Edmonton Web Design & Development
Most people who ask me for a rebuild don’t need one.
A rebuild is the most expensive thing I sell, and it’s the wrong answer more often than it’s the right one. Usually the site doesn’t need replacing — it needs putting back in order: structure, findability, speed, and a clear path from visitor to action. Discovery decides which, before anyone signs anything.
Optimization from $4,500
Builds $8,000–$30,000
Discovery credited back
You own everything
Every engagement includes
- 4P Clarity Framework discovery
- Information architecture
- A design system your team can use
- Standard WordPress you fully own
- Recorded team walkthrough
- The honest recommendation, first
Including when the recommendation is “don’t.”
The actual decision
Two very different invoices.
The gap between these is roughly four times the money and three times the calendar. Which is why the decision deserves evidence rather than a hunch — and why I’d rather lose a build than sell you one you didn’t need.
Discovery costs $1,500 and is credited against whatever follows. If it concludes optimization, you’ve found that out for the price of the discovery rather than the price of a build.
the cheap answer is usually the right one
Optimization
- Investment$4,500+
- Timeline4–8 weeks
- Keeps your platformyes
- Content migration risknone
- Fixes structure & pathsyes
- Right answer roughly7 times in 10
$4.5kmost organizations, most of the time
Full rebuild
- Investment$8,000–$30,000
- Timeline12–20 weeks
- Keeps your platformno
- Content migration riskreal
- Fixes structure & pathsyes
- Right answer roughly3 times in 10
$18kwhen the platform blocks the work
The five-question test
Does your site need replacing, or repairing?
These are the five questions discovery actually answers. A yes to any of them points at a rebuild — but only one of the five is a rebuild on its own. Run it yourself before you brief anyone.
01 Can your team add a new page without calling someone?
Repair — this is a training and system problem If the answer is no, that’s usually a missing design system and undocumented templates, not a broken platform. Building a component library on your existing site and recording a walkthrough solves it in weeks. A rebuild that doesn’t explicitly fix this reproduces it on day one — plenty do.
02 Does your content model match what you actually do?
Repair, usually — unless it’s structural If you run programs, events and members but the site only knows about “pages” and “posts”, editors end up duplicating everything by hand. Often that’s fixable in place by adding proper content types. It becomes a rebuild case when the existing model actively fights the correction — a page builder with content welded into layouts, for instance.
03 Is the navigation describing your organization, or its history?
Repair — and the cheapest high-impact work there is Menus that grew by accretion are an information architecture problem, and IA is content work: decide what the site is for, cut back to it, redirect the rest. Days of thinking, not months of building. This one produces the largest measurable improvement per dollar of anything on this list.
04 Can a developer safely change the site without fear?
This one is a genuine rebuild case Abandoned themes, plugins that haven’t updated in years, custom code nobody documented, a staging environment that doesn’t exist. When every change carries risk, optimization becomes more expensive than replacement because each fix has to be re-tested from scratch. This is the one question that justifies a full rebuild on its own.
05 Is the real complaint “it looks dated”?
Neither, yet — get the evidence first Sometimes true and worth acting on. But “dated” is frequently what we say when we mean “I can’t tell whether it’s working.” Look at the analytics first: if the pages that matter are converting, a redesign is a preference purchase and should be budgeted as one. If they’re not converting, the problem is structure and the visuals are a symptom.
Scoring, honestly: noes across 01–03 mean optimization — you’d be paying rebuild prices for repair work. A yes on 04 means rebuild, almost regardless of the others, because everything else gets more expensive while it’s true. A yes on 05 alone means gather evidence before spending anything.
Mostly noes
Keep your site. Take this list to whoever maintains it and fix the specific things — you don’t need an agency to tell you that, and you certainly don’t need a rebuild.
How discovery works
The 4P Clarity Framework.
Four questions · answered with evidence, not taste
Persona
01 · Who’s visiting
- Stakeholder interviews4–8
- Analytics review12 months
- Search demand dataincluded
- Output2–4 personas
Built from your actual traffic and the people who talk to your audience daily — not a workshop where we all agree on who we’d like to be visiting.
Problem
02 · What they need
- Task analysisper persona
- Drop-off mappingfrom analytics
- Content gap auditfull site
- Outputprioritised list
Where people currently give up. This is usually the section that changes the brief, because the failure is rarely where everyone assumed it was.
Promise
03 · What you offer
- Positioning reviewvs 3 peers
- Message hierarchydefined
- Proof inventoryaudited
- Outputmessaging map
What you can credibly claim, and what proof exists to back it. Organizations routinely hold better evidence than their website uses.
Product
04 · The path between
- Information architecturefull
- Conversion pathsmapped
- Template inventorydefined
- Outputbuild roadmap
The sitemap, the templates, and the route from arrival to action. This is the document that says optimize or rebuild — and what it will cost.
The three-in-ten case
When a rebuild is the right answer.
Essex Lease · equipment & financial solutions
Essex Lease sells equipment and financial solutions — a considered purchase, where the website has to do real explaining before anyone picks up the phone. This one came out of discovery as a rebuild rather than a repair. The work covered a streamlined user journey, a content structure that could actually describe what they offer, and CRM integration so enquiries stopped being re-keyed by hand. Organic click-through went up 164% in year one.
+164%
Organic click-through lift in year one, from Google Search Console
One number, because it’s the one we can source. This is what the other three in ten look like — the seven get a cheaper invoice and the same outcome.
Pricing
Three ways in. Start at the top.
All CAD · discovery credited against what follows
Discovery
$1,500once
The honest starting point. Ends with a recommendation, which is sometimes “don’t hire me.”
- Full 4P Clarity Framework
- Stakeholder interviews and analytics review
- Content audit and information architecture
- Prioritised roadmap with costs
- Credited back against any build
Optimization
$4,500+
Keep the site. Fix what’s failing. The right answer most of the time.
- Information architecture rebuilt
- Content structure and templates
- Conversion paths and forms
- Performance and Core Web Vitals
- Design system for your team
Website build
$8,000+
When the platform itself is blocking the work. A few of these a year.
- Everything in Discovery and Optimization
- Full WordPress build, standard and yours
- Component-based design system
- Content migration and redirects
- Team training, recorded
Website review
Cheapest possible look at whether any of this applies to you. A recorded walkthrough of what’s working and what isn’t — several clients have taken it and fixed things themselves.
$349one-time
Design system only
For teams whose site is fundamentally fine but who can’t build a new page without help. Component library plus documentation on your existing platform.
$2,800+
Ecommerce & membership
WooCommerce, member portals, gated content, event registration and payment flows. Scoped in discovery because the range is genuinely wide.
Quotedafter discovery
Straight answers
The questions people open with.
Including the one about why a build here costs three times what the template shops quote.
How do you decide between optimization and a rebuild?
Discovery decides it — not the sales conversation. If the platform is maintainable, the templates are workable and the content is largely right, optimization gets most of the outcome for a quarter of the cost. A rebuild is warranted when the platform blocks the work: unmaintainable code, a content model that can’t express what you do, or an IA no amount of editing rescues.
How much does a website cost in Edmonton?
Optimization from $4,500, most builds $8,000–$30,000, discovery $1,500 and credited against whatever follows. You’ll see local agencies quote builds from $5,000 — that’s typically a template with your logo applied, which is a real product for a real budget, just a different one. The pricing page compares them properly.
How long does it take?
Optimization is 4 to 8 weeks. A full build is 12 to 20 weeks including discovery. Anyone quoting a custom site in two weeks is filling in a template — and again, that’s fine, it just isn’t this.
Will my team be able to update it ourselves?
Yes — a design requirement, not an afterthought. Every build ships with a design system your team composes new pages from, standard WordPress you fully own, and a recorded walkthrough. If a site can only be updated by the agency that built it, the agency sold you a dependency.
Do you work with our existing brand?
Usually yes. Most organizations here have a brand they’re committed to and a website that isn’t expressing it. That’s a web problem, not a branding problem — and we’d rather solve the one you actually have than sell you a rebrand you didn’t ask for.
What is the 4P Clarity Framework?
The discovery method every engagement starts with: Persona (who’s actually visiting), Problem (what they need solved), Promise (what you offer), Product (the path connecting the two). It exists so design decisions trace back to evidence instead of taste — including the decision not to build.
Next step
Let’s find out which
one you need.
Fifteen minutes, no deck. Tell me what’s not working and I’ll give you my honest read on whether it’s a repair or a replacement — and if it’s a repair you could do in-house, I’ll say that too.
- Replies within one business day
- You’ll talk to James, not a rep
- Discovery credited against any build