I want the current website to feel clear, current and easy to use
A website redesign makes the current site clearer, more current and easier to use without discarding what still works.
Turn the existing website into a clearer, current and easier-to-use version without losing the addresses people already visit. A redesign is not only about how a website looks. It is whether it works on a phone, whether you can change a word without calling someone, whether search engines can read it, and whether the first screen says what you do. A site can look dated and still earn its keep, and a site can look modern and fail all four.
Run these on your own site before you talk to anyone. The checks help separate a rebuild from smaller repairs.
Three different jobs get called a redesign, and each has a different scope.
Fixes. The site is sound, parts of it are not. Speed, phones, a page that does not load.
A redesign. The content is broadly right, the structure and the look are not. Rebuilt on what you already have, with a redirect map so what you rank for now survives the move.
Moving platforms. Off one builder onto another, or off a builder into code. With a redirect map either way.
If there is no website yet, that is a new build, priced by size.
Selling products online is a different build with different pricing, and it has its own page. If your site needs a catalog, a cart, shipping or tax, start there instead.
A redirect map is part of every redesign and every platform move, at no extra charge, because without one every old address becomes a dead end.
A redesign can be any of these, and it is rarely all of them. Which ones you need comes out of the checks above, and they get quoted as one piece of work rather than as a list of services.
Where a piece has its own page it has its own price and can be bought on its own. Bought together as a redesign they are one number, not the sum of these.
The standard job above covers the work at that size, finished and live. Each line below is its own piece of work, agreed with you before it happens rather than after.
More on how working together works.
Each one shows what belongs in the agreed scope and what changes the quote. Nothing here is a surprise later.
Every old address pointed at its new one, before anything goes live.
When a page moves and nothing is left behind, whatever that page had earned in search goes with it, along with every link anyone had to it. A redirect map is the list that stops that: every old address, and the new address it now points at.
Sites lose their place in search during a redesign because nobody did this step. It is not a promise that rankings improve. It is what stops a rebuild going backwards.
A builder you can edit, hand coded, or a builder with code where it matters.
Three ways to build the same website. The difference is not how it looks. It is who can change it afterwards, and whether you can take it with you.
You edit it yourself without calling anyone. That is the whole argument for it, and for a site that changes a few times a year it is enough. What you can control depends on the platform and on which plan you are on.
Nothing to break, and every part under your control: the addresses, the structure, the markup search engines and AI assistants read. The files are yours and they move to any host. You give up editing it yourself, unless a content system is added.
Built in the platform you want to keep using, with the parts a builder handles badly written by hand where that platform allows it. This is the common answer.
Squarespace gates custom code by plan. Their documentation says code injection is available on Core, Plus, Advanced and some legacy plans, so the cheapest plan cannot carry the technical work.
Wix cannot be exported. In their words, "since Wix is a SaaS solution, your site must run on Wix's servers". It will rank perfectly well. It just never leaves.
Decided before the build, because it decides what is possible.
A builder hosts itself. A coded site needs somewhere to live, and the plan level gates real features.
Your domain and hosting are billed to you directly, in your name. Not marked up, not held on your behalf, and yours if we stop working together.
Colors and type, agreed before anything gets designed.
If you already have brand colors and type, the site uses them. If you do not, they get chosen here, and they get chosen once.
Colors chosen for a website are not the same as a brand kit. A brand kit is the document you hand to anyone building anything for you, and it is separate work.
Every page, what it is for, and what happens next on it.
Structure first, design second. Structure decides whether a search engine can rank you and whether a visitor can find anything, and it survives the next redesign. Layout changes in an afternoon. A site built on the wrong structure gets rebuilt.
The rule that decides what gets built and what does not.
A page earns its place three ways. It helps you get found in search. It helps an AI assistant answer a question about you correctly. Or it qualifies a customer before they call, so the call is shorter and the buying is faster.
A page that does none of those three is a page to maintain, a page to keep current, and one more thing between a visitor and contacting you.
One page suits a business with one service and one audience. Several suit a business whose customers arrive with different problems, because each problem gets the page that answers it. Sites start at whichever size fits and grow a page at a time.
You write them, or they get written for you.
A build stalls waiting on words more often than on anything else.
Cheaper, usually slower. You get a brief for every section: a rough word count, what that section has to do, the order the information appears in, and whether a photo belongs there.
Quoted as copywriting on top of the build. The order information appears in is part of that work, because what somebody needs to read first is rarely what a business wants to say first.
What does not happen either way is a site launched full of placeholder text.
Compressed and sized for the web. That is where it stops.
Photographs get compressed and sized so the site loads quickly on a phone.
If what you have is hurting the site you get told plainly, and a referral to somebody who does that work.
Built in from the start rather than added afterwards.
None of this promises a ranking, a position, traffic or a date. A website built correctly can be found. Getting found is search work, and it is a different job.
Included on every site, and a lawyer should still read them.
Forms, booking and signups are real work, so each one is quoted.
These are not settings. Each one is a connection to something else that has to be set up and tested end to end, so each is quoted rather than absorbed quietly into the build.
A redesign does not have to mean starting somewhere new. Three places it can happen, and the right one depends on what you are on now and what you want to be able to do afterwards.
Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, Framer, Shopify, GoDaddy, Carrd. If the platform can do what you need, staying is the cheapest answer and you keep editing it the way you already know how.
When the one you are on cannot do what the business now needs, or you have outgrown it. The move comes with a redirect map either way, so what you rank for goes with you.
Coded gives you every part of it under your control and files you can take anywhere. A hybrid, WordPress being the common one, puts a content system on top so you can still edit the words yourself. Craft and Statamic do the same job.
That is exactly what the redirect map is for. Every old address points at its new one, so what ranked keeps its place. Sites lose rankings in a redesign when nobody does that step. What nobody can promise is that rankings improve, because a redesign is not search work.
It depends which of the seven checks failed. Speed and phone problems are usually fixes. Structure nobody can navigate, or a platform you are locked out of, is usually a rebuild, and on a locked platform a rebuild is often cheaper than the recovery.
Usually yes, and where the platform stops you, you get told exactly where and why. What a platform allows changes, so whatever you are on gets checked against its current documentation before anything is promised.
Then that gets dealt with first, because spending money on design before you know who owns the site is the wrong order. That is an ownership and access job.
Moving is one of the three jobs, not a requirement. If what you have works for you, the work happens inside it.
Either. If you write them, the work is cheaper and usually slower. If they get written for you, that is copywriting quoted on top.
Not included. A store is a different build with different pricing, on its own page.
The quote carries a delivery window for the specific job. What usually moves it is waiting on words and waiting on access.
I read it and reply with the scope and the price before any work starts.
Tell me the result you want and where I can see the business now. I use that information to identify the most useful service or package and decide whether I can quote it in writing. If one missing detail changes the work or price, I will ask for that detail or suggest a short call.
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