Some clients sometimes respond to the quoted design cost with the phrase, "What if we just do a redesign?" expecting to hear a lower number.
According to surveys, about one in three designers charges less for website redesign work than for designing from scratch.
Let’s break it down!
Technical Assignment
Agree, it’s great when a designer immediately meets expectations. Through my years of practice, I’ve come to believe that a technical assignment (TA) should consist of two parts:
Brief
(How to do it?)
Prototype/Scheme
(What to do?)
Brief
The purpose of the brief is to understand what the client likes: raised or flat buttons, sharp or rounded corners, solid fill or gradient, etc.
Prototype or Scheme
It doesn’t matter what form it takes: whether it’s a wireframe, text in Word, or even a surprise in Excel. The main thing is that you can immediately see the scope of work, the number of blocks, and what kind of content will be in them. That’s enough to state the cost and start giving advice to the client!
What About Redesign?
In such a TA, the brief is still present, meaning the wishes regarding the appearance are included. It might seem that’s all, since there’s no need to create a prototype—there's already an existing website that just needs to be updated!
Yes! And that existing website will serve as the prototype!
We take content from it, and we will use it as a basis to suggest changes, additions, movements, deletions, or replacements.
Redesign = Design from Scratch
The process will be the same!
We work in the same program, click the same buttons, assemble the same blocks, and dress them in colors. And it takes exactly the same amount of time! So, since everything is the same, why should redesign cost less?!
The price for design and redesign is the same because there’s simply no difference in processes, time, and effort expended!