How much does it cost to fix bad website design?

Key takeaways

Fixing bad website design in the UK usually costs far less than a new site. In the market, focused fixes to an existing site, such as contrast, type, buttons, forms and navigation, typically cost £500–£3,000. A redesign on the same platform runs about £3,000–£12,000, and a full rebuild £5,000–£20,000 or more. These are market ranges, not a GBL price list.

• Focused design fixes: typically £500–£3,000 in the UK market.
• Redesign on the same platform: about £3,000–£12,000.
• Rebuild on a new platform: £5,000–£20,000 or more.
• Many contrast and button fixes take hours, not weeks.

What decides the cost of fixing website design?

Cost depends on how many problems there are, whether they sit in the site's global styles or page by page, how flexible the platform is, and whether content also needs rewriting. A colour change in one stylesheet fixes every page; restructuring forty pages built separately in a page builder takes much longer.

• The most common business website design mistakes
• how much a business website costs in the UK

What can be fixed cheaply?

Many of the most common design mistakes are quick fixes on a reasonably built site, often a few hours of developer time each. In the UK, developers commonly charge somewhere around £50–£100 an hour, often with a minimum charge.

• Darkening text and button colours to pass contrast.
• Increasing body text size and line spacing.
• Moving the phone number into the header.
• Adding visible labels and clearer errors to forms.
• Renaming and trimming menu items.
• Turning off sliders, autoplay and pop-ups.

• Quick website improvements to try before a redesign

When do you need a redesign?

A redesign makes sense when problems are everywhere and inconsistent, when the brand has changed, or when page structures need rethinking. On the same platform, UK redesigns typically range from about £3,000 to £12,000 depending on page count and complexity.

• Website redesign versus rebuild

When do you need a rebuild?

A rebuild is justified when the platform itself blocks the fixes: an outdated or unsupported system, a page builder that makes the site slow and fragile, or a structure that cannot support what the business needs. Rebuilds typically cost £5,000–£20,000 or more.

• Slow website: fix it or rebuild it?

Is fixing design worth the money?

Compare the cost with the value of extra enquiries. Illustratively, if a site gets 2,000 visits a month at a 1.5% enquiry rate (30 enquiries) and fixes lift it to 2% (40), and one in four enquiries becomes a £1,500 job, the extra 10 enquiries are worth about £3,750 a month. A £2,000 fix would pay back within the first month in that example.

• What a low-converting website really costs

When is fixing design not worth it?

If the site gets very little traffic, the problem is the offer or the price rather than the design, or a rebuild is already planned soon, spend the money elsewhere first. Accessibility faults are the exception: they shut people out and carry legal risk, so fix them regardless.

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: an owner budgets for a full rebuild, but a review shows most of the problems sit in a handful of global styles and templates. Fixing those first costs a fraction of the rebuild and makes clear what, if anything, a rebuild still needs to solve.

• See client work
• Website Design & Development for UK businesses
• Website design review: score your own site in 30 minutes

Costing checklist

• Score your site to find the main problems.
• Separate global fixes from page-by-page work.
• Get quotes for fixes before quotes for a rebuild.
• Estimate the value of extra enquiries.
• Fix accessibility faults regardless.
• Check the platform can support the fixes.

Next step

List your site's top five design problems and ask a developer for a quote on each separately.