Planning a new website?
This guide covers realistic timelines, costs and what each budget tier actually buys you.
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Last updated: August 2026
The four questions that decide it
Does it convert? If visitors call, buy or enquire at a reasonable rate, the site works and you are considering a redesign for aesthetic reasons. Aesthetics matter, but not five thousand dollars' worth if the current site is producing.
Is the structure right? Missing service pages, no clear path to contact, a navigation nobody understands, content organized around your internal departments rather than customer needs: these are structural and are hard to fix incrementally.
Is the platform maintainable? A site built on an abandoned theme, a discontinued page builder, hardcoded custom PHP nobody documented, or a CMS your team cannot use is a rebuild candidate regardless of how it looks.
How old is it, really? Age matters less than mobile behavior. A clean 2019 site that works properly on phones is fine. A 2015 site that was never designed for mobile is not a maintenance problem.
Signals that say maintain
The site converts but loads slowly. It looks dated but the layout is clear. A few pages are missing but the structure holds. Rankings slipped after a technical issue. Content is stale. Every one of these is solved by speed work, security, SEO fixes, content updates and small design refreshes, which cost a maintenance plan rather than a project.
Signals that say redesign
The site is not mobile-friendly at a fundamental level. The platform is abandoned or unmaintainable. Your business changed and the site describes a company you no longer are. Conversion is poor despite decent traffic. You are embarrassed to send the link to a prospect. Two or more of these together usually justify the rebuild.
The middle path most businesses miss
You can redesign the top five pages that carry 80% of traffic while keeping everything else, add the missing service pages, refresh the visual language without changing the platform, and improve the site continuously rather than replacing it every four years. Continuous improvement is how the best-performing sites are actually run, and it avoids the great hidden cost of a redesign.
The hidden cost nobody quotes
Redesigns lose traffic when they are done carelessly: URLs change without redirects, pages disappear, speed regresses, tracking breaks. Recovering that costs months. If you do rebuild, insist on a URL map with 301 redirects, a speed budget, and a post-launch technical check, or read our guide on why rankings drop after a redesign at the moment it becomes urgently relevant.
What we would say on your call
If the site converts and the bones are sound, we will tell you to maintain and improve, even though the rebuild would be the bigger invoice. If it genuinely needs rebuilding, our 48-hour build covers standard business sites at a fixed $699, and anything more complex we quote honestly or point you elsewhere.
FAQ
How often should a website be redesigned? Every four to six years for most businesses, and never on a fixed schedule if continuous improvement keeps it current.
Will a redesign improve my SEO? Only if it is done with SEO discipline. Careless redesigns are one of the most common causes of sudden traffic loss.
Can I redesign in stages? Yes, and usually you should: highest-traffic pages first, measuring as you go.
How much does a redesign cost? $700 for a fixed-scope rebuild, $2,000 to $8,000 for semi-custom, $10,000 upward for full agency work. Full breakdown in how much a website costs.
Need a website, not a six-week project?
Launch48 delivers a complete five-page business website in 48 hours for $699 flat, mobile-ready, secure and fast at launch, with your first month of maintenance included.