Website redesign: what it costs and when it is time

For a price for your own situation, request a quote.

What does redesigning a website cost?

Redesigning a website costs from €995, excluding VAT, for a new business website of five pages on a ready base design. With a design of its own a new website starts at €5,000. Nearly always, redirecting the old addresses comes on top, 2 to 8 hours of work, so that visitors and Google find the new pages.

Redesigning means the layout or the system of the website is built again. Improving means the existing website stays and text, photos or a few pages are replaced. How much you renew decides the price. Count on about €100 an hour:

So rebuilding a small website on a ready base design costs no more than improving an old one. If your website is small and its layout is out of date, starting again is often the cheapest route. Ask for the redirects as a separate item in the quote, so that you see what they cost and that they belong there.

For a larger website the amounts lie further apart. The law firm from the cost breakdown already has a website with eight pages, and the new one gets six because three of them merge into one. Building again with a design of its own is 69 hours, €6,900. For redirecting the eight old addresses, 4 hours come on top: 73 hours, €7,300. Improving the existing website, with new text and photos and a layout that works on a phone, is 18 to 25 hours, €1,800 to €2,500. That is not the same as a new website, and for many businesses it is enough.

Torn between improving and rebuilding? Ask for a quote with the address of your current website, and we will set the two side by side.

When should you redesign your website?

You redesign a website when it no longer helps your customers, and otherwise you improve it. What you see decides what you do:

A new website does not bring customers by itself.

What brings customers is an offer that fits and a website that says it clearly. If your website produces enquiries today, do not redesign it because it is old.

Does the table point to a redesign? Ask for a free example of your new homepage, with no obligation, and compare it with the one you have.

How do you keep your place in search results?

A new website often gets new addresses. If you do nothing, every old link, in Google and on other websites, leads to a page that no longer exists. Google describes what to do in its guidelines for moving a website:

1. Make a list of all old addresses and decide for each which new address replaces it. You get them from your sitemap, from Google Search Console and from your statistics.
2. Redirect every old address permanently to its new address, with a so-called 301 or 308 redirect. Redirect straight to the final address, not through a chain of redirects.
3. Do not redirect everything to the home page: Google treats that as a page that does not exist. If three pages merge into one, those three may go to that one.
4. Keep the redirects as long as possible, in general at least a year, Google says.
5. Update your own links, your sitemap and your profiles to the new addresses.
6. Expect fluctuations: your place in the results can fluctuate for a while, and for a website of average size it can take weeks before the new addresses have replaced the old ones.

An example of the list

The list of old and new addresses does not have to be prettier than this:

How to test the redirects

After going live, run four checks:

1. Open every old address in your browser. You should land on the new page, and the new address is in the address bar.
2. Look in the developer tools under Network which status code the old address returns. It should be a 301 or a 308, not a 302 and not a 404.
3. Two weeks after going live, look in Google Search Console under Pages. Are there addresses under “Not found (404)” that you should have redirected?
4. Check your sitemap: only the new addresses are in it.

Do not change everything at once. If you renew the design, move to another domain name and rewrite all the text, you will not know which change caused a drop. Google advises changing one thing at a time.

What do you need to prepare for a new website?

Before the builder starts, have six things ready:

• The list of all current addresses. Without it you cannot redirect anything.
• Which pages bring visitors and enquiries. You keep those, or you redirect them precisely.
• Which text you want to keep. What works well, you do not rewrite.
• Access to your domain name and hosting, which the builder needs to move the website.
• The photos and logos in their original form, not as an image from another website.
• A measurement of today: how many visitors, which searches, how many enquiries. Otherwise you will not know afterwards whether the new website is better.

Have you made the list of your current addresses? Ask for a quote and send the list along, so that the redirects are in the price from the start.

What often goes wrong with a new website?

Five mistakes keep coming back. New addresses without redirects break every old link, and everything the old pages had in Google is gone. Redirecting everything to the home page makes the old pages disappear for Google. The test version goes live with a setting that tells search engines not to read it; Google names a noindex or a block left over from the test explicitly as a mistake. The sitemap still points to the old addresses. And the new website is prettier but says less: a design that leaves out text customers were looking for costs enquiries.

Frequently asked questions

Having your website redesigned with us

If your website is good and you only want to replace text and photos, you do not need us. If the layout is no longer usable, you cannot change anything yourself or the system is out of date, we build a new website with the redirects arranged, from €995 for five pages on our base design. Ask for a quote and describe what has to change. You get the hours, the schedule, the price, the redirects as a separate item and an estimate of the running costs.

See an example website quote first.