Website redesign in Des Moines
Rebuilding a site you already have, without losing the rankings you already earned. From $499, and you finish holding the domain, the hosting and every file.
Since 2011 · You own everything · Rankings preserved · Veteran-owned
Signs your Des Moines business website needs a redesign
A redesign is rarely about taste. It is usually one of these, and they are all measurable.
Text that needs pinching, buttons that need aiming, a menu that covers the screen. If the site predates about 2018 it was probably designed on a laptop and checked on a laptop, and the majority of your traffic has not worked that way for years.
A price is wrong, an hour has changed, someone has left. If updating that means emailing a developer and waiting, the site stops reflecting the business — and eventually stops being worth visiting.
Oversized images, a stack of plugins nobody audited, an SSL certificate that lapsed. Modern browsers warn people away from that, and search engines measure it. Both of them are telling visitors something you did not choose to say.
Sites drift. Services get added and never written up, prices change and never appear, and the page ends up describing a business you stopped running two years ago.
What gets rebuilt, rewritten and carried across
A redesign is not a new site with your logo on it. Most of the work is deciding what to keep.
- A full inventory of your existing pages before anything is touched
- Every page rewritten — not reflowed into a new theme with the old words
- A custom design, signed off by you before a single page is built
- Content migration: the pages worth keeping come across, the rest are retired deliberately
- 301 redirects mapped page by page, so old links and old rankings land somewhere sensible
- Mobile and tablet layouts checked on real screen sizes
- Technical SEO rebuilt in: titles, headings, structured data, internal links, sitemap
- An accessibility pass against WCAG 2.1 AA
- Domain, SSL and hosting moved into your name and under your billing
What happens to your existing site, content and URLs
The question every redesign page skips, answered before you commit.
Nothing is deleted before you see it. The first step is an inventory of what you already have — every page, every URL, and which of them still bring people in. That list is how we decide what gets rewritten, what gets merged and what gets retired, and you see it before any of it happens.
Pages worth keeping come across and get rewritten rather than pasted. Pages that were only ever filler get retired on purpose, which is different from vanishing. Every retired URL gets a 301 redirect to the closest surviving page, so an old link in an email, a directory listing or someone’s bookmark still arrives somewhere useful instead of a dead end.
Your old site stays up and untouched until the new one is ready to replace it. There is no window where the business has no website.
If you cannot get into your own website, or your developer has stopped answering
More common than anyone admits, and not a situation you caused.
It usually looks like this: the domain was registered on someone else’s account, the hosting is billed to a company you have never dealt with directly, the theme license is in a developer’s name, and the person who set it all up has stopped replying to email. You are still paying for it and you cannot change a word.
Most of that is recoverable. A domain can be transferred on proof that the business owns it, whatever name sits in the registrar record. A site that is publicly reachable can be rebuilt from what is published, even with no admin access at all. What genuinely cannot be recovered is a premium license bought on somebody else’s account — which is exactly why we buy yours on yours.
Tell us the domain and what you can still log into. We will tell you what can be recovered and what has to be rebuilt, in writing, before you pay anything. If the answer is that you are better off pushing your existing developer for the logins, we will say that too.
Keeping your Google rankings through a website redesign
The single biggest fear about redesigning, and a fair one.
Rankings are lost in a redesign for boring, preventable reasons: URLs change with no redirects behind them, pages that were ranking get quietly dropped, page titles and headings get replaced with prettier ones that no longer match what people search for, or the new build is slower than the old one.
So the order of work matters. We record what currently ranks and which pages bring traffic before anything changes. The redirect map is built alongside the new site rather than after it. Titles and headings that are earning their place stay, even when a rewrite would read better. After launch we watch what moved and fix what dropped.
What we will not do is promise the numbers only go up. A redesign is a large change and search engines take time to digest it — a dip in the first few weeks is normal and usually recovers. Anyone guaranteeing otherwise is guessing.
Who owns the redesigned site, the domain and the files
You do — and this is the part that stops it happening to you twice.
The domain is registered in your name. The hosting account is opened under your billing at a host you could have chosen yourself. Any premium plugin or theme license is bought on your account rather than ours, because a license on a developer’s account does not transfer — and a site you cannot update is a site you will be redesigning again sooner than you planned.
We do not resell hosting at a markup, so we earn nothing from you staying. If you leave, there is no migration to negotiate and no file we hold back. You remove our login and everything keeps running.
What a website redesign does not include
Said plainly, so nothing arrives later as a surprise.
- Recovering a premium license bought on someone else's account — that one is genuinely gone
- Legal action or arbitration against a previous developer
- Ongoing SEO campaigns — technical SEO is rebuilt in, retainers are separate
- Paid advertising, ad accounts or media buying of any kind
- Logo and brand identity design from scratch
- Rewriting content beyond the page count of your tier
- Online stores, booking systems, member logins and client portals — quoted separately
- Hosting and domain fees themselves, which you pay directly at cost
Every site is built by Elisabeth Samuels and the Salterra team — a company building websites since 2011. Not a reseller, not an offshore queue. The same person who scopes your project writes the pages and hands over the logins.
Tell us the domain and what you can still log into. We will tell you what can be recovered and what has to be rebuilt — before you pay anything.
What a website redesign costs in Des Moines
The same tiers as a new build, because the work is the same work.
Up to 15 pages starts at $499. Sixteen to 50 pages starts at $999. Fifty-one or more starts at $1,499. A redesign is priced on the pages the NEW site will have, not the pages the old one had — retiring forty pages of filler makes a project smaller, not larger.
Recovering a domain or rebuilding from a site you cannot log into does not carry a surcharge. It is the situation most of our redesign clients are in, and charging extra for it would be charging people for someone else’s behavior.
What moves the number
- Page count on the NEW site — the honest driver, because every page is rewritten and structured individually rather than reflowed
- How much of the existing content survives — pages worth keeping are faster than pages written from nothing
- Functionality — a store, a booking system, a member login or an integration is quoted separately
- How many structural changes you want after the design is approved — small ones stay included, structural ones are quoted and move the date
Frequently asked questions about website redesign in Des Moines
How much does a website redesign cost in Des Moines?
From $499 for up to 15 pages, $999 for 16–50, and $1,499 for 51 or more. It is priced on the pages the new site will have rather than the pages the old one had, and the things that move the figure are listed above.
Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?
It can, if it is done without redirects or if pages that were ranking get dropped. That is why we record what currently ranks before anything changes, map a 301 redirect for every URL that moves, and keep titles and headings that are earning their place. Expect a dip in the first few weeks while the change is digested — that is normal and usually recovers. Anyone who guarantees no dip is guessing.
Can you move my existing content to the new site?
Yes, and we start by listing everything you have so you can decide what is worth keeping. Pages that survive are rewritten rather than pasted across; pages that were filler get retired deliberately, with a redirect so old links still land somewhere sensible.
What if I do not have access to my current website?
That is one of the most common reasons people call us, and it is usually recoverable. If the site is publicly reachable it can be rebuilt from what is published, with no admin access at all. Tell us the domain and what you can still log into and we will tell you where you stand before you pay anything.
What if my developer will not hand over the files?
You may not need them. A domain can be transferred on proof that the business owns it, whatever name is on the registrar record, and a live site can be rebuilt from what is published. The one thing that genuinely cannot be recovered is a premium license bought on their account — which is why we buy yours on yours.
How long does a website redesign take?
Four to six weeks is typical. The two things that usually move it are how quickly content and photographs arrive, and how many structural changes are requested after the design is approved. Recovering a domain can add time at the start, but that waiting is registrar waiting, not build time.
Who owns the site after the redesign?
You do. The domain is in your name, the hosting is under your billing, and premium licenses are bought on your account. That is the part that stops you being locked out a second time.
Tell us what you sell. Get your number.
Send us what your business does and roughly how many pages you think you need. You will get the number and a timeline in writing.
Takes about a minute. No call, no obligation.
We reply to everything within one business day.