How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost in Columbus?

The short answer

A one-time website redesign for a Columbus small business typically costs roughly $2,000 to $6,000 for a brochure site of 5 to 10 pages, roughly $4,000 to $12,000 for a lead-generation site with service and service-area pages, and roughly $8,000 to $25,000 or more for an e-commerce site or one with custom features. The biggest swings come from how many pages you have, whether the content gets rewritten, and how much care goes into protecting the Google rankings your old site already earned.

A monthly plan is the other route. Mine run $100, $200, or $500 a month with a $0, $1,500, or $2,500 setup, and you get two months free if you pay yearly. Either way, you own the finished site.

What drives the cost of a redesign?

A redesign is different from a brand new site because you are starting with something. Sometimes that saves money, since the pages, photos, and service list already exist. Sometimes it costs more, because an old site has to be untangled, moved, and redirected without losing what it has built up. These are the things that move the price the most:

• Page count. A 6 page site for a Worthington accountant is a fraction of the work of a 40 page site for a Grove City HVAC company with a page for every service and suburb.
• Content. Reusing your current text as written is the cheapest option. Rewriting it so it actually brings in calls takes real hours, and it is usually where the value is.
• Photos. Real photos of your crew, trucks, and finished jobs beat stock photos every time. Arranging new photography adds cost, but phone photos from the job site are often good enough.
• Moving off an old platform. Getting a site out of an outdated WordPress setup, a page builder, or a locked hosted system means rebuilding pages and moving files by hand.
• Features. Online booking, quote request forms that route to the right person, financing applications, or a product catalog each add work.
• SEO migration. Mapping every old page to its new home and setting up redirects is unglamorous work, and it is the part cheap redesigns skip.

How do I redesign my website without losing my Google rankings?

This is the most important section in this post. If your current site has been live for five or ten years, Google has learned which of your pages answer which searches. Say your page about furnace repair in Westerville has been sitting on page one for years and sends you a few calls a week. A redesign that changes that page address, or deletes the page, throws that position away.

A careless redesign that skips redirects can wipe out years of rankings overnight. The owner gets a nicer looking site and a quieter phone, and often does not connect the two for months. Here is how a redesign should protect what you have:

• Keep every old URL or redirect it. A 301 redirect is a permanent forwarding address that tells Google a page has moved and passes its standing along. Every old page should either stay at the same address or point to its closest new match.
• Keep the pages that already rank. Before anything is deleted, check Google Search Console (Google's free tool that shows which searches bring people to your site) to see which pages earn traffic.
• Keep titles and content that work. If a page ranks well, improve it carefully instead of starting over from a blank page.
• Resubmit your sitemap. A sitemap is a list of your pages for Google. Submit the new one in Search Console on launch day.
• Watch rankings for a few weeks. Small dips right after launch are normal. A big drop on a key page usually points to a missing redirect, and it can be fixed quickly if someone is actually watching.

How do I avoid paying for a website twice?

Plenty of Central Ohio business owners are on their second or third website, and the earlier ones were not cheap. The usual reason they had to start over was not the design. It was that they did not control what they paid for. Before you sign with anyone, get three things settled in writing.

First, you own the domain, the hosting account, and the website itself. The domain should be registered in your name with your email address on it. If a designer holds it, you are renting your own business name. Second, the new site should be something you or any competent designer can edit, not a custom system only one person understands. If your designer retires or stops returning calls, someone else should be able to pick it up next week. Third, ask what happens to the old site. Who cancels the old hosting, who keeps a backup copy, and who makes sure the old email accounts keep working are small questions that prevent big headaches.

How my redesign pricing works

I publish my prices because I think you should be able to compare quotes without a sales call.

You can choose a one-time build that you own outright, or a monthly plan at $100, $200, or $500 a month with a $0, $1,500, or $2,500 setup, and two months free if you pay yearly. Ongoing SEO, if you want it, is $500 a month and completely separate. Every client owns their site, domain, and accounts in writing. All of it is laid out on my published pricing page, so you can see the numbers before we ever talk.

When is a website redesign not worth it?

Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need one. If your site is reasonably modern, loads fast, works well on a phone, and already has clear service pages, a redesign may not fix what is actually wrong. A good test you can do in five minutes: open your site on your phone, find your phone number, and try to request a quote. If that works smoothly, the design is probably not your problem.

In that case the real issue is usually one of three things. Your site may not show up for the searches that matter, which is an SEO problem. Your pages may be thin and vague about what you do and where, which is a content problem. Or a competitor in Dublin or Hilliard may have 200 Google reviews to your 15, which is a reviews problem. Fixing those costs less than a redesign and often brings in more work. Spending $8,000 on a new look while the real problem stays put is how owners end up feeling burned again.

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