Website Redesign vs Building a New Website: Which Is Better?

Your website is how people learn about your business for the first time. An old design, slow load time, poor mobile experience, or a website that no longer describes your business can make you question whether to update the website or completely replace it.

Deciding to redesign your website or build a completely new website involves many business factors including the current layout of your website, your business goals, budget, available technology, current SEO ranking, and future business growth. There are also times when simply improving the website design is enough. However, in some situations, updates to an old website become so costly and complex that it is easier to build a new website.

Understanding the characteristics of a new website vs a redesign can help you execute changes to your website that develop user experience and drive business growth.

What Is a Website Redesign?

A website redesign is the process of refreshing the design, content, and/or functionality of a website without building it from the ground up. Common outcomes of redesigns include:

• Redesigns of outdated layouts
• Responsive navigation
• Optimization for different screen sizes
• Stronger calls to action
• Faster page speed
• Newer images and copy
• Improved accessibility
• Enhanced SEO
• More simplified user flows
• Stronger lead generation forms

Websites often undergo redesigns when their technology and foundational systems are in good working order, but their design and user experiences fall short.

What Does Building a New Website Mean?

Creating a website from scratch means designing, planning and building a website from the bottom up as opposed to making substantial modifications to an existing one. This usually requires new Content Management Systems (CMS) and Technology Stack choices, improved site architecture, new navigation, integration systems, and focus on site security and its scalability. A new website is usually preferable to an existing website when it is outdated, technically obsolete, and lacks crucial site features, including online orders, bookings, customer accounts, CRM integrations and automation.

Signs You Only Need a Website Redesign

Knowing when to redesign a website helps your business save money by identifying exactly when a new website is needed. You may only need a redesign if your website is stable from a technical standpoint, but is visually or strategically outdated.

Your Design Looks Outdated

The expectations for website designs shift. Your site looks less professional when there are outdated designs, too many design elements, cluttered designs, low-quality images, fonts, etc. Most likely with dated designs, the site performance hasn’t taken a hit.

Confusing Navigation

When visitors enter your website, they should intuitively know where to go. Navigation elements that are too complicated push more users to leave your website (aka bounce) and impede goal fulfillment. More often than not, a significant performance boost is accomplished by simply reorganizing menus and page elements.

Your Branding is New

A company’s logo, colors, slogans, and mission may all be new. When these changes happen, a new website design is warranted.

The Mobile Site Looks Really Bad

If your site works fine but individual pages or elements have a noticeable lack of design on smartphones and tablets, then a design change should only take a few additional designs for each page.

Not a Lot of Conversions

An abundance of website visitors that result in no conversions may be attributed to a whole host of bad design, messaging, poor layouts, etc. rather than issues with website performance. A redesign for conversion rate optimization may be just what was needed before.

Signs It's Time to Build a New Website

In some situations, an updated site can mask underlying issues. Building a new site could be the more worthwhile decision.

Your Tech is Outdated

Outdated themes and frameworks and obsolete CMS and plugin technology can bring on a number of issues including slow and insecure sites. If the technology behind your site is abandoned, then rebuilding the site may actually save you time and money in the end.

Your Website is Slow

If your website is slow because of bad architecture, legacy code or obsolete systems, new sites can provide faster performance.

Your Website Can't Handle New Features

If your website can't support features like an online ordering system or booking system, a customer portal, subscription services, multilingual systems or integrate systems and products, a new website with these features may be the better decision.

Security Concerns

Constantly having security issues may mean that the technology behind your website needs to be updated. A new website can help solve these issues and improve the security behind your site.

Your Business Has Changed

If your business model or products or services or your audience, location, or business operations have changed dramatically, rebuilding your website will provide you the flexibility you need for your website.

Website Redesign vs New Website: Key Differences

There are differences in website redesign vs building a new website in terms of the amount of the foundation that remains.

A website redesign works in the context of the existing site structure. Developers and designers improve the elements of the website such as the design, usability, and content structures and add responsiveness and conversion pathways. The majority of the existing system is kept. In the case of a new website, most or all of the existing structure is replaced.

Some major differences are as follows:

• Project scope: Redesign projects scope are restricted to enhancing website pages while new website projects involve planning, designing and developing an entire website and moving website contents.
• Development requirements: A redesign may require less backend development. In contrast, a rebuild requires more extensive work to be done for both frontend and backend.
• Project Complexity: Rebuilding a website includes making choices about databases, integrations, redirects, migrations, testing and infrastructure.
• Customization: New platforms usually allow more freedom and flexibility in design.
• Future scalability: Easier to create a flexible foundation for expected future growth.

There is no best approach in either situation. The right choice will depend on supporting structure and flexibility of the current foundation in line with expected future needs.

Cost Comparison: Redesign vs New Website

A typical expense for a business is whether to redesign or recreate a website. Building a website from scratch is objectively more expensive because the redesign actively uses components of the website. However, pricing is not as straightforward as it appears. A redesign may have numerous aspects that cost money.

A website redesign by a top web development company that focuses on improved aesthetics and content renewal may be less expensive than a “from scratch” website build. In the redesign process, developers may encounter issues that are hidden in the system. Complex or poorly developed systems go hand in hand with increased costs. Creating a website requires several processes, including:

• UX and website architecture planning
• UI development
• Frontend development
• Backend development
• Database configuration
• Content migration
• Introduction of third-party integrations
• Quality assurance
• Improvement of redirects
• Performance and security testing

The total cost should be considered over the length of time a platform will be in use. In the long run, repeatedly paying to cover support for an outdated website may actually cost more than building a modern website.

SEO Considerations Before Making a Decision

SEO is an important consideration when planning a website redesign or rebuild. In its current state, almost all websites have indexed pages, backlinks, rankings, organic traffic, and search authority. Poor migration planning will result in site assets and traffic being lost. Before redesigning, businesses should identify key pages and analyze the search performance of the site. SEO strategies to consider include:

• Preserving URLs: If improving SEO, keep high performing URLs as-is.
• 301 Redirects: When URLs must change, permanent redirects should be used to send both viewers and search engines to the new most relevant page.
• Migrating Content: Valuable content cannot disappear due to website restructuring.
• Metadata: Migrations are the time for reviews of all important title tags, headings, content descriptions, and overall content structures.
• Valid internal links: Ensure there are no broken links within the site.
• Technical SEO: Check mobile website speed, usability, and optimization for search engine visibility and crawlability.

Designing and building a new website with strong SEO in mind can actually help increase visibility whereas strong SEO is added only after the website is complete.

How to Choose the Right Option for Your Business?

The first step is performing a website audit that looks at the design, technology, performance, SEO, content, usability, integrations, and conversions of your website. Consider the following:

• What are our current CMS limitations?
• Are there future website capabilities?
• What is technology?
• Is the technology secure and maintainable?
• Is a website easy to use?
• Is the website sales/leads focused?
• Does the website display our brand?
• Who/what is creating website performance issues?
• Do we need many custom features?

A website redesign is usually a time efficient approach instead of new web development when the technical base is solid and the answers to the questions above are considered. If the website has security, architectural, technology, or scalability issues, it may be more beneficial to build a new website.

Final Thoughts

There isn't a clear winner between a new website vs redesign. A redesign is warranted when a website has a good technical foundation, but needs improved design, usability, mobile performance, and conversion rates. A new website is a better option when the current website’s technology is outdated and presents security risks and scaling issues, along with inflexible business needs.

Think beyond a website’s design when making a decision — prioritize the site's performance, user experience, and its long-term ability to benefit your business. Thinking about your technology, SEO, and the functionality you need to maintain your site to draw in business can help you decide between a redesign or a complete rebuild.