How long does a website redesign actually take?

Short answer: with a focused studio, a website redesign usually takes 7 days to 6 weeks. A smaller site with content ready can go live in about a week. A larger site with lots of pages, new copy or custom features takes nearer six. Large agencies often quote three to six months, mostly because of process, not the work itself.

Where the time goes

Discovery (a few days)

Understanding your business, your customers and what the current site is getting wrong. This is where we agree the pages, the priorities and the price.

Design (around 1 to 2 weeks)

The homepage design comes first, so you can see the direction early. Once you are happy with it, the other key pages follow in the same style.

Build and CMS (around 1 to 3 weeks)

The site is built, connected to its CMS so you can edit it yourself, and set up for search: page titles, descriptions, local pages and redirects from your old addresses so you keep any rankings you already have.

Launch (a few days)

Final checks on phones and desktops, speed testing, then the switch-over. We show you how to use the CMS before handing over.

What slows a redesign down

• Waiting for content. The single biggest cause of delay. Photos, service descriptions and reviews gathered early keep things moving.
• Too many decision makers. Agree who signs off before you start.
• Changing scope mid-project. New features are fine, but they add time. Better to plan them as a second phase.
• Layers of people. At larger agencies, feedback passes through account managers before it reaches the person doing the work. Each hand-off adds days.

Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?

Not if it is done properly. The key is redirecting every old page address to its new equivalent and keeping the content Google already values. Done well, a redesign usually improves rankings, because the new site is faster and better structured.

How we keep projects quick

You deal directly with the team designing and building your site, so there are no hand-offs. We agree a fixed price and timeline before we start, take 50% to begin and the rest at launch. Bespoke websites start from £2,500 and most go live within 7 days to 6 weeks.

If you have a date in mind, tell us about it and we will tell you honestly whether it is realistic.