In 2021, amidst the COVID-19 lockdowns, Top Design Firms conducted research among 500 consumers, and it turned out that 50% of them believe that a functioning website is crucial for brand promotion. As internet and digital media usage grows each year, corporate websites have to fight for users’ attention and compete with both rival websites and other types of content available, including funny cat pictures or trendy TikTok videos. To become a worthy competitor, entrepreneurs need to provide users with a website that looks up-to-date and is easy to understand.

One way to deliver a great user experience to potential customers is to run website redesigns. In this article, we explain when your website might need a redesign, what affects website redesign costs, and share a cost estimate for one of our redesign projects.

How do you know that it’s high time to redesign your web product?

The surveys of the Business 2 community show that each website needs redesign after 1.5–2.5 years. During this period, new technologies and trends appear, changing the users’ needs and, as a result, making you refresh the design to get in line with them. Of course, if your website still hits your goals after 2.5 years without a redesign, there is no reason to spend the resources. But there are a few cases when your website calls for revamp, and here they are.

Even huge and prominent companies like Facebook and Apple run website redesign at least once in 2–3 years. The Apple website has been redesigned no less than 10 times since it was first built. The designers played with different color schemes, experimented with layout, and established several UI/UX design trends.

However, Apple is a giant tech company that can afford any website redesign costs. If you are not as big as Apple yet, the UI/UX design update should be made with business aspects in mind.

The greatest reason for the redesign is usually few sales and poor marketing results. Here’s the list of key metrics to track if you are planning to turn your website into a profitable sales tool:

• Conversions — this metric shows how many website visitors become paying customers
• Time users spend on the website
• The depth of page view — that’s how deep the users scroll each page

If these metrics are low or experience a long downfall, this can be the fault of the poor web design. For instance, low conversions may indicate that users have to take too many steps before making the target action like a purchase or application. To add, unclear navigation, pages overcrowded with content, or outdated design can make users leave before they check your website content.

As your company adds new goods and services, more and more elements need to be featured on your website. If the design isn’t scalable, new tabs may not fit into the structure. In this case, the product needs a navigation update.

The site might be easily scalable but as the business grows, there is a need to generate more content and display it on the screen. When the page displays too much content, the users might lose the key information points, the site looks messy, and the navigation gets overcomplicated.

According to surveys by Statista, mobile devices generated more than 50% of web traffic in 2021. To stay in touch with as many clients as possible, the website layout may need to be adapted for tablet and mobile screens.

What points affect website redesign costs?

The answer is simple — the more targets mentioned above you want to hit, the more complex the redesign process is and the higher the website redesign cost is. Our team has collected the list of issues that can impact the overall project price.

UI/UX designers usually don’t redo every page of the website. They find the pages that look alike and create templates for them. For instance, if you have many product cards, the designers won’t redesign the card for each product; instead, they will create a single template and apply it to each product card. That’s why the website redesign cost is most likely to be affected not by the total number of pages but by the number of unique pages. The more unique pages the websites display, the more templates UI/UX designers need to create.

When you are planning to improve marketing metrics like the number of conversions or time spent on the site, it’s better to let your marketing and UI/UX design teams work in close coordination. In this case, it might be a good idea not to redesign the entire website on the spot but divide the process into iterations: make minor changes one by one and check how these changes affect the metrics. Although this method can result in higher website redesign costs, at the same time, it allows hitting your target accurately.

When planning the redesign, you may not only want your site to hit your new marketing goals but also get a more unique and recognizable visual style. In this case, you can have some custom elements like hand-drawn illustrations or animations created for your web product. Although their creation will raise the website redesign cost, you will give a hint of uniqueness to your website and make it break away from the competitors.

After the mockups of your website are ready, you will need to change the code of your website to get a functioning product, which means you have to find developers who can help with the development of the new interface. It’s also a great idea to check the initial code of the website before redesigning it. Although it will need to be changed anyway, you may avoid rebuilding it from scratch and reduce the website redesign costs.

All the above-mentioned points help to make your website functionality, visual style, and marketing results better. On the contrary, unclear goals are the biggest factor that can raise your website redesign costs for nothing. If you don’t know what numerical result you want to reach after your website is remade and you are simply trying to “make everything better’ at once, both you and the team will have a hard time remaking the design several times. That’s why to avoid wasting your money for nothing, set a measurable goal: define the precise number of conversions, clicks, or page views you want to reach after the upgrade is completed.

How can a hiring model affect the website redesign cost?

Before starting the redesign, the startupper usually needs to decide who is going to accomplish it, as the choice directly affects the website redesign cost. Below are a few possible variants of how to manage the task.

1. Cope with the redesign on your own

   In case you work under tight budget constraints and don’t want to add any custom features, you can use open-source website builders like Wix, GoDaddy, or WordPress as they usually have free templates to use.

   Do-it-yourself website redesign cost may not exceed $3,000. Apart from cost-effectiveness, the method has several drawbacks. Firstly, the website won’t look unique since many people use the same free templates. More than that, without coding skills you can have a hard time adding custom features like price calculator or chatbot as they need a developer to set them up. Finally, you will need to establish a design that is easy to scale up, so you don’t have to upgrade the website again in case you need to add new services or goods to the website.

   To establish a well-functioning website, you have to deal with the following points:

   • UI/UX design
   • Coding
   • Copywriting
   • Search engine optimization
   • Image or video content

   Covering this amount of work is actually hard for only one person. That’s why hiring professionals to cope with all this will free you from stress and hustle and allow you to achieve desirable results quickly.

2. Hire a freelancer

   Cooperating with a freelancer for a website redesign is another available option. Providingthe freelancer’s experience and positioning, the website redesign costs can fall anywhere between $2,000–10,000 and more for complex projects. You can search for freelancers on websites like Linkedin, Fiverr, or Upwork, as well as explore their portfolios on Dribbble or Behance.

   The freelancer can provide you with an intuitive interface and result that is really close to your initial vision. However, you might encounter a challenge: during the redesign, you need specialists with both UI/UX design and coding skills, which means you might need to hire two freelancers. And if you hire two of them, they might have a hard time finding a common language and a suitable workflow. This may be time-consuming, as you will have to manage this team on your own.

   In addition to this, freelancers usually work on multiple projects at a time. Therefore, they might get overwhelmed, respond to your requests with delays, or even disappear from time to time. As a result, the amount of time spent on the project can extend.

3. Hire an agency

   You can also use the services of a software development agency. If you choose to hire an agency, the website redesign costs depend on the agency’s experience and location. It can fall anywhere between $5,000 and $100,000 and beyond determined by the complexity of the project. These prices can be applied to both websites and web applications. Agencies usually have bigger teams and bring more convenience to their customers, that’s why they charge more for their services. We have created a list of advantages that cooperation with the agency can bring.

   Broad expertise. A software development agency usually involves different types of professionals in its workflow. They have designers, developers, project managers, and analysts. Therefore, when working with redesign you can get help with UI/UX design mockups as well as the services of coders who can set up the interface of your website. Designers and developers have the needed knowledge and skills to create a website that is visually appealing, user-friendly, and optimized for search engines.

   Time-saving. If you try to redesign your website on your own or with the help of a freelancer, it can take a lot of time and effort. By hiring an agency, you can save time on project management or studying the design tools on your own. As a result, you get more time to focus on other aspects of your business like marketing or managing your own team.

   Customization. An agency can create a website tailored to your business needs and requirements. They can provide customized solutions that will help your business stand out from the competition.

   Responsive design. With the increasing use of mobile devices, it is crucial to have a website optimized for mobile devices. An agency can create a responsive design that will work seamlessly across all devices.

   Ongoing support. An agency can provide ongoing support and maintenance for your website. They can ensure that your website is always up-to-date and secure even after the agency completes working on the project.

   It’s worth pointing out that if you decide to work with an agency, the website redesign costs will highly depend on the complexity of the software you want to develop. For instance, our team can charge $2,000 for landing page design, while building a UI/UX mockup of a web application may cost from $3,000 to $5,000.

How does our approach help to reduce website redesign costs?

Within 16 years on the market, our team has developed and launched more than 1,500 software products. During this time we found a workflow that is convenient for us as well as helps to keep our customers updated on each stage of the product development and reduce the time and resources spent on it. Here are the steps we take in the process of website upgrade:

1. Discovery phase

   We start off by identifying the customer’s requirements, finding out information about their company, and spotting the problem that needs to be solved with the redesign. Based on these facts, our analyst creates the project breakdown and the price estimate. We thoroughly discuss them with the customer to form a clear vision of the future project. If the team and our customer reach a shared vision of the project before the work starts, the project team follows the plan and the time spent on redesign doesn’t prolong. As a result, website redesign costs are less likely to exceed the estimate.

2. Wireframes

   After the project breakdown is created, we build a few wireframes of the website. With their help, we show how the navigation of the upgraded website is going to look and where the key UI elements will be located. After the wireframes are created, we approve them with the customer and make minor changes if needed. Changing the design at this stage is not as expensive as when the fully-fledged design is completed or when the development has started. That’s why this preparatory step is essential for reducing the total website redesign costs.

   

3. Creating a fully-fledged design

   When the wireframes are approved by the customer, we start creating the detailed UI/UX design according to the wireframes. Our designers work in close cooperation with developers, together they frequently check the site code. Thus the project team understands how to change the design with minor changes in the code. As a result, the design not only looks attractive but is also easy to develop. This helps to shorten the development time and slightly reduce website redesign costs.

4. Development

   After UI/UX mockups are completed, our clients can stay with us to develop an interface. Our frontend developers can develop the layout in line with design mockups, while backend developers can reset the backend part in case you planned to enhance the website functionality during the redesign.

How we redesigned a corporate website

To practice and showcase our UI/UX design skills, we create many shots for our Dribbble portfolio. We have recently got interested in the topic of software used in agriculture. In the process of research, we ran into a cool website we decided to redesign to better dive into the topic of agricultural apps. This website belongs to IRRIOT — the company that provides software for automated irrigation systems.

We think the UI/UX design of this website is great. That’s why to train ourselves a bit we gave it a few new touches and updated its visual style. Here’s the list of points we covered during the redesign:

First of all, we have changed the layout a bit: We incorporated a more complex composition of blocks to create a balanced look and avoid the feeling that the web page was created with the help of free templates from the website builders.

Apart from the layout, we have made a few changes to the color scheme to improve contrast and readability. The previously pale background and gray text have been replaced with more contrasting colors to make the text on the page easier to perceive.

To further enhance the overall look and feel of the website, we have selected photographs that illustrate the company’s services. We corrected the colors of these photos so that they matched the brand color palette of the company.

To highlight the company’s expertise in designing and manufacturing irrigation components, we have created illustrations in the style of industrial design blueprints. This not only adds visual interest but also reinforces the company’s focus on quality and innovation.

Although we upgraded the design, we have also tried not to break the existing system. We decided not to change the navigation, structure, and branding style, so the users who are already familiar with the website don’t feel bewildered the next time they decide to visit it. We posted the updated design on our Dribbble profile.

How do we calculate the website redesign costs?

To provide you with an example of estimated website redesign costs, we have decided to count how much it would cost to redesign the whole IRRIOT website in the mentioned above visual style. The estimate below is rough and could be different depending on the customer’s goals and initial request.

When it comes to the IRROT website, the scope of work is not really big: There is a need to create new UI/UX mockups, develop the layout, and set up the content management system. If we were to accomplish this amount of work, we would manage to do that within a month while the website redesign cost wouldn’t exceed $10,050.

Apart from changing the visual style, our team could enhance this web product with advanced features: develop a chatbot, integrate AI into the product, and set up the system for video content management or advanced search. In this case, the redesign would cost more, but a more sophisticated experience would be provided as well. We can also work with iterations and test how the updated design affects conversions and other metrics of the website.

Finally, if you are searching for a team to upgrade your website, don’t hesitate to text us. We will identify your goal and adjust your website design so you can reach it. Our team can provide UI/UX design of the interface, enhance it with new features, and develop them. Fill in the form below to get the estimate for your project!