Website redesign timeline: how long a rebuild takes and how to keep your rankings

A landing page redesign takes 2-3 weeks. A company site takes 4-6 weeks. An e-shop takes 8 weeks or more. That covers discovery through launch. Content you still need to write, extra integrations and extra languages add time on top.

This article breaks down where each week goes, and how to keep your search rankings while the site changes underneath them.

Website rebuild timeline: week by week

Every rebuild moves through the same phases. The site type only decides how many weeks each phase takes.

The old site stays live until the new one is tested and ready, so there is no gap where visitors land on a broken page.

What stretches a redesign timeline?

Three things push any of these ranges out:

• Content that does not exist yet. Writing copy from scratch, translating it into several languages or waiting on client sign-off adds real weeks. Content ready on day one is the single biggest time saver.
• Integrations. A booking system, a payment gateway or a CRM connection needs testing beyond the design and build phases.
• Extra languages. Chronicles studio works in Czech, English, Russian and Ukrainian. Each additional language needs its own copy, its own review and its own set of pages.

SEO website redesign: how to keep your rankings during the move

Rankings drop after a redesign for one reason more than any other: pages move and nothing tells search engines where they went. The fix is a mechanical checklist, and it works every time.

1. Map every URL before you touch anything. List every page that gets organic traffic, and where it moves to on the new site.
2. Set one-to-one redirects. Each old URL points to its closest new equivalent. No mass redirects to the homepage.
3. Keep the titles and headings that rank. Use the redesign to fix weak copy and leave pages that already work in search alone.
4. Measure before and after. Record rankings, organic traffic and Core Web Vitals a week before launch, then check them again 30 days after.

Skip these steps and an SEO website redesign quietly costs you the traffic you already earned, even if the new site looks better. If you want a read on where your current site stands before you start, our free site check covers speed, structure and the pages worth protecting.

When does a rebuild beat a refresh?

A refresh changes what visitors see. A rebuild changes what the browser has to do to show it, and that is where most of the SEO and conversion gain actually sits. Google’s Core Web Vitals set the bar: Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds. A site built on a heavy template can hit all three targets and still load slowly, because the browser is assembling the page before it can show it.

Fabrika Sumy, a textile factory running since 1987, rebuilt its site as a static Astro build and cut load time from 4.2 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Nothing about the content changed. The gain came from removing the layers between the click and the page. A redesign on the same underlying platform would not have moved that number.

From 4.2s to 0.8s is what Fabrika Sumy’s rebuild achieved with no content changes, just fewer layers between the click and the page.

How much does a website redesign cost?

Scope drives website redesign cost more than design taste does. A one-page landing costs less than a catalog with a hundred products because it has less to build, test and migrate.

€800 to €4,900 covers the redesign itself, from a one-page landing to a full e-shop, with SEO audits from €400.

The number on the quote is the final price, nothing is added on the invoice. Payment splits 40/30/30: at the start, at design approval, and at launch. Every site ships with a Lighthouse performance score of 95 or above. If it does not hit that on launch day, the fix is free.

What do website redesign services include?

Chronicles studio covers the whole move, from planning to the 30 days after launch:

• Discovery and a full URL map before anything is rebuilt
• Design and build on a static-first stack (Astro), so pages load without waiting on a server to assemble them
• One-to-one redirects and search console setup at launch
• 30 days of free fixes after launch
• A privacy notice and the legal details a business site needs to show (company name, registration number, address) where the market requires it

See what a rebuild looks like start to finish on the websites page.

How often should you redesign your website?

People ask how often should you redesign your website almost as often as they ask what it costs, and there is no fixed calendar for it. Three signals matter more than age:

• Speed fails Core Web Vitals. If LCP, CLS or INP miss Google’s thresholds on your real pages, that costs you rankings and visitors alike.
• The site cannot carry new content without breaking. Adding a page, a language or a product category takes disproportionate effort.
• Traffic or conversion has flattened or dropped while your market kept growing.

A site with none of these problems does not need a rebuild just because it is a few years old. A site with two or more of them is already losing ground.

Frequently asked questions

Will my site go down during the redesign?

No. The current site stays live and indexed while the new one is built and tested. A realistic website rebuild timeline runs the two sites in parallel and switches only once the new one passes checks, so there is no window where visitors or search engines see a broken page.

Do I lose my Google rankings when I redesign?

Not if the migration is done with a URL map and one-to-one redirects, and the titles that already rank are kept. Rankings can dip for a few days after launch while Google re-crawls the site. A drop that lasts past 30 days usually points to a missed redirect.

Can I redesign only part of my site?

Yes. A refresh of specific pages is faster and cheaper than a full rebuild, but it will not fix a slow underlying platform. If the current site is slow everywhere, a partial refresh carries that problem into the new pages too.

What do I need to prepare before we start?

Final or near-final copy, your logo and brand assets, and access to your domain and analytics. Content ready on day one keeps a project inside its planned timeline.

Next step

If you want a timeline and a fixed quote for your own site, start with the website redesign services page and send the URL of your current site.