It's been a few years since you built your current website and it's time for a redesign. You are no stranger to this process, but you also know that things have changed.
- Technology has grown, and you have more options for platforms and features.
- The way that people shop and the experience that they want from your brand has evolved.
- Your website's design is important, but the content, messaging, and overall tone play an even bigger role in the success of your new site.
It can be very challenging to put together a realistic budget for your new site. Websites come in all shapes and sizes and are built to fulfill a myriad of different purposes.
In this article, we're going to look at some of the primary factors that you need to consider when evaluating website quotes. If you are aware of these six factors during your next redesign, then you can be confident that you're investing in something that will get the results that you want.
What Determines Website Redesign Cost
As you're preparing to get the quotes for your new website and embark on this journey to achieve better results, there are a few things that you need to do.
- You need to review the current performance of your website and get a baseline. A baseline will help you determine the successfulness of the new site.
- Work on identifying the gaps. Where are you losing potential customers? What areas of the site have low engagement?
- What are the goals that you want from your website every month? How far away are you from reaching them?
Once you have armed yourself at the answers to those questions, you can put together a significantly more accurate budget. You will also be able to work with different developers to help determine the website redesign costs that not only fit within your budget but also achieve your goals.
In our experience, here are the top six factors that impact your website redesign cost.
Strategy
The complexity of your website strategy will depend on how much you already have built out in your current site.
If you already had a buyer journey website where each stage was strategically planned out and expertly executed, then this stage may not need to be as detailed. You and your development team will be able to utilize much of the existing strategy.
This way, you can focus on refining any gaps or problems instead of having to work so hard on building an entirely new strategy.
However, if you do not have a good website flow, then you will need to spend more time in this step.
If your website is struggling in any of the following areas, then it's a sign that you need to put more focus into strategy during your redesign.
- Your website should have a good flow what's people visiting multiple pages during each visit.
- It should be generating leads for your business.
- The site should have a workflow in place that will nurture those leads into reaching out to make a purchase.
It is pretty standard to invest up to 50% of your total budget solely on developing a solid strategy. After all, the strategy is how you're going to actually use your website to attract, convert, nurture, and close leads for your business.
Content
When it comes to website content, you may be thinking about strictly the pages on your site and the text that is on them. Content is about much more than that.
Your content is what will organically attract people to your business as well as make them feel like they are right at home. It's about your tone and messaging. The right content we'll connect with your visitors on a deep, and personal, level.
If your website pages already convert well, then you may not need to create that much more content. You could be able to utilize much of your existing content in the redesign.
However, you would need to allocate more budget and time to content creation if you find that you're struggling to:
- Attract organic traffic
- Convert leads
- Move people through your funnel
Improving these areas of your website requires some work on strategy as well as developing a buyer journey, a content offer or two, and hiring incredible writer(s) to execute on the strategy.
Design
If you have a solid strategy, and your content is incredible, then the design can be minimal and still carry your message throughout the site.
Website design has functions to:
- Support your brand message, style, and tone.
- Make it easy for visitors to learn what you do.
- Help visitors find the information that they are seeking.
You can start by investing a style guide if you do not already have one. A style guide ensures that pages are consistent and will match at someone navigate to cross the site.
Investing in modular design can drastically reduce your design expense. Your developers will be able to create custom modules and similar page structures to help speed up development time, reduce costs, and maintain quality and consistency.
The CMS (Content Management System)
Depending on the CMS platform you had before, you may experience some cost differences. If you stay on the platform that you currently have, then your cost should remain the same. However, if you move to a different platform such as HubSpot or WordPress, then you will need to consider the cost of migrating to that platform.
You will need to move website pages, and other content will need to the new platform. Be sure to factor this into your budget.
Development
When it comes to investing in the website development, it depends on whether or not you have someone in-house that can build the pages, or if you're working with an agency or freelancer.
The most significant factor here will be the cost of experience. If you hire a freelancer, that may require some on-boarding experience to get them familiar with your company, your website, and the platform that you choose to build on.
If you are using in-house staff, you will need to consider their experience on the platform if you are migrating to a new CMS system.
Likewise, if you use an agency, you will need to factor in their cost and experience in doing development work on the platform of your choosing.
Launch + Ongoing Optimization
You will not typically have to invest a lot in launching your website, but you do still need to consider your team’s time. They will need to spend time testing and quality checking the pages.
Then after the site’s launch, you will need to continue to track results, make optimization, run A/B test, and perform other functions to help improve the overall results that your website is achieving.
UNDERSTANDING WEBSITE REDESIGN PRICING
Now that you know the different factors that can impact the cost of your website redesign, you can find the right tools and partners. However, you'll find that different agencies and design firms price websites differently. Each approach has it's advantages and disadvantages.
In our free guide Price Wars, you can learn more about the various pricing structures for websites and determine which one would be the best fit for you.
