Service
Website redesign
Most organizations do not need a first website. They need the one they have to stop being a problem.
The four reasons people call about a rebuild
It is slow. It is unreadable on a phone, which is where most visitors now arrive. No one on staff can change it without calling somebody. Or it simply describes an organization that no longer exists, because programs changed and the site did not.
Those are four different problems with four different fixes, and only one of them actually requires a redesign. A slow site is often a hosting and image problem. An uneditable site sometimes needs a different editor rather than a different site. Sorting out which one you have is the first conversation, and occasionally it ends with a recommendation not to rebuild at all.
What a rebuild puts at risk
An existing site has accumulated things that are invisible until they are gone. Pages that rank in search. Links pointing at addresses that will stop existing. A donation flow that regular givers know by muscle memory. Printed material listing addresses that need to keep working.
A redesign that ignores that can cost more traffic than it gains, and the loss shows up gradually enough that it is easy to miss. Keeping old addresses redirected to their new equivalents is unglamorous and it is the difference between a rebuild that holds its ground and one that starts over from nothing.
Around Sacramento, redesign-related searches run at roughly the same monthly volume as the broad web design terms, which is a fair signal that most organizations here are replacing rather than starting.
Common questions
How much does it cost to design a website?
For a redesign the honest answer depends less on design than on what has to be carried across. Migrating a decade of posts, keeping existing page addresses working, and moving a donation setup without downtime are usually the bulk of the work. A visual refresh over a sound site is a small project. A rebuild that also has to preserve search rankings is not.
Is web design still in demand?
Yes, and redesign more than new builds. Most organizations already have a site, so the work is rarely starting from a blank page. It is deciding what to keep from something built years ago by someone who is no longer around, which is a different skill from designing from scratch.
How much does it cost to have someone design my website?
Ask any quote to separate three things: the build, the content, and the ongoing maintenance. Quotes that bundle all three into one number are difficult to compare and tend to leave the content work undefined, which is where projects stall. Content is almost always the thing that delays a redesign, not development.
Redesign work across the area
Get a second opinion before rebuilding
Send the address of the current site. A short review of what is actually wrong with it costs nothing and sometimes saves the whole project.