A visual redesign, a content and structure rebuild, and a platform move are separable. Doing all three at once is a decision, and it should be a conscious one.
They have different costs and different risks.
A redesign brief usually starts with how the site looks and ends with a launch date. Underneath it there are normally three separable problems, and knowing which one is binding decides where the money should go.
The first is genuinely visual. The site looks older than the business is, the brand has moved on, and the presentation undersells the work. A visual redesign inside the existing structure is the cheapest of the three and the most often deferred in favour of a bigger project.
The second is content and structure. The pages do not answer what buyers ask, the navigation reflects the organisation rather than the decision, and there is no page for the thing people actually search for. Restyling that produces a better-looking site with the same problem.
The third is the platform. The team cannot publish without a developer, the build is slow, or the stack is unmaintained. That is a migration, and it carries the search-continuity risk the other two mostly avoid.
They combine, but combining them should be chosen.
| Project | What changes | What it will not fix |
|---|---|---|
| Visual redesign | Design system, typography, components and imagery inside the current structure | Missing pages, weak messaging, or a site the team cannot edit |
| Content and structure rebuild | Information architecture, page inventory, messaging and internal linking | A slow or unmaintainable platform, or a badly dated visual identity |
| Platform move | The technology, the editing model, performance and the deployment process | Content that was never right, and a structure nobody re-examined |
Doing all three together is a legitimate choice on a small site. On a large one it makes it impossible to tell which change caused which result.
The existing site has assets. A redesign is the most common way to lose them.
Before anything is designed, the current site is inventoried. This is the least interesting part of a redesign and the part that most often decides whether it was a success.
A redesign that loses a third of the organic traffic has not been a redesign. It has been an expensive way to start again.
The order protects the result.
Every existing page, its purpose, its traffic and whether anything links to it. Design decisions made before this is known are decisions made in the dark.
The page inventory and the navigation are agreed before any page is designed. Otherwise the site becomes a collection of designs rather than a structure.
A small set of templates that carry every page type, so the site can grow without a new design each time. Bespoke pages are chosen, not accumulated.
The design system, the content model and the publishing route documented in the terms the marketing team uses. A site nobody can extend stops being maintained within two quarters.
Inventory, structure, templates, then design. In that order.
Published starting figures in GBP and USD, excluding VAT.
From-price or scoped after discovery
Up to 20 pages
From £2,000From $2,600
A compact marketing site or one focused lead-generation system, on a defined page and component scope of up to twenty pages.
Starting price
Lead generation
From £4,000From $5,200
A complete marketing and lead-generation website: the messaging, the structure and the enquiry routes a qualified buyer needs to make a decision.
Starting price
One bounded piece
£1,500$2,000
One bounded improvement: landing pages, a template rebuild, an analytics implementation, or a build-readiness review credited against a larger project.
Fixed price
A visual redesign on an existing structure is usually the smallest of the three projects. A structural rebuild with a platform move is the largest, and the difference is a diagnosis rather than a preference.
It can, and most of the risk is avoidable. Losses come from removed pages, changed URLs without redirects, thinner content and weaker internal linking. Each of those is a decision that can be made deliberately if the current site is inventoried first.
Often, and it is worth asking before committing to a move. If the team can publish, the site is fast enough and the stack is maintained, a platform move is an expensive way to solve a content problem.
No. Staged redesigns work well where the site is large: rebuild the templates that carry the traffic first, keep the rest consistent, and move the remainder as capacity allows. It also makes results attributable.
Content and decisions usually set the schedule, not the build. Where messaging, structure and material are ready, a redesign moves quickly. Where they are not, the honest plan makes that the first phase rather than pretending it will happen in parallel.
Appearance, missing answers or a team that cannot publish. Each one points at a different project.
