How to Estimate Average Cost of Website Redesign in 2022

Nowadays, the importance of high-quality website design for client acquisition and retention cannot be overstated. A stellar online presence is an effective communication channel between your company and site visitors. It takes someone a fraction of a second to form an opinion about your website.  

When your site visitors are convinced that your website reflects their unique needs and provides solutions to their specific problems, it’s a match made in heaven. An optimized, user-centered website design naturally improves customer loyalty and increases the conversion rate.

In this article, we explained how to estimate the cost of a website redesign. First, we discuss how to determine if it’s time to redesign your website and what benefits it might have for your business. Even though every website redesign project is unique, we identified four main reasons that call for an overhaul of your existing site. 

Finally, you will learn what potential steps are involved in a website redesign process and what factors affect its cost. We will share a UX design audit template and provide real-world examples from our practice that will help you get started.

What Is a Website Redesign?

A website redesign is a process of updating your website’s appearance and functionality. It can include changing content, improving navigation, adding new functionality, or shifting a site to a new platform. As a result, your website’s performance improves as it begins to speak directly to your customers. 

Among the current trends in web design, we see an increased importance of research-based UX design. Since today’s site visitors expect a highly personalized experience, industry leaders want to get to know their clients and offer them the most straightforward way to connect and place an order. When it comes to B2B projects, we see many requests for creating or redesigning a web portal with a functional client dashboard. 

With over a decade of experience in web design, we have repeatedly seen how a website redesign can lead to better relationships with your customers and stronger customer loyalty.

Estimating Website Redesign Cost

Before we get into estimating the average cost of a website redesign, it’s essential to realize that it’s a strategic business decision that requires serious consideration. We will discuss a variety of reasons that typically motivate this decision. 

Before you spend a lot of money and energy on a website overhaul, we recommend that you clarify your primary reason(s) for redesigning your site. An experienced web design agency can help you determine if a redesign will benefit your business right now and guide you through the whole process.

In some cases, a website redesign naturally follows a UX design audit. In our previous article, we provided a tutorial with a checklist for a detailed website usability audit. A UX design audit helps evaluate your website’s performance and understand its current state.

4 Main Reasons for a Website Redesign

Why do companies choose to redesign their websites? There are four main reasons why companies choose to redesign their websites. These reasons are discussed in detail below.

1. Rebranding or Repositioning

A brand repositioning is an adjustment in how your customers perceive your brand. It’s not a complete change of your company’s identity, but it redefines where your products or services fit into the marketplace. For example, Apple positions itself as a manufacturer of consumer electronics that humanizes technology and simplifies people’s lives.

On the other hand, rebranding is a complete remake of your company’s identity that affects how your company presents itself through every channel. A rebrand could involve changes to your brand name, logo, color palette, brand messaging, core products, business model, and more.

Both rebranding and repositioning decisions are informed by the company’s business goals and based on preliminary research. Rebranding becomes necessary during mergers and acquisitions.

For example, we redesigned a FOREX trading website that was newly acquired. At the time of switching ownership, it already had an established customer base but showed a significant growth potential. The new owners wanted to establish a strong brand identity and reach a wider audience immediately after the acquisition. We completed rebranding, UI design, and front-end development for their website. There were no issues with the UX design, so it was not a part of the redesign.

2. Introducing New Offerings

Launching a new product or service line requires a website redesign to introduce the changes. In some cases, new offerings are presented simultaneously with repositioning or rebranding. Mergers and acquisitions can lead to changes in what a company offers.

For example, we completed a website redesign for a data services company that had recently acquired three other companies. The new company continued to offer the same services that the four individual companies offered before the merger. However, they now needed to unify the brand and improve the structure of the offerings on the website. The redesign project included UX design, UI adjustments, design system, and development.

3. Changing Website Functionality

Website redesign often includes introducing new features or updating existing functionality with more modern or appropriate technology. Implementing new functionality on your website requires making changes to your current website. 

For example, Energy Ogre, a Texas-based company that helps people save money on their electricity bills, hired our design team to introduce new functionality and redesign their membership website. We conducted a UX design audit, analyzed their current site, created a list of recommendations for improvements, and developed an actionable plan for implementing them. During the redesign, we paid particular attention to revising the structure of the client’s website because many new features were launched at the same time. Among all user flows, our priority was streamlining the sign-up process.

4. Resolving Identified Issues

Any issues that interrupt the user journey hurt your business and should be eliminated as soon as you notice them. In some cases, it’s obvious what causes a setback in website performance, while in others, a UX design audit can diagnose critical issues.

Website Redesign Pricing and Stages

The process of a website redesign can include the following stages. Not every stage is present in every project. Website redesign pricing depends on which stages are required and how comprehensive each step is. Therefore, website redesign development and design costs can differ widely across projects. After discussing your website redesign ideas with a web design agency, you’ll be able to determine what stages are required in your case and get cost estimates for a website redesign. 

Let’s go over each stage in a website redesign to understand the process better.

1. UX Design Audit

A UX design audit is a quality assurance process where your website performance is carefully reviewed and evaluated from the point of view of a typical user. As a result of this process, you will receive a detailed audit report, discuss the findings with a specialist, and receive a list of recommended changes. Even though this step is not always required, we begin many website redesign projects with a UX design audit. 

2. UX Research

UX research is a systematic study of users’ motivations, needs, and preferences based on qualitative and quantitative methods. User journeys are mapped out during this process, positive and negative user flows are specified, and desired outcomes are identified.

3. UX Design

User experience involves every aspect of user interaction with a website. UX design focuses on creating a positive user experience at every stage of a user’s journey. Based on the research results, UX designers study your mobile users’ unique needs and preferences and craft a product that matches them. A good user experience optimizes all aspects of website usability.

4. Branding

Depending on the company’s current situation and the availability of an internal team, the project’s scope can vary. New branding can only make adjustments to the existing branding elements, such as a logo, font, illustration, and icon style, while the client’s team provides all the necessary research results. On the other hand, if the company doesn’t have any internal team who could conduct the research, our team would analyze the market, create user personas and use them to make a new logo, develop the color scheme, and so on.

5. UI Design

The UI design can include designing every screen and state or providing only the design system. Illustrations and animations are an essential part of the website UI design. 

Illustrations that match the brand in style and color help effectively communicate with your site visitors. They can be custom-made for your website or selected from existing free or paid libraries. Animations increase the interactivity of the platform and engage your users.

6. User Testing

User testing can help you validate new features before they go live. UX design for a website is typically evaluated based on a thorough usability evaluation, user testing, and interviews.

7. Development

The development team implements the changes, focusing on the front-end and back-end sides of the website. While the front-end development team makes adjustments to the visual elements that users will be engaging with, the back-end development team works on the server-side of a website that is not visible to the users. 

8. Deployment

This step is optional and would be needed if a website has undergone significant changes and is being moved to a different server. A DevOps specialist would assist with setting up a server and launching the product.

Thus, a website redesign project includes eight potential stages:

UX Design Audit Template to Determine Which Stages Are Included in a Website Redesign

1. the number and complexity of changes in functionality and 

2. the resources a company has. 

The following template will help you estimate the cost for a basic website redesign. A typical website redesign development and design cost increases with the number of steps included in the project and the complexity of each step. In addition, you can refer to our UX audit template and checklist to evaluate your website and identify areas of improvement.

1. Are there any new features?

• If the answer is “yes,” the redesign project will include creating a new sitemap, UX design, and front-end and back-end development.
• If the answer is “no,” no UX design is needed.

2. Are there any issues with the existing UX design?

Some website redesign projects are based solely on the existing issues that were previously identified. Examples of such issues include the following:

• Low sign-up or subscription rate;
• Low conversion rate;
• High cart abandonment rate;
• High number of customer service calls;
• Low questionnaire/form completion rate, etc.

3. Do you know your current audience?

UI design decisions are based on our current understanding of the user personas and their behavior on the website. If this information is not available or no longer valid, UI design may be ineffective, and additional UX Research and branding may be required, which leads us to the next question.

4. Does a company have a marketing team to complete the UX Research and Branding?

The cost to redesign a website is higher if there is no internal marketing team.

5. Does a website require advanced, average, or basic animation and illustrations?

Advanced, custom-made animations and illustrations typically increase the website redesign prices.

6. Does the company have a front-end development team, back-end development team, and DevOps?

Our team can complete any or all of these steps and launch the redesigned site.

How Much Does It Cost to Redesign a Website?

So how much does it cost to redesign a website? As we have already established, every redesign project is unique. The cost of redesigning a website varies greatly depending on the required functionality and the complexity of included stages. 

Our website redesign per hour cost can vary between $65 and $160 depending on the team member’s qualifications and job description.

When we work on redesigning a website, the size of our design and development team depends on the scope of the project. Some websites have only 20 screens, while others include 300 to 400 screens. At a minimum, the team consists of a development coordinator and web developer. The development coordinator serves as a link between the back-end, design, and development teams.  

Our development team includes a development coordinator, lead developer, and senior and mid-level web developers for large projects. The lead developer assigns the sequence of tasks to developers, oversees the entire development process, and coordinates the internal transfer of functions between the QA team and the development team.  In addition, the responsibilities of a lead developer include ensuring that the policies set up by the development coordinator are closely followed.

Consider Tino Agency Your Trusted Partner

As a full-service design agency located in Houston, we help our clients define, design, and develop powerful user experiences. Our proven human-centered design process consistently delivers user-friendly and engaging digital products for our customers. We develop full-fledged mobile and web applications with front-end, back-end services, and third-party integrations. We also build and redesign static websites.

We helped many established companies redesign their websites and, thereby, reach their business goals. In some cases, a website redesign naturally follows a UX usability audit. Check out our UX design audit checklist to evaluate your website’s performance and understand its current state. 

If you would like to determine if your website would benefit from an update and get a cost estimate for a website redesign, please drop us a line at…, and we’ll be happy to assist you.

Final Thoughts

A website redesign is a process of updating your website that improves your website’s performance. Before you spend time and money on a website overhaul, it’s essential to understand your primary reason(s) for redesigning your site. An experienced web design agency can help you determine if a website redesign is your best next step and provide a cost estimate.

This article identified the four main reasons for a website redesign and discussed eight potential steps that are typically included. Updating your website is an important business decision that requires serious consideration. To help you estimate the cost of a website redesign, we offer a simple template to serve as a guide.

Overall, every company’s situation is unique, and a typical website redesign cost varies greatly depending on the required functionality and the number and complexity of included stages. An effective website redesign helps you serve your clients better and brings you closer to reaching your business goals.

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