Also called “website redesign”, one quote may only include visual adjustments to the homepage, while another may include redoing product templates, organizing multi-lingual content, form testing, and migrating old URLs. It’s easy to put projects of different scopes together by directly comparing total prices. For companies with existing websites, the website revision quotation must first answer three questions: which assets of the current website should be retained, what specific changes will be made this time, and how to judge whether the changes have been completed after delivery.

What is the difference in cost logic between website revision and website development from scratch?

When developing a website from scratch, you need to determine the platform, page structure and basic content; when revising it, you need to first figure out what can be used from the old site. Original articles, product information, customer inquiry portals, website addresses, and backend operating procedures are all assets that need to be inventoried. The clearer the foundation of the existing site, the easier it is for the service provider to estimate the workload; the more complex the historical plug-ins, customized code and multi-language versions are, the greater the scope of testing and migration may be.

If you’re still comparing the costs of starting a project from scratch, start by looking at brand website Breakdown of new build budget . This article only discusses how to clarify the scope of revision work for existing sites, and does not treat hosting or platform subscription fees as fixed expenses for all revision projects.

Before getting a quote, do an inventory of your existing website

First list the page types such as home page, column page, product or service product detail page, blog, contact page, etc., and then count how many actual pages there are for each type. If ten pages share two sets of templates, the way design and development work is different from ten pages each having a special layout. Write the total number of pages and the number of independent templates separately so that both parties can know what the “pages” in the quotation actually mean.

Then record the entrance and symptoms of the current site: which pages bring search visits, which pages receive advertising traffic, where users enter the customer inquiry form, and whether it is easy to read on the mobile phone. When there is no analysis tool data, you can save the actual page and operation screenshots first, and mark “suspected low conversion” as a pending verification instead of taking it as a conclusion that has been measured.

Finally, check the backend and assets: CMS and themes, main plug-ins, forms and email reception methods, language versions, product information, image licenses, account permissions and backup methods. Backend functions that cannot be seen by service providers can be explained with screen recordings or function lists; sensitive accounts do not need to be included in public inquiry emails. Organizing this information into a one-page status table can reduce the possibility of discovering hidden functions and adding additional scopes later.

What tasks are usually broken down into when website redesign quotations are made?

Research, structure and content

This part includes current site review, sorting out target users and customer inquiry paths, column structure adjustments, page lists, and content removal. Ask if the quote includes copywriting rewriting, product information compilation, translation and material procurement. Just because a designer provides a new layout does not mean that old articles, dozens of products, or multilingual content will automatically be moved in.

Vision, Interaction and Development

Visual work can be changing colors, fonts and partial components, or redesigning the homepage and various templates. Development involves responsive layout, background editable modules, forms, search filters, third-party tools and necessary performance processing. For foreign trade B2B websites, whether the customer inquiry entrance is easy to see and whether the product information is sufficient to help judge, is often more worthy of verification than adding complex animation effects; you can refer to Inspection ideas for B2B official website homepage and customer inquiry design 。

Migration, testing and handover

The quote should also state the scope of content import, old site backup, test environment, equipment and browser checks, go-live operations, back-end training, and post-go-live problem fixes. It is best to list ongoing maintenance and one-time revisions separately, with clear revision rounds, response times and warranty boundaries. It can be seen whether such a low quotation omits key links.

How to compare three common revision scopes in the same table?

The following is a range model for inquiry purposes and is not a market uniform package. The actual project may include several types of work at the same time, and the final site inventory and written delivery list should still prevail.

Ask each service provider to fill in the “included, not included, billed separately” according to the same list, and then compare the deliverables and revision rounds. Quotation figures alone cannot indicate which solution is more suitable; what really affects the decision is which business problems will be solved and which risks will be left to the enterprise itself.

When revising, how should SEO migration and maintenance be included in the scope?

If you only adjust the visuals and content, and the old URL remains unchanged, there is no need to forcefully change the URL for “doing SEO”. First check whether the page title, body text, navigation and internal links are still accurate, and confirm that pages with frequent search visits have not been accidentally deleted. If you really want to change the URL, the workload will be more than checking the old and new URL lists, correspondences, redirects, internal links and sitemaps.

Google Search Central’s website migration guide It is recommended to prepare old and new URL mappings, set up redirects, and update internal links when the URL changes; also observe the crawling and indexing status after going online. Listing these tasks as clear deliverables is easier to accept than saying “including SEO optimization”. Redirects and sitemap submissions also do not guarantee that rankings or customer inquiries will remain unchanged, so unverifiable promises of growth should not be included in the offer.

Maintenance also requires boundaries. Please ask the service provider to explain who is responsible for plug-in and system updates, backup and recovery, form receipt testing, content release training, and post-launch problem handling. If these are monthly services, they should be listed separately from the one-time design and development fees; otherwise, there will easily be disagreements about “thinking they are included” after settlement.

What information can be sent directly to the service provider for price inquiry?

First, provide the current site URL, target market and language, and describe the things you want to improve this time, such as customer inquiry paths, mobile reading, backend editing efficiency, or product information display. Second, give the total number of pages and template types, key pages that need to be retained, and functions that cannot be lost at present. Third, list the new requirements: form fields, filtering, downloading, multi-language, CRM docking, content migration, etc., and sort them by “must have, hope to have, can be done later”.

Fourth, state the budget range and planned go-live date, but don’t let them replace the scope of work. Fifth, the quotation is required to respond to the delivery documents, design modification rounds, test environment, go-live responsibilities, training, warranty and follow-up maintenance. Finally, ask the other party to indicate the prerequisites: who will provide the materials, whether the old site can be exported, who will bear the plug-in license, and how the new demand will be priced.

The acceptance list can start from real user tasks: whether the contact entrance can be found on the mobile phone, whether the form can be delivered correctly, whether the specifications of the product page can be clearly seen, and whether the back-end staff can independently update the content. Then add navigation, key page loading, broken links and initial accessibility checks. Basic checks for W3C WAI Can be used for preliminary checks such as color comparison, keyboard operation, alternative text, etc.; passing these preliminary checks does not mean full compliance with WCAG standards.

Conclusion: Unify the scope first, and then compare website revision quotations

There are no general figures for website revision quotations that are divorced from the current site situation. Only by clearly describing the current situation, number of pages and templates, functional requirements, content responsibilities, URL changes and acceptance methods can we determine where the quotation differences come from. Prioritize the links that have the greatest impact on reading and customer inquiries, and then decide whether to optimize locally, revamp the template level, or reconstruct the entire site. If you have a list of live links and requirements ready, you can contact AIRSANG to discuss the scope of the revision; the evaluation should be based on actual pages and delivery boundaries, rather than promising a certain ranking or conversion result.