Canadian small business owners ask us this question more than any other: ‘our site looks dated, what would it cost to redo it?' The honest answer depends on whether you need a refresh, a rebuild, or a full strategy reset, three very different projects with three very different prices.
Here's how to tell which one your business actually needs, what each tier costs in Canada in 2026, and the most overlooked line item: protecting the SEO you've already built.
The three types of website redesign
| Type | What it is | Typical Canadian cost | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refresh | Same structure, new visual design, same platform | $1,000–$3,500 | 1–3 weeks |
| Rebuild | New design + new platform + same general content | $3,500–$12,000 | 4–10 weeks |
| Full redesign + strategy | New brand, new IA, new content, new platform | $10,000–$50,000+ | 8–20 weeks |
When a $1,500 refresh is enough
A refresh is the right answer when your website's structure, content, and integrations all still work, you just don't like how it looks. Maybe the typography feels dated, the colours are 2017, the buttons are too small for mobile, or the whole thing has a ‘web 2.0' vibe that no longer matches your brand.
We do refreshes for Canadian small businesses all the time at $1,000–$2,500. The same pages, the same URLs, the same booking and form integrations, just a clean new design system, modernized typography, real photography (yours or stock), and mobile-first responsive cleanup. Done in 1–3 weeks. SEO impact is essentially zero because URLs and structure don't change.
When a $5,000–$10,000 rebuild makes sense
A rebuild is the right call when the underlying platform is the problem. Common triggers: you're on Wix or Squarespace and want to leave, you're on a 2014 WordPress build with 40 plugins held together by hope, your site is slow on mobile and Lighthouse score is below 50, or your developer left and nobody can update the site without breaking it.
Rebuilds in Canada at this price typically include: migration to a modern platform (we usually recommend Shopify for ecom, Webflow or modern WordPress for content sites, custom React for marketing sites that need speed), new design system, content migration with light editing, redirect mapping to preserve SEO, GA4 + Search Console reconfiguration, and 1–2 months of post-launch tuning.
Time: 4–10 weeks depending on page count. SEO impact: temporarily negative (3–8 weeks of Google re-crawling) but net positive long-term as page speed, mobile UX, and structured data all improve.
When a $15,000+ full redesign is justified
Full redesigns earn their cost when the business has materially changed since the last website. Common triggers: you've added new service lines or product categories, you've moved upmarket and the brand needs to reflect higher prices, you've expanded to multiple locations, or your conversion rate has plateaued and you suspect the entire customer journey needs to be re-architected.
At this tier the project includes: discovery and brand strategy, customer interviews, sitemap and information architecture work, full custom design (not template-based), professional copywriting, original photography or illustration, accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA / AODA), bilingual versions if needed, comprehensive SEO migration, conversion rate optimization, and a real CMS so the team can publish without dev support. Most of our $15,000+ Canadian redesigns are with multi-location practices, regulated industries, or established ecommerce brands.
Protecting your SEO during a redesign, the most expensive thing you can ignore
We've seen Canadian businesses lose 60–80% of their organic traffic in the 30 days after a redesign because the agency forgot to do a redirect map. That's the most expensive line item in the entire project, except it isn't a line item at all, it's free if you do it right and catastrophic if you don't.
- Crawl the existing site with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb before you touch anything, capture every URL with traffic
- Build a 1:1 301 redirect map from old URLs to new URLs, every page, every blog post, every PDF
- Preserve the URL structure where you can, don't change /services/web-design to /our-services/web-design just because it ‘reads better'
- Keep on-page content depth equivalent or greater, pages that drop from 1,200 words to 200 words almost always lose ranking
- Submit the new sitemap.xml in Google Search Console the day you launch
- Monitor Search Console weekly for the first 60 days and fix any 404s or coverage drops
- Keep page titles and H1s aligned with the original keyword targeting (you can improve them, but don't drop the targeted query entirely)
Thinking about a redesign? We do free redesign audits, we'll tell you whether you need a refresh, rebuild, or full redesign before quoting.
Get a Free Homepage DesignCommon redesign cost mistakes Canadian businesses make
- Paying for a full redesign when a $2,000 refresh would have done the job
- Hiring an offshore agency for $2,500 and discovering 6 months later the SEO has collapsed
- Forgetting to budget for content migration, moving 80 blog posts is real work
- Letting the new agency build on a platform nobody on the team knows how to maintain
- Launching without GA4 or Search Console reconnected, losing months of data
- Expecting ranking lifts in week 2, the typical recovery + lift curve is 2–4 months
Most Canadian small business redesigns we quote land in the $2,500–$8,000 range. Below that, you're getting a refresh. Above that, you're paying for strategy and brand work that's only worth it once your business has the revenue to make a 1–2% conversion lift pay it back. Whatever tier you're in, protect your SEO during the migration, it's the cheapest expensive thing you can do.
Want a free audit of your current site to see if a redesign is worth it?
Jacob
Founder of Elevate Web Design. Building fast, conversion-focused websites for small businesses across Canada and the US since 2018.