Most redesign disasters are not design disasters. Somebody rebuilt the site and forgot that four hundred URLs were already earning.
Website redesign in New York costs $4,000 to $30,000. The risk in a redesign is not aesthetic, it is that a site earning traffic today stops earning it on launch day. Redirect mapping, done before design starts rather than the week of cutover, is what separates a rebuild that keeps its rankings from one that quietly loses a year of work.
Export every indexed URL, rank them by traffic and links, decide the destination for each. Do this first. Agencies that leave redirects until cutover week are the reason redesigns lose traffic, and it is entirely avoidable.
Some pages earn and nobody internally knows which. Rebuilding blind means the page that produced a third of your enquiries gets merged into a section nobody visits. Look at the data before deciding the structure.
If the content is sound and the problem is speed, layout or a dated look, a front-end refresh costs a fraction and carries none of the risk. We will tell you when that is the honest answer, even though the smaller project pays us less.
Moving, rewriting and re-linking years of pages is most of the hours on any redesign and the first thing underquoted. Ask any agency to price it as its own line, because otherwise it arrives as a change order.
Every template, every form, every integration, on staging, against a checklist. Launch day is the wrong time to discover the contact form posts nowhere.
Indexation, redirects resolving, errors in Search Console, traffic by page against the old baseline. Problems show up in weeks two and three, not on day one, and nobody is looking by then.
| Project | Range (USD) | Timeline | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front-end refresh | $4,000 to $9,000 | 3 to 6 weeks | New design on existing structure, no URL changes, speed pass |
| Standard redesign | $9,000 to $20,000 | 6 to 12 weeks | New design and build, content migration, redirect mapping, parity testing |
| Large or multi-section site | $20,000 to $45,000 | 12 to 24 weeks | Above plus information architecture, component system, integrations, phased cutover |
| Redirect mapping alone | $1,200 to $4,000 | 1 to 2 weeks | Full URL inventory, destination mapping, implementation file, verification |
| Post-launch watch | $600 to $2,500 | 4 weeks | Indexation, errors, traffic by page against baseline, fixes |
If a redesign quote does not name content migration and redirect mapping as separate lines, it has not been scoped. Those two are most of the risk and most of the hours.
| What happened | The result |
|---|---|
| Redirects written the week of launch | Hundreds of URLs pointing at the homepage or a 404 |
| Old URLs not exported before the rebuild | Nobody knows what was lost until the quarter ends |
| Pages that earned merged into a hub | The best-performing content stops existing |
| Content migration underquoted | A change order, or pages that never move across |
| Staging site left indexable | Google ranks the staging copy instead |
| Nobody watching after cutover | Problems found in month two, fixed in month three |
| What happened | The result |
|---|---|
| Redirects written the week of launch | Hundreds of URLs pointing at the homepage or a 404 |
| Old URLs not exported before the rebuild | Nobody knows what was lost until the quarter ends |
| Pages that earned merged into a hub | The best-performing content stops existing |
| Content migration underquoted | A change order, or pages that never move across |
| Staging site left indexable | Google ranks the staging copy instead |
| Nobody watching after cutover | Problems found in month two, fixed in month three |
| The question | A good answer | Walk away if |
|---|---|---|
| When do you map redirects? | Before design starts | Near the end, as part of launch |
| Which of our pages currently earn? | They ask for analytics access first | We will improve everything |
| Is content migration a separate line? | Yes, with a number against it | It is included |
| What happens in the month after launch? | A named watch period with checks | Support if something breaks |
The redirect timing question tells you everything. An agency that maps them first has lost traffic before and learned; one that leaves them to launch week has not yet.
A front-end refresh runs $4,000 to $9,000. A standard redesign with content migration and redirect mapping runs $9,000 to $20,000. Larger multi-section sites run $20,000 to $45,000.
It can, and when it does the cause is almost always redirects done late or badly. Every indexed URL should have a mapped destination before design starts, with parity testing before cutover and monitoring for a month after.
Frequently not. If the content is sound and the problem is speed, layout or a dated appearance, a front-end refresh costs a fraction and carries almost none of the risk. We will say so even though it is the smaller job.
By looking at the data before deciding the structure. Some pages earn quietly and nobody internally knows which. Rebuilding blind is how the page producing a third of your enquiries ends up merged into a section nobody visits.
Because it is moving, rewriting and re-linking years of pages, and it is most of the hours on any redesign. It is also the first thing underquoted, which is why it should be priced as its own line rather than folded into the build.
Checking every template, form and integration on staging against a checklist before you switch. Launch day is the wrong moment to find out the contact form posts nowhere or the booking integration lost its credentials.
We watch indexation, redirect resolution, Search Console errors and traffic by page against the old baseline for a month. Redesign problems surface in weeks two and three, by which time most agencies have moved on.
Usually, and it is most of what we do. We audit what exists first and tell you honestly whether rebuilding or refreshing is better value, including the cases where the answer is to leave it alone for another year.
Send us the current site and we will tell you which pages are earning and what a redirect map would need to cover.