Small business website redesign, done without breaking what works
A small business website redesign has two jobs. The obvious one is a site that looks current, reads clearly and works on a phone. The less obvious one is not throwing away what the old site already earned: the pages Google knows about, the links other sites point at, and the bookmarks your regular customers use.
Plenty of redesigns get the first job right and the second one wrong. The new site launches, the old addresses quietly turn into error pages, and calls from search slow down for months. We plan the second job before the first one starts.
Everything else about the work matches a new site here. You see a free demo of the redesign first. Maurice Johnson writes the pages by hand. You own the finished site, the domain and the logins.
Signs your site needs a rebuild, not a touch-up
Some sites need new words and a few fixes. Others are past the point where patching helps. These are the signs that usually mean a full rebuild is the cheaper path in the long run:
- It is painful on a phone. You pinch and scroll sideways to read it, or the menu covers half the screen.
- You cannot change it. Every edit needs a vendor, a plugin that no longer updates, or a login nobody remembers.
- It describes a business you used to run. Old services, towns you stopped covering, a phone number that forwards twice.
- It is one page holding everything. Every service and every town on a single scroll, so nothing gets its own page in search.
- It loads slowly. Heavy sliders, huge photos and scripts from tools you stopped paying for.
- Leads disappear. The form sends to a dead inbox, or there is no form at all.
- It is locked inside a platform. A subscription builder or vendor system you cannot take with you if you leave.
If only one or two of these are true and the site is otherwise sound, say so when you ask for the demo. Sometimes the honest recommendation is to fix the words and keep the rest.
How redesign traffic gets protected
Google's documentation on site moves is direct about this: map each old URL to its new equivalent and use permanent redirects. Here is how that works in practice.
- List every old addressEvery page the current site has, plus any address Google still shows for it. Nothing is deleted before it is on the list.
- Match each one to its new homeThe old "services" page points at the new services page, an old article at the guide that replaced it. Google warns against sending everything to the home page, which it can treat as an error.
- Set up permanent 301 redirectsEach old address answers with a permanent redirect straight to its match, with no chains of hops in between. Google's site move guide says permanent redirects like these do not cause a loss in PageRank.
- Keep page addresses where they already workIf an old page's address is fine, the new page keeps it, so there is nothing to redirect at all.
- Submit the new sitemap and testThe sitemap goes to Google and the old addresses are checked one by one after launch. Google advises keeping redirects in place for at least a year; we leave ours in place.
Own your domain before anything else changes
The most painful redesign stories start with a domain registered in a former vendor's name. The business paid for it for years and still cannot point it anywhere without permission.
The fix is usually less dramatic than it sounds. Your domain lives at a registrar. ICANN, the body that sets the rules for domain names, states that moving a domain between registrars is the registrant's right, and the current registrar must provide the authorization code for the transfer, either through your account or within five calendar days of a request. A registrar may charge a transfer fee, but it cannot refuse the transfer because you did not pay that fee.
The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends buying domains and web services in the company's name, not an individual's, and that is how we set it up. Your domain stays registered to you. We need access to point it at the new site, and that is all.
Before a redesign, find these four things: who the domain is registered to, where it is registered, who has the hosting login, and which email address receives your contact form. If you do not know, that is fine. Finding out is part of the work.
What a website redesign costs
Ask five web companies and you will get five numbers, because a redesign can mean anything from new colors to a new site with three times the pages. Published estimates give a sense of the market:
| Who does the work | Typical published range | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Designer or agency, custom build of a small business site | $1,000 to $10,000 | Siimple cost guide |
| Small business site under 20 pages | $2,000 to $8,000 | G2 |
| Dominion Web Design Pro, redesign or new site | $497, $997 or $1,997 one time | This site |
Those outside figures are for building or rebuilding a site, which is what most redesigns turn into once the old pages are opened up. Agency guides that include strategy, custom features and large sites run much higher. What pushes any quote up is the same everywhere: more pages, custom features, online stores, and whether someone writes the words or leaves that to you.
Here, the price of a redesign is the price of the package. The redirect map, moving the good content across and pointing the domain are part of the job, not extras. For a deeper look at the whole market, read how much a small business website costs.
Starter
$497 one-time
For a business that needs a clean, working website and nothing complicated.
- 5-page website: home, services, about, contact and service area
- Every page written for your business by hand, never filled into a template
- Works on phones, tablets and desktop
- Contact form that emails you every lead
- Page titles, descriptions and sitemap submitted to Google
- Google Maps and your hours on the page
- Links to your Facebook and Instagram
- Live in 7 to 14 days
- You own it outright
Pro Most Popular
$997 one-time
For a business that wants the website to bring in calls from more than one town.
- Everything in Starter, plus:
- 10-page website with a photo gallery
- Lead capture on every page, not only the contact page
- Local SEO: schema markup and Google Business Profile setup
- 10 city pages, each town researched, then written from scratch
- Your Google reviews displayed on the site
- AI chat widget that answers visitors 24/7 and takes their name and number: free for 14 days, then $297/mo
Agency
$1,997 one-time
For a business that wants to cover its whole service area, town by town.
- Everything in Pro, plus:
- Keyword research across your whole service area first
- A hand-written page for every town-and-service combination the research says is worth having, usually 30 to 60 pages
- Pages delivered in waves, the first ones live inside two weeks
- Custom design for your brand
- AI phone agent setup. The agent itself is free for 7 days, then $297/mo for up to 750 minutes, cancel any time (not part of the one-time price)
Hosting, maintenance and updates are included while you keep the AI agent. Without it, they are $49/mo.
We do not sell page counts. Every page on every plan is researched and written by hand for your business and your town. That is slower than generating a few hundred pages from a template, and it is the reason these pages get read. If the research says your service area needs thirty pages, you get thirty good ones rather than a hundred thin ones.
Keeping the good parts of the old site
A redesign should not mean starting from a blank page. Most older small business sites hold something worth keeping: an accurate history of the business, a clear explanation of a service, photos of real work, the answer to a question customers ask every week.
Maurice reads the old site page by page before writing the new one. Accurate facts and good sentences move across. Outdated claims, filler and anything that cannot be backed up are dropped. Each page is then rewritten for the search it should answer, so the new site is clearer and more specific than the old one, not just newer.
If you have a page that brings in calls today, tell us. That page keeps its address, and its words change only where they need to.
Choosing a package for a redesign
Match the package to the size the new site should be, not the size of the old one. A five-page site that was never finished fits Starter. A site that should cover several towns, or that already has a handful of service pages worth keeping, usually fits Pro. A business that wants every service in every town it covers to have its own page belongs on Agency, which starts with keyword research across the service area.
Whichever you choose, the redesign begins the same way: a free demo of the new look, built from your business name and trade, which you can put side by side with the old site. The Before and After tool compares the two on Google PageSpeed scores, and the free Site Check reports on the current site's titles, headings and search basics.
Curious what your site would look like rebuilt? Ask for the free demo and compare it with what you have now.