The question arrives when the site starts embarrassing you: is it worth fixing, or should we start again? The answer depends on what is actually broken, and most owners misdiagnose it. Here is a way to decide in an afternoon.
What a refresh keeps
Your domain and its history, your page structure, the content that still describes the business accurately. What changes is presentation, mobile behaviour, speed, photos and outdated sections. A refresh is right when visitors can find what they need but the experience is dated or clumsy.
What a rebuild changes
Everything from the information architecture up. A rebuild is right when the structure itself misleads people — services that no longer exist, pages nobody can find — or when you need features the current platform cannot support: bookings, a shop, integrations with your software.
Five questions
- Can a stranger tell what you sell within a minute? If yes, refresh. If no, rebuild.
- Is the domain and most of the content still accurate? If yes, refresh.
- Do you need new functionality? Bookings, e-commerce, portals push toward rebuild.
- Is the platform maintainable? If nobody can safely update it, or it is on an abandoned system, rebuild.
- How much has the business changed? New services, new areas, new positioning: the more that has changed, the more a rebuild makes sense.
What each costs
A refresh is usually priced like a smaller build: presentation and content updates within the existing structure. A rebuild is priced as a new site — at YINO from $499 for a one-page site to $999 for up to 8 pages, with custom work from $2,500. The rebuild is not always more expensive; a heavily patched old site can cost more to fix than to replace.
Protect what you have either way
Whichever route you take, keep the domain, redirect every old URL to its new equivalent, and carry over the content that earns search traffic. Losing rankings during a redesign is almost always a redirect problem, not a design one.
Start with website refresh to see how a refresh is scoped, or send your URL and we will tell you honestly which route we would take.
