If your website still works but feels like it's dragging you down, slow to load, awkward on a phone, looking like it was built a decade ago, you've probably typed "cost design website" into Google more than once. Fair enough. Nobody wants a surprise bill or a vague quote that turns into three times the price. So let's talk about it plainly.
A lot of pricing guides online talk about building from scratch, but if you already have a website, you're in a different position. There's stuff worth keeping: your content, your photos, your domain, maybe your branding. A redesign isn't starting from zero, it's fixing what's not working and rebuilding it properly.
That usually means the cost to design a website again is less about size and more about how much of the old one is holding up. A site that just looks dated but has decent content is a quicker, cheaper job than one where the whole structure needs rethinking because it was never built with your customers in mind.
Here's the bit people skip over. An old, slow, clunky site has a cost too, it's just hidden. If someone lands on your site on their phone and it takes an age to load, or the text is too small to read without pinching and zooming, they don't wait around. They just leave. That's not a design opinion, that's just how people behave now.
Google notices too. Slow sites and ones that don't work well on mobile tend to sit lower in search results than faster, cleaner ones. So an old website isn't just looking tired, it can genuinely be working against you every single day it stays as it is.
I'll be straight with you, I'm not going to promise you a number here without knowing your site, because anyone who quotes a firm price before looking at what you've got is guessing. What I can tell you is what a fair cost to design a website properly should include.
You should be getting a site that's fast, that looks right on a phone as well as a desktop, that's simple to navigate, and that you can actually understand and update without ringing me every time you want to change your opening hours. You're paying for the thinking as much as the building, working out what your customers actually need to see and in what order.
When someone comes to me with an old site, I start by having an honest look at what's actually wrong with it. Sometimes it's the speed, sometimes it's just that it looks like it's from 2012, sometimes the whole structure is confusing and people can't find what they're after. There's no point rebuilding something shiny on top of the same problems.
From there I rebuild it properly, faster, cleaner, and built for how people actually browse now, mostly on their phones, mostly in a hurry. I keep the process simple because I'm one person doing this, not an agency with layers of people and meetings. You deal with me directly from the first chat to the finished site, which tends to keep both the cost and the confusion down.
If you want an honest answer on cost, the best thing to do is show me what you've got. I can look at your current site, tell you plainly what needs work and what doesn't, and give you a proper price rather than a guess. No pressure, no jargon, just a straight conversation about what it would take to get your site working as hard as your business does.
If your website's had its day and you're ready to see what a proper rebuild would look like and cost, get in touch through ArloWebStudio and let's have a chat about it.