Costs and Benefits of Redesigning Your Website

When you launch your first website, you might often think that you’re one and done. You don’t have to worry anymore: your site is up, and now you just have to rake in the leads.

But, like most things in tech, things become old. They become stale and outdated, and they need an upgrade to stay relevant.

The same thing happens with a website – the CMS you first used is outdated now, the content you were using isn’t as trendy, and, quite honestly, you’ll have more holes in your security than even the most skilled web developers can plug.

Therefore, it’s time you redesign your website. But, before you start looking for a web design company or taking this endeavor upon yourself, here are a few benefits, as well as costs, to redesigning your website.

It’s More Cost-Effective in the Long Run

One of the biggest concerns when it comes to making a website is the cost. And now, you have to do it again!

And, sure, while redesigning a website from the ground up might cost you as much as $20,000, the cost-effectiveness of a redesign is much better than you ever imagined.

See, the thing is, the older your website is, the further it gets pushed down in the SERPs. This means you’re not getting any new visitors and probably bleeding the ones you have, which further leads to losing leads.

And, if you’re not getting any new leads, you can’t convert any sales, and you’re now losing money.

So, staying relevant basically becomes paramount when it comes to websites. The more you wait, the more money you lose, and saving $20,000 now will lead you to lose twice, if not thrice as much in the time you could have launched a new website due to your existing website becoming obsolete.

It Enhances Brand Identity Cohesiveness

Over the years, a company can hire a number of branding agencies to help with developing a brand. This can lead to a number of design choices being implemented on the website over the years that can lead to a distinct lack of cohesion and brand dissonance.

A website redesign can help you step back, take a look at what your brand message needs to be, and then work on putting that message front and center.

If you’re still not sure why you need your brand to be consistent with its messages, consider this: brands that present a unified message across all facets of their endeavor are rewarded with up to a 23% increase in revenue!

And, if that’s the prize for making a little bit of effort in creating a cohesive brand identity, then that effort is very much worth it.

It Improves Site Speed

When we say you should redesign your website, we don’t just mean you should just spruce it up with a few new pieces of media or a whackier font. We also mean that you should redesign systems on your website that might be slowing it down.

One of the biggest gripes people (and Google) have with old websites is that they’re very slow. People nowadays really don’t have the time or the energy to deal with slow websites, and so they will tend to abandon any website that loads for more than five seconds.

Another shocking fact that further reiterates that people like fast websites, is that a website that loads in 1 second has a 3x higher conversion rate than one that loads in five seconds.
This makes modernizing a website that much more of a necessity, and it’s something that you will definitely benefit from if you choose to redesign your website.

It Improves SEO and SERPs Rankings

With improved loading speeds, your SEO and your SERP rankings will see improvements as well.

It is no secret that Google has a preference for fast-loading websites. Such websites have a much higher priority when being indexed and are, conversely, much more likely to get ranked higher in SERPs.

Additionally, redesigning your website also gives you a chance to reevaluate and redo your SEO practices and introduce new ones.

SEO practices tend to change every few years as Google rolls out more and more updates, and a good web redesign company ought to help you keep track of all the SEO practices that give rise to those updates.

It Refreshes Your Content Strategy

You’ve probably heard this one before – content is king.

Indeed, brands that blog see a 67% increase in leads generated. With such a powerful impact on lead generation, redoing your content strategy might just be the thing that launches your brand to the next level.

This is something a good web design development company will know how to use to your advantage. They will redesign your website to bring your content to the forefront, making it the thing your visitors will keep coming back for, and, from there, they’ll start converting to customers at an increased rate.

It Optimizes Your Site Experience

One of the main reasons why you would want to redesign your website is because you want to optimize your site experience. With a highly optimized website, you’re not just offering an excellent experience to your users, but to your developers as well.

Oftentimes, one of the greatest hurdles creative agencies have to overcome when redesigning a website is an outdated content management system.

An outdated CMS often doesn’t support the latest fonts or the latest media, and the agency devs will struggle to implement more modern SEO practices.

By modernizing your CMS, or replacing your old one with a new and modern one, you’re opening new avenues for redesign and modernization, and those new, contemporary designs might mean a difference between a user enjoying their time on your site or having a terrible experience and never returning again.

Improves User Experience

Naturally, with an optimized website experience, you’re also improving your user experience.

UX has always played a major role in customer satisfaction and conversions. People want to feel good when browsing your website, and they won’t take too kindly to slow loading times, irrelevant content, a messy navigation scheme, or any of the other sins old websites tend to commit.

Thus, most brands work hard to create as pleasant an experience for their users as they can. By redesigning your website, you can take a step back, analyze what elevates that user experience and implement changes that will ultimately lead to a better UX and more visitors.

Using a powerful design tool like Webflow UI design can enhance the visual appeal and user experience of your website redesign.

It Increases Responsiveness for PC and Mobile

One of the biggest trends nowadays when it comes to web browsing is mobile browsing. Over 58% of all website traffic comes from mobile devices, which speaks volumes about how prolific mobile devices are nowadays.

Thus, it becomes an absolute imperative that your website is adaptable for mobile. As you know, mobile devices have much smaller screens, and you need to make your website adapt to those smaller screens.

One of the greatest sins older websites commit is exactly this – they’re made for desktop only, and adapt poorly to smaller screens. By redesigning your website with mobile in mind, you’re catering to a vast majority of consumers, which will surely lead to more traffic and more conversions.

It Improves Security

Another cardinal sin that old websites usually commit is having terrible website security.
Since the data leak incident with Facebook a few years ago, data security has been taken a lot more seriously.

Having a leak nowadays will not only land you in hot water, but it will definitely land you at the opposite end of a class action lawsuit.

By redesigning your website, you’re also looking for any security leaks and backdoors you might have in your system.

Newer CMSs have a lot better security measures in place, and a lot fewer holes, so redoing your website now can save you a lot of pain later when cyber thieves come a-knocking.

It Increases Sales Conversions

Finally, the ultimate goal of redesigning your website is to increase sales conversions.

Content improvements, security improvements, a visual redesign, better user experience – all these have a singular goal: to increase user engagement with your website and drive sales conversions.

An old and worn design isn’t able to do this – only a fresh coat of paint and a brand new engine in your website will be able to achieve this goal.

Costs of Rebuilding a Website

Right, now that we’ve covered all the benefits of redesigning a website, let’s take a look at the costs.

A little earlier, we threw out a number – $20,000 for a full redesign. However, this is what a website redesign will cost you if you’re doing it from the ground up and doing a full overhaul of your website.

You see, redesign costs can vary. You could be paying as little as $5,000 if you’re only looking to spruce up your visuals, or many times more if you’re looking to build a brand new website.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the scope of the work done on your site, so we’ve made several groups based on that aforementioned scope.

Redesign

Redesign refers to a simple visual restyle of the website. We’re talking about a new layout, different colors, fonts, and logos. This is, probably, the lightest amount of work you could be doing to your website, and the costs associated with it will be considerably low to match.

Rewiring

Rewiring refers to an overhaul of backend systems. This includes but isn’t limited to switching to another CMS, switching to cloud hosting and SaaS development, and updating security.

Needless to say, tech stuff costs a lot more than a simple change of logos and fonts, and you will need to pay for a license to a new CMS, hire more developers, and the whole thing will take much more time to complete.

Remodeling

Remodeling a website is a combination of the two previous groups. Remodeling involves reworking most of the website’s front end and back end.

This includes all the things we’ve talked about before. You’ll probably be changing and updating your visuals entirely, as well as working on the backend.

Conversely, this will cost you a considerable amount of money, as well as time, but the benefits are more than obvious if you’ve been reading the article so far.

Rebuilding

This involves building a website from scratch. We’re talking about the complete revamp of all systems, switching to an entirely new hosting service, brand new CMS, completely new architecture, and, on top of that, new visuals.

Needless to say, your costs here will be as high as creating a brand-new website. Again, the level of functionality of your website will determine what your end costs will be, but a good website will cost between $10.000 and $40.000.

Final Words

In the end, is revamping your website a good idea?

Short answer – yes, in most cases, it is. Most older websites have a hard time ranking high and bringing in new visitors, let alone scoring new conversions.

So, yes, if you have an old website, it might be time to give it a new face, as well as a new heart, and it will be more than happy to secure new customers for you and grow your revenue.