The Ultimate Guide to Website Redesign for Businesses

What Is a Website Redesign?

A website redesign updates a site's content, structure, design, or functionality to better serve its visitors and business goals. It can involve rebuilding the site or improving specific parts. Start by identifying what buyers need and what is getting in their way, then decide how much needs to change.

This guide walks through five steps: plan your budget and timeline, assess your technology, prepare your team, gather performance data, and choose the right agency.

“I Just Don’t Like Our Website Anymore...”

One of the biggest “issues” that people cite with their website is simply, “I don’t like it anymore.”

Designers and developers at agencies are visual problem solvers, so, unfortunately, this kind of “blank check” statement gives them almost nothing to go on.

It’s merely a personal, subjective opinion that you have as someone who likely views the website every single day. But what do your customers think?

As the most important users of your website, are your customers satisfied with what it offers them?

Another poor reason for a redesign is to keep up with your competitors. Your analytics, customer feedback, and business goals should help you judge how effective your website is.

If you’re redesigning it only because a rival just rolled out their sleek new site, then your goal is really to save face, not to change your lead conversions or update your technology. You can’t be objective, purposeful and strategic when thinking about your own website if you’re only being reactionary to a competitor.

Finally, a significant change to your website, while exciting, doesn’t always necessitate a complete redesign. Adding a feature such as a blog or a membership portal may be possible within your current site. A platform migration is also a separate decision from a visual redesign. Investigate the work each requires before assuming they need to happen together.

Also, a new hire with web design chops will sometimes want to make their mark by suggesting changes to the website, but this shouldn’t always mean a massive new project.

Why You Should Redesign Your Website

With that out of the way, there are some very good reasons why your website may need a redesign. Here are three of the strongest:

• Your site doesn’t provide value to visitors;
• Your site doesn’t accommodate mobile users or isn’t responsive; or
• Your site looks outdated and outmoded.

Another good reason is having a new strategy or new business objectives that include clearly defined goals for your website. So if your company is moving in a different direction or introducing a brand new product, it’s worthwhile to consider who your business will be targeting and how your website will contribute to those objectives.

But before you take the leap, there are still three key areas you need to evaluate:

• The number of leads you’re currently getting;
• User feedback about the current site’s helpfulness; and
• The security risks involved with your current technology.

Ultimately, Your Website Isn’t About You 

You may not want to hear this, but your opinion matters very little when it comes to a redesign.

Your website should be first and foremost about your users. It needs to be designed in a way that your users are familiar with: the way they consume media and the way that they’re going to buy your products and services. Everything is about the user, and as soon as you start thinking that way, a lot of decisions about the redesign will be a lot easier to make.

Neither should your website be a sales brochure. It shouldn’t be about directly telling users what you can do. Instead, it should be focused around solving their problems and understanding their journey and what they need.

Once you’ve determined that you’re going into your website redesign project with the correct mindset, it’s time to call up the agency of your dreams and get to work with new designs and fonts, right?

Actually, not so fast. You have a lot to do to prepare for your next website redesign. In fact, before you start looking at agencies, there are still four internal preparation steps you need to go through, and they include:

• Evaluating your objectives against your timeline and budget;
• Assessing your technology needs and access requirements;
• Aligning your stakeholders and identifying your team; and
• Gathering and analyzing your website’s benchmark data.

How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost?

A website redesign's cost depends on the scope: the number and complexity of pages, how much content you can reuse, custom design and development, integrations, and the support your team needs. Compare proposals against the same requirements, and separate the project fee from ongoing hosting, software, maintenance, and support costs.

Perhaps the most important question of them all is:

What does a realistic redesign budget look like for your business?

Of course, when it comes to determining how much your website redesign should cost, you need to keep one thing in mind -- if you’re looking for a website that you ultimately can’t afford, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

For a current example, IMPACT’s website redesign projects start at $30,000, with the final price depending on scope. Review the service page for current pricing and what is included.

The answer is different for every company, but here are some of the most important factors to consider:

• What does your wish list look like, and what do you want out of the project?

  The answer could be a simple redesign, a new platform or new technology, new content, new photography and video, or an entire digital strategy with search engine optimization. All of these need to be factored into your budget.

• How much of your current website content will be used for your new site, and how much new content will you need to create?

  You need to define the content needs for your company's website redesign as early as possible. Not only will it impact your project timeline and budget, knowing this information in advance will help you find the right agency -- not every agency is equipped to handle website content creation.

• What level of support and experience are you comfortable with?

  The level of communication, project management, and specialist support varies by provider and scope. Ask who will work with you, how often you’ll meet, and what your team will need to contribute.

• Do you need to integrate existing functionality, such as an e-commerce platform?

  That will require additional testing to make sure it’s compatible with the rest of the website.

The other point you need to consider is your potential return on investment with a new website. For example, a $25,000 investment would require $25,000 in additional contribution after the costs of delivering the extra sales to recover that investment. The number of sales depends on your margins, ongoing website costs, and what results the redesign actually contributes. This is an illustration, not a forecast or an IMPACT price.

So, take our advice:

Don’t underplay your project’s complexity so that you can bring your numbers down.

Finally, make sure that you leave room in your budget for contingencies.

Sometimes old, forgotten legacy technologies present problems, or a new tool clashes with your company’s intranet. In cases such as these, the agency may need to pull in an outside developer for help, which can break the budgets of those who are unprepared.

How Long Does a Website Redesign Take?

A website redesign timeline depends on the scope, content readiness, integrations, and how quickly your team can review and approve work. Ask for a schedule covering discovery, content, design, development, testing, and launch. Agree on who owns each decision before committing to a launch date.

Just like your budget, you have to consider whether your projected timeline is viable.

If you have a fixed launch deadline, ask prospective agencies what scope they can realistically deliver within it.

The time it takes for agencies and clients to agree on a website redesign project varies with the scope and decision process. This period can be extended if you need to wait for the budget to be approved, or if a key stakeholder is unavailable.

During this time, you should be open and honest with salespeople about your situation -- otherwise, you'll risk your website redesign project going off the rails. A good sales team will put effort into understanding your business, your goals, your competitors and how their agency can fit into the picture.

Realize that your company has a great deal of influence over how long the project will take, and that you need to figure out internally how much time you have available. Throughout the process, you’ll need to participate in kickoff meetings and site reviews, give feedback and spend time either writing new copy for your site or speaking to copywriters who are writing it for you.

Ask the agency to estimate your team’s weekly participation and identify the periods when content, interviews, and approvals will require more time.

For example, copywriting may involve interviews with subject matter experts as well as research, drafting, review, and approval. Agree on the time and responsibilities for each stage.

“Whoa, This Is Already A Lot of Work...”

By now, you might be saying to yourself: “This sounds like a lot of work that I don’t want to do. I shouldn’t have to think this hard.”

First, if you’re not willing to think about your budget and timeline, then you need to pay an external consultant to do it for you. Their decisions will be made based on their own experience and best practices, not yours.

Second, and more to the point, if you aren’t willing to put in the time and effort to figure this out, then you’re going to be very disappointed with the entire process when you engage with a web design agency. You can’t get what you need if you don’t know how to ask for it in the first place.

Okay, are we good?

Great. Let’s get back to business.

Grab Your Key Stakeholders

Before you pick up the phone to call a web design agency, you need to determine the person who will have ultimate approval power and judgment over the entire project. This is typically someone such as a CEO or a marketing director, who will sign off on any major decisions.

The situation you want to avoid is any sort of “design by committee,” in which more than one person has these responsibilities.

While it’s good to have multiple people involved -- we’ll talk more about that in a minute -- having this kind of crowding at the top of the approval chain will prolong your timeline and increase the chance of conflicts. Plus, it puts the burden on the agency to resolve conflicting opinions and ideas, a time-consuming process that you will ultimately pay for.

That’s why selecting a single, final decision-maker is for the benefit of both you and the agency, so that they can have an established point of contact for their questions and concerns, and you’re not paying your agency to play mediator for your team.

Build Your Internal Team

Beyond this project leader, you will also need to select a committed team that will be working with and assisting the agency throughout the process. They will be able to provide on-the-spot feedback as important developments occur, rather than involving the entire company or conducting an internal user survey.

Your team for the redesign should be a diverse, cross-functional group of people, with clear responsibilities and enough time to contribute. Keep the core review group manageable and bring in specialists when needed.

They must be willing to contribute to the process by participating in the initial kickoff call and evaluating major milestones, at the very least. They should have different backgrounds and opinions in order to give the best feedback, but not volatile or conflicting personalities that make for a dysfunctional team -- and for awkward arguments in front of your agency of choice.

Who Should Be a Member of Your Team?

Employees in client-facing roles can be a great choice for inclusion. Salespeople and members of your customer service department are often more tuned in than anyone else in the company to what your prospects want and need, because they hear it from them directly. They’re also usually the ones who will answer a lot of your partner agency’s questions.

Your marketing team can also be a great asset, because they not only live and breathe your current website, they’re going to probably be the ones working with and updating your new website the most. That means they’ll have a lot of valuable input - just be choosy as to who you invite from the team.

A higher-level executive in the C-suite would be an ideal choice. They may not participate as much in the process, but they can be inserted strategically at various points in order to make sure that the new website is in line with your company’s mission and vision. This is especially important if your redesign is meant to help turn over a new leaf for your company, or is a key part of achieving forward-looking revenue and business goals.

If your business has a large number of subject matter experts, you should definitely include someone who knows your products or services inside and out, and who can assess the quality and accuracy of the content on the new website. This is especially important if you plan to have any sort of copywriting delivered by the agency as part of your redesign.

Employees who have been at your company for a long time are also a good choice, because they can testify about your company’s story and have a better idea of where your business has been, as well as where it’s headed in the future.

While it’s important to plan ahead, you don’t need to have a final team in place until you engage with an agency and understand the demands they will ask of you. Every agency is unique, and every process will require a different number of people with varying levels of involvement.

Still, you should have a general idea of the different segments of your business that need to be involved in the project and keep certain people on an unofficial list. 

This way when you first start reaching out to agencies, you can point them to specific employees with knowledge of different areas who can answer their questions.

“What If My Website Redesign Project Includes Content?”

If your project will involve content creation (whether that content be written copy for your website pages, a new explainer video for your homepage, or visuals that help explain what you do), and the agency is responsible for creating the new content, you need to have members of your team ready to take on two tasks:

• Contributing as a subject matter expert; and
• Editing as part of your review team.

Contributors need to be available and willing to speak with the agency’s copywriting or content creation team, possibly during multiple interviews. They can range from those who execute the service to those who sell the service -- just make sure to select individuals who can speak to your different business segments with ease.

Also, if this redesign is to be a signal of a new chapter for your company, plan on a C-level executive being involved in some capacity, such as an interview focused on what the road ahead looks like for your organization.

Next, you will need to have an internal set of individuals who will review any new content created by the agency. In our experience, two editors from a client, as well as one point of contact set aside as a final approver, tends to work well. Or you can simply have one point of contact for editorial review on your end.

Again, your agency should be more than willing to work with multiple individuals, but they will need to know who has the final say. Otherwise, you run the risk of creating confusion and missing deadlines.

The one thing to keep in mind with content is how easily it can become the most challenging part of your project.

Be realistic about what you’re looking to get out of a website redesign project, from the content end, and measure that against the level of effort you’re willing to put into it.

Identify Your Internal Technology Resource

Finally, you need to select a point of contact at your company that the agency can consult for the project’s technology needs.

The right person for this job will depend on how robust your company’s IT framework is.

Are you a small startup with five employees and an outsourced IT solution, or do you have a more sophisticated IT environment with thousands of employees across the country?

No matter your internal arrangement, your technology point of contact should be ready and available to answer technical questions from the agency. This person should be prepared for any IT emergencies that might arise during the project and able to be on standby when the website launches.

Compare how buyers use your site on different devices. Our mobile versus desktop traffic and conversion benchmarks can help you interpret those differences alongside your own data.

Tool 1: Hotjar, Now Part of Contentsquare

Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare. Its heatmaps and session replay tools can help you see where visitors click and how far they scroll across devices. Check the current product and plan details.

You can use this information about how people respond to your website’s page designs to take the subjectivity out of understanding the user’s journey through your website and make data-backed decisions about how the new site will be designed.

For example, you may be assuming that people are scrolling all the way down your page, or that an offer in a prominent location is getting a lot of attention, but the Hotjar data may tell you that your visitors are not even going beyond the hero image on mobile.

Heatmaps give you a visual representation of interactions collected from actual visitors.

These visual cues can help you investigate how your website’s design affects the experience. With low traffic, treat a small set of sessions as observations to investigate, not proof of how every visitor behaves.

Combine those observations with analytics, customer feedback, and task testing to understand what needs to change.

Tool 2: Google Analytics

You might already have Google Analytics 4 installed on your site. If not, agree on a measurement plan with the person responsible for analytics. Your agency will need enough relevant data to understand patterns, alongside customer feedback and business context.

Google Analytics offers a free version. Installation and configuration should include the events and outcomes that matter to your business, with verification that the data is being collected correctly.

You’ll need to collect data about how many views each page gets, what the overall traffic to your site is, how users move through your site, and which pages they bounce away from. This information also allows you to see which pages are in most need of a restructure or need to be more closely evaluated.

Many companies that we talk with want to rebuild their website with a fresh new look and feel, without necessarily reviewing the site’s content. Google Analytics provides the kind of data that might make you realize that certain pages need an entire overhaul of the on-page content as opposed to simply a new design.

For instance, if a page barely gets visitors, investigate its purpose, search visibility, incoming links, and usefulness before deciding to remove it. If an important page has a high bounce rate, check whether visitors are finding the answer they need and whether your measurement setup reflects the intended task.

Tool 3: Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that reports Google Search clicks, impressions, queries, and indexing information. It can help you understand which pages bring visitors and identify reported indexing issues.

Before the redesign, export the queries and pages that bring relevant visitors, including clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position. Preserve useful content, page URLs, and internal links where possible. After launch, compare equivalent periods and review indexing alongside qualified inquiries and sales. Rankings alone do not tell you whether the redesign is helping buyers.

Repairing broken links as part of a website redesign can take time. Use a site crawl and direct link checks alongside Search Console; it is not a complete inventory of every broken internal link. Give your agency the findings so they can plan the work, budget, and schedule.

If you have a very old website, some of your links may have broken over time as you’ve shifted things around. Higher-end web design agencies know to check for issues like this, because it affects their work on things like search engine optimization (SEO).

Tool 4: HubSpot

HubSpot’s marketing and CRM tools can help connect website interactions, form submissions, and contacts to your sales process. The reports available depend on your subscription, integrations, tracking setup, and consent settings. Review the current HubSpot marketing tools.

Used with your CRM outcomes and customer conversations, this can help you understand the buyer’s journey and investigate gaps in the process.

This is great data to have in advance of a site redesign, because you really need to understand how visitors are using your website in its current form before attempting to rebuild it.

Start Collecting Data Early

Start collecting and validating data early enough to establish a useful baseline. The period you need depends on your traffic, sales cycle, seasonality, and measurement setup. Keep the reporting period and definitions with your findings so you can compare results after launch.

This being said, don’t feel like you can’t engage with an agency if you don’t have these tools installed, but understand the risks involved if you do begin a website redesign project without adequate benchmarking data.

If you begin without reliable baseline data, identify the assumptions you are making. Use customer interviews, sales feedback, and task testing to reduce uncertainty, and agree on what you will measure as the project progresses.

The 4 Types of Web Design Agencies

Ad Agencies: Brand and Campaign Focus

Advertising agencies often focus on branding, messaging, and campaigns. Website design may be part of their offering, but the services and experience vary by firm.

Ask how the website work connects with their broader brand and campaign expertise, and which parts of the project they deliver themselves.

An ad agency might be right for you if the website is part of a wider brand or advertising initiative. Compare the proposed website scope and costs against your requirements, rather than assuming an agency’s location or client list determines its fit.

Marketing Agencies: Focused on Strategy

Marketing agencies can come in various forms. They may do work in inbound marketing, outbound marketing, or even traditional public relations. If you’re looking to work with a marketing agency, you need to be aware of the differences here, because they’ll all come to the table with different specialties and solutions to address your pain points.

These agencies often connect website work with a broader marketing strategy. IMPACT provides sales and marketing coaching, training, and hands-on implementation. Our website redesign services combine strategy, content guidance, design and development, and training on HubSpot or WordPress so your team can manage the site.

That means that the focus is on the content and the user, from the moment they land on your website, through to the close of a deal. To us, the entire purpose of your website should be to answer customers’ questions and aid them throughout the buyer’s journey. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is one part of improving that experience.

Additionally, they may have experience with CMS platforms such as HubSpot and WordPress. Ask them to demonstrate the updates your team will need to make, and compare the capabilities, integrations, ownership, and ongoing costs.

If you’re comparing platforms, review the differences between HubSpot and WordPress. The right choice depends on your requirements and the people who will maintain the website.

If you use marketing automation, ask how the website will connect with those tools and your CRM. Understand what is included in the integration and how the data will be maintained.

Other marketing agencies focus on advertising, public relations, visual design, or a combination. Compare their actual process and expertise with the outcomes you want from the redesign.

If you want informative content that helps buyers solve problems and make decisions, look for a partner with demonstrated content and conversion expertise.

These categories overlap. Evaluate the team and proposed work rather than relying on an agency label alone.

Which Type of Agency Is Right for You?

If you’re totally lost, do this first: Figure out whether your company is primarily B2B, B2C, or e-commerce of any variety. This will affect how you approach your website and how users interact with it. If you don’t know your own goals, you won’t be able to appreciate how a website is supposed to help you with them.

Next, take stock of the various skill sets you might need. Who do you have internally on your team, and where are the gaps? Do you need content writers, developers, or someone with design sense? The agency you work with should be able to fill these vacancies with skilled members of their own staff.

Finally, beware of ye olde shiny penny syndrome.

Don’t make your decision based on how pretty an agency’s portfolio is. You also want website visitors to find useful answers and take the next step toward becoming customers. Look at usability, accessibility, content, and evidence of results alongside visual design.

A snazzy website which does lots of fancy tricks built by an ad agency might not make sense if your goal is to get your visitors to fill out a form and provide you with their email address or phone number.

As previously discussed, before you talk to an agency, you need to have some sense of your budget. However, you should expect to have some flexibility on this during the negotiation process, especially if your project will require additional support in the form of copywriting or developers to code specialized features.

When talking about how much things will cost, compare the same requirements across proposals. If you need to reduce the budget, discuss which pages and features matter most, what can wait, and what tradeoffs a smaller scope creates.

Think about your website budget in terms of the complete work: communication with the agency, creativity, strategy, branding, content, development, and search research. Evaluate what each part contributes to your goals, alongside the cost.

Evaluating Your Agency Contenders

Now that you have an idea of what type of agency you would like to work with, you still have more research to do before selecting your top pick(s).

By researching different agencies and looking at their websites, you can pick up on some indicators that are either green lights or red flags to help you whittle down the potential agencies to do your redesign. In fact, we’d say all of the below factors are ones that you should be able to access online, through your own research, without having to pick up the phone to ask.

Ultimately, the goal of this independent research phase is to land on two to four agencies you’d like to speak with further about your redesign project.

2. What Does Their Team Look Like?

Next, you should check the makeup of the company’s staff by reading its About page. How many are core members of the team versus freelancers? What kind of experience and educational background do they possess?

Also, examine the diversity of skills that the team members have. You don’t necessarily want to work with an agency filled with generalists.

For example, if one person is responsible for design, development, copywriting, and marketing, ask how they manage the workload and where specialists provide support. A small team can be a good fit, but it needs the capacity and skills to meet your project’s requirements.

5. Pricing

An agency’s price proposal needs to be just as acceptable as its team, its results, and its aesthetic. At this point, you should be conscious of the fact that you can’t get a champagne website on a beer (or water) budget.

You should be able to get at least a ballpark number from an agency without having to ask for a full blown proposal. This saves both you and the agency time.

Discovery can take time and may be a separately paid engagement. Ask each agency how it works, what it costs, and when you will receive a scope and price. Establish budget fit early so neither side invests time in an approach you cannot fund.

Providing price estimates is also a good sign of a healthy agency. It gives you a sense that they know themselves well, they’re competent, and they’re aware of how much effort they need to put into a project.

Questions to Ask Prospective Web Design Agencies

Before choosing a website redesign agency, confirm these six things:

• Fit: Relevant work, references, and an understanding of your buyers and goals.
• Scope: Written deliverables, pricing, exclusions, and ongoing costs.
• People: A clear point of contact and named responsibilities for your team and theirs.
• Process: A realistic schedule for content, design, development, reviews, and changes.
• Launch: A plan to protect search visibility and test accessibility, performance, and tracking.
• Ownership: Control of your domain, content, accounts, and a clear handoff and support plan.

Now that you have your agency candidates in mind, it’s time to begin having those initial conversations that will help you make the best choice for your project.

Depending on your business and industry experience, your company will obviously need its own list of specialized questions for prospective agencies. However, regardless of who you are, you should also go through some standard, yet important, questions which may be less obvious right off the bat. 

It should be an automatic demerit in the back of your head if they can’t provide answers to all of these inquiries. And the answers agencies provide to the first six questions below are probably the most interesting and valuable for your business.

When You Shouldn’t Choose an Agency

Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out which agency to work with, and sometimes it’s clear as day. Based on our experience, here are seven major warning bells that should cause you to go running in the opposite direction.

Mobile-Friendly in Name Only

An agency calling a site “mobile-friendly” is not enough. Ask to see how real pages and buyer tasks work across screen sizes, with a keyboard, and at increased zoom.

Check that people can read the content, use the navigation, compare options, and contact you without missing information or obstructive overlays.

A responsive website, however, is one that dynamically changes based on the user’s device and provides a consistent user experience across different screen sizes.

With a responsive website, your team can maintain one set of content that adapts to different screens. You still need to test that each important page and task works well on mobile and desktop.

Google uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing. Keep important content available and usable on mobile, and review Google’s mobile-first indexing guidance.

Make sure that the agency’s proposal includes responsive layouts and accessibility testing. Agree on a target such as WCAG 2.2 Level AA and include keyboard, screen-reader, contrast, zoom, and task checks. A responsive layout alone does not prove that the experience is accessible.

About the Author

Bob Ruffolo is the founder and CEO of IMPACT and co-creator of the Endless Customers System. He founded IMPACT in 2009 as a web design company and has led its growth into sales and marketing coaching and training.