By Mehdi HassanShould you do a rebrand and website redesign at the same time?
You should do a rebrand and website redesign as one project with two stages, not as two separate projects and not as one big simultaneous push. The brand decisions come first, because the website is the main place the new brand will live. Then the site is designed from those decisions, and both launch together.
The reason is simple: your website is usually the first and most-visited expression of your brand. A rebrand that launches on an old site looks like a logo swap. A redesign that launches before the brand is settled gets redone a few months later. Either way you pay twice and confuse the people you're trying to impress. Keeping brand, site and product aligned is the core argument of our guide to brand consistency.
Brand first, website second, one launch day.
What goes wrong when you rebrand and redesign separately?
When you rebrand and redesign separately, you get a long in-between period where the brand and the site disagree, and you pay for translation work twice. Both orders cause trouble.
Approach | What happens | Cost of it |
|---|---|---|
Rebrand now, website later | New logo on an old layout for months; the old site's type and colors clash with the new identity | Patchwork updates, then a full redesign anyway |
Website now, rebrand later | New site built on an identity you're about to replace | Much of the design is redone within months |
Both at once, in parallel | Web designers guess at a brand that's still changing | Rework every time the brand shifts |
Brand, then website, one launch | The site is built from settled decisions | One translation, one launch |
The parallel approach deserves a special warning, because it sounds efficient. In practice, every change to the palette or type during brand exploration ripples through every page the web team has already designed. Sequencing doesn't add much time. It removes the churn.
When should you not rebrand, and just redesign the website?
You shouldn't rebrand when your positioning, audience and price point haven't changed and your identity still works on screens. In that case, a website redesign can modernize how the brand is applied without the cost and risk of a new identity.
- Redesign only when your message is right but the site is slow, dated, hard to update or doesn't convert. Our SaaS website redesign guide covers that path.
- Refresh the brand and redesign when the identity is roughly right but looks dated or fails on screens: weak contrast, an illegible logo at small sizes, a font with no web license.
- Rebrand and redesign when you've changed market, product or customer, for example moving from SMB to enterprise. See rebranding to move upmarket for that case.
- Rebrand only almost never makes sense for a startup, because the website is where most people will meet the new brand.
What's the right sequence for a rebrand and website redesign?
The right sequence for a rebrand and website redesign is words, identity, identity on real screens, website design, build, then a single launch. Each stage produces what the next one needs.
Positioning and messaging
Agree the one-line positioning, key messages and voice. This decides what the brand must express and what the homepage will say.
Identity
Logo or wordmark, palette, typefaces and core rules, chosen for screens first.
Identity on real screens
Test the brand on a homepage hero, a pricing section and a product view before approving it. This is where weak choices show up early.
Website design
Design every page from the approved brand and messaging, with tokens and components set up for the build.
Build and migration plan
Build the site, map old URLs to new ones and prepare redirects, so search visibility survives the change.
One launch
Ship the new brand and the new site on the same day, with the product, deck and email templates updated as close to it as possible.
Stage three is the one most rebrands skip, and it's the one that makes the website stage fast. If the identity has already been tested on website and product explorations, the web designer isn't guessing. That handover is the subject of our article on going from brand sprint to website.
What does a rebrand and website redesign cost with Designify?
With Designify, a rebrand and website redesign costs $11,000 in total for a site of up to 6 pages: a $3,000 brand & design sprint followed by an $8,000 website. Extra pages are $500 each. Both prices are fixed.
- Brand & design sprint: refresh or redesign plus 10 website or product explorations
- $3,000
- Website: up to 6 pages, custom design, Next.js build, CMS, animation
- $8,000
- Per extra website page
- +$500
The sprint is design only, delivered as Figma files. Its 10 explorations are applied to your website and product, which is what makes the website stage efficient: the hardest brand decisions have already been tested on real screens. Delivery timelines for the website are scoped on the intro call, because they depend on page count, content and how quickly decisions get made.
What if we need more than 6 pages, or a migration?
Pages beyond the first six are $500 each, so a 10-page site would be $8,000 plus $2,000. Migration work, such as importing blog content or moving off another platform, is scoped on the intro call, and we include redirects and SEO checks in any migration we take on. Either way, you get the full fixed price before you commit.
How do you protect SEO during a rebrand and redesign?
You protect SEO during a rebrand and redesign by keeping or redirecting every URL that earns traffic, keeping the old brand name findable during the transition, and checking indexing after launch. Rebrands that skip this can lose search visibility they took years to build.
Big Leap's case study of Workfront, previously AtTask, is a well-known example of a rebrand that wiped out organic visibility when the name and site changed. The lesson isn't to avoid rebrands. It's to treat the website as a migration, with a redirect map, updated titles and a short note on the site explaining the change. Our website redesign after a rebrand article covers the details.
- Export every URL with traffic or backlinks before you start.
- Map each one to its new URL, and redirect with permanent redirects.
- Mention the old name on the About page and in a launch post for a while.
- Submit the new sitemap and watch coverage in Google Search Console after launch.
What should launch day include?
Launch day should include the new website, an announcement explaining what changed and why, and updated product, docs, social profiles, deck and email templates. Customers should never land on a surface that still shows the old brand without explanation.
A dedicated launch page or post helps existing customers and press understand the change, and it gives you something to link from social and email. Our brand launch website checklist lists what that page should include, and the broader rebrand launch checklist covers every other surface.
