Redesign Roulette: Why Every New Site Relaunch Feels Like Starting Over

The budget gets approved. You bring in the agency. The stakeholders gather, the brand book gets dusted off, and the Figma files start flying.

This is it. Your big redesign. New layouts, new content, new vibes. You’ve convinced leadership it will fix everything. And for a few brief, glorious weeks after launch, it does.

Then reality creeps in.

Someone tries to update the homepage banner and accidentally breaks the layout. The blog team wants to A/B test titles, but the CMS doesn’t support variations. A product manager asks to embed a new demo video, but it’s not possible without digging into template code. So what do you do?

Nothing. You leave it. You wait for the next redesign.

Sound Familiar?

You’re not alone. Most websites get redesigned not because they’re outdated, but because they become impossible to manage after launch.

The site gets stale because content updates are too hard. Design consistency falls apart because there’s no system for reusable elements. Performance drops because no one trusts the CMS enough to iterate. What starts as a fresh start becomes another expensive, short-lived facelift.

What Is the Typical Cost for a Website Redesign?

That depends on your setup. For mid-sized organizations working with an agency, $30,000 to $100,000 is a common range. Need custom integrations? Add more. Want to move platforms, overhaul UX, and rebrand? That number can easily double. And that’s just the first launch. It doesn't include maintenance, updates, or the inevitable rework when the CMS proves inflexible.

Your CMS Should Be a Platform, Not a Prison

If your only option for evolving your digital experience is to start from scratch, your CMS is failing you.

You should be able to:

• Update designs without rewriting templates from scratch
• Reuse elements across the site with centralized control (hello, Stacks)
• Create landing pages without cloning old ones and hoping they hold together
• Test and tweak content without requiring developer help
• Launch quickly, learn fast, and grow continuously

That isn’t a wishlist. It’s the bare minimum.

Redesigns Should Be Rare and Strategic

Most people approach redesigns like building a new house instead of flipping the house. Tear it down, rebuild, and hope it appraises higher. A better approach is to treat your website like a product, not a project. Conduct a website Audit what’s working. Map user flows. Update content and visuals incrementally. And most importantly, use a CMS that empowers non-developers to make meaningful changes post-launch. Redesign by evolution, not demolition.

There’s nothing wrong with a redesign. But if you’re doing one every 18 to 36 months just to fix your CMS problems, that’s not a strategy. That’s survival mode.

How Often Should a Website Be Redesigned?

If your CMS can’t support iteration, probably every 2 to 3 years. At that point, rebuilding becomes easier than maintaining. But with a system that supports continuous improvement, you can stretch that cycle to 5 years or more. You don’t need a redesign because your site never becomes stale. It evolves.

What’s the Difference Between a Website Redesign and a Revamp?

A redesign changes the structure, layout, visuals, content and can include a CMS migration. It’s a full overhaul. A revamp is more surface-level, like swapping out text, refreshing colors, or updating imagery across the website. Redesigns are expensive and risky. Revamps are quicker and safer. But neither will help if your CMS makes every change painful. The real fix isn’t the visual refresh. It’s the platform beneath it.

Build a System That Grows With You

With the right platform, you can evolve your design system over time. Launch new campaigns without breaking core pages. Add new content types without migrating to a new stack. You keep what’s working, fix what isn’t, and grow as you go.

A modern CMS like Concrete doesn’t just make redesigns easier. It makes them unnecessary more often than not.