some functionality | The platform is outdated, the code is unmaintainable, or you’re changing the business model entirely |
| SEO history | Preserved with careful planning (redirects, URL structure) | Higher risk of losing rankings even with redirects in place |
| Price | Lower, since part of the work isn’t repeated | Higher, built from zero |
| Risk | Lower, changes are more incremental | Higher, more unknowns surface during development |
If you’re not sure which category your site falls into, that’s exactly what we’d assess in a brief before quoting anything.
What drives the price of a redesign
| Factor | Why it changes the price |
|---|---|
| Scope of changes | A visual refresh (colours, fonts, imagery) costs less than restructuring every page |
| Platform | A redesign on the same platform (e.g. WordPress to WordPress) is cheaper than moving to a different one |
| Number of pages and content | A 5-page site and a 50-page site aren’t the same price, even at the same redesign depth |
| Custom functionality | Bookings, calculators, integrations — anything built custom needs re-testing or rebuilding |
| Preserving SEO rankings | Mapping old URLs to new ones, 301 redirects and post-launch checks add time, but save months of recovering lost positions |
| Content | If copy is rewritten rather than just reformatted, that’s a separate cost |
Redesign and SEO: what to watch for
This is where most sites lose search rankings during a redesign, and it’s usually an avoidable loss:
- Keep the URL structure wherever possible. Every page address that changes without a redirect means a lost link and a lost ranking.
- Set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones, page by page, not just from the whole domain to the homepage.
- Record current rankings and traffic before launch, so you have a baseline to compare against afterward.
- Maintain or improve load speed — a redesign that slows the site down can cancel out any SEO benefit from the new design.
- Update the XML sitemap and resubmit it in Google Search Console as soon as the site goes live.
- Monitor the Coverage report for a week or two after launch to catch indexing errors early.
Redesigning a WordPress site
If the site is already on WordPress, a redesign is usually cheaper than on other platforms, because the content structure (pages, posts, metadata) stays the same — mostly the theme and some functionality change. The risks are similar: the old theme may have customisations the new one doesn’t support, so that needs checking before work starts. For comparison with building a WordPress site from scratch, see our WordPress website development cost guide.
A rough price range
A redesign is hard to quote with one fixed number, because it depends much more on the condition of the existing site than building a new one does. As a rough benchmark, market practice puts a redesign at roughly 40-70% of the cost of building a comparable new site — closer to the lower end when you’re mostly changing the look, closer to the higher end when you’re also changing the structure or platform. For a business website that starts at €700 with us, that works out to roughly €280-490 for a comparable redesign — but this is only a benchmark, not a substitute for a quote on your actual site.
What can push a redesign above the estimate
- The existing site has no organised approach to files or the database, which slows migration.
- Some content needs to be rewritten rather than just carried over.
- Technical issues (outdated plugins, incompatible code) only surface once work has started.
A note on AI redesign tools
“AI website redesign” searches a real audience of decent size, but the trend dropped sharply over the past year — a sign this is more hype cycle than stable demand. AI tools can speed up drafting layout options, but the same caution applies here as with building a site from scratch with AI: generic output, weak SEO structure, and code that’s hard to maintain later. If you want AI involved, it’s best used by someone who understands what they’re changing, not as a replacement for that judgment.
Frequently asked questions
Does a redesign affect SEO rankings? It can, in either direction. Without careful planning (redirects, preserving structure), rankings can drop for weeks or months. With good planning, a redesign often improves rankings, since it fixes technical issues that were holding the site back.
How long does a website redesign take? Depends on scope, but typically 2-4 weeks for a standard business site, longer for larger sites or a platform change.
Is a redesign cheaper than a new website? Almost always, unless the existing platform is so outdated or damaged that starting from zero is actually faster.
Can I keep the content and just change the design? Yes — that’s the most common and cheapest type of redesign: the visual layer changes, content and structure stay as they are.
Read more
- How much does a website cost
- WordPress website development
- WordPress vs Wix: which is cheaper over 3 years
Not sure if you need a redesign or a new site?
Send us a link to your current site and describe what’s bothering you most about it, and we’ll give you a realistic estimate of scope and price, no obligations. Request a free assessment