Website Redesign Checklist

A website redesign is one of those projects that always takes longer and costs more than people expect. Not because it’s inherently difficult, but because most teams start without a clear picture of what’s involved.

This is the checklist I use when planning a redesign, whether it’s for a client or when reviewing someone else’s plan. It’s not exhaustive for every possible scenario, but it covers the things that get missed most often.

Before you start

Define why you’re redesigning. "It looks dated" is a reason, but it’s not a strategy. What isn’t working? Are users dropping off? Is the conversion rate poor? Has your business changed and the site hasn’t kept up? The reason for the redesign should shape every decision that follows.

Audit what you have. Before building something new, understand what exists. Run a content audit: what pages do you have, what’s performing, what’s redundant? Check your analytics. Identify your top-performing pages, your highest-traffic entry points, and your most common user journeys. A redesign that accidentally kills your best-performing content is a disaster.

Set measurable goals. "A better website" is not a goal. "Increase enquiry form submissions by 30% within six months" is. "Reduce bounce rate on the services page from 70% to 45%" is. Goals give you something to measure against after launch.

Document your SEO baseline. Record your current rankings, organic traffic, indexed pages, and backlink profile before you change anything. Redesigns regularly destroy SEO performance because nobody planned the URL migration properly.

Define your audience. Who is this site for? If the answer is "everyone", you need to be more specific. Different audiences need different messaging, different content, and sometimes different user journeys.

Planning and strategy

Create a sitemap. Map out every page the new site needs. Compare it to what exists. Identify pages that are being removed, merged, or created from scratch. This is also where you plan your URL structure.

Plan your URL redirects. If any URL is changing, you need a 301 redirect map. Every old URL should point to the most relevant new URL. This is non-negotiable for SEO. Missing redirects mean lost rankings and broken links across the web.

Define your content needs. What content needs to be written, rewritten, or migrated? Who’s responsible for it? What’s the deadline? Content is almost always the bottleneck in a redesign. Plan for it early.

Choose your technology. CMS, hosting, framework, plugins. Make these decisions based on your actual needs, not on what’s trendy. WordPress still powers a massive chunk of the web for good reason. But if your needs are simpler, a static site or a headless CMS might be a better fit.

Set a realistic timeline. A typical redesign for a 20 to 30 page site takes 8 to 14 weeks from kickoff to launch. Larger sites take longer. Factor in time for content creation, feedback rounds, testing, and the inevitable delays.

Design and development

Start with wireframes. Get the layout and structure right before adding visual design. This saves time and reduces the risk of major changes late in the process.

Design mobile-first. More than half of web traffic is mobile. If your site doesn’t work well on a phone, it doesn’t work well.

Build a component system. Don’t design every page from scratch. Build a set of reusable components (headings, cards, CTAs, forms, content blocks) that can be combined in different ways. This makes the site easier to build, easier to maintain, and more consistent.

Optimise for performance. Set a performance budget. Compress images. Minimise scripts. Lazy load below-the-fold content. Test Core Web Vitals throughout development, not just at the end.

Implement structured data. Schema markup for your business type, articles, reviews, FAQs, and breadcrumbs. This helps search engines understand your content and can improve how your pages appear in search results.

Test across browsers and devices. Chrome on a MacBook is not the only way people will see your site. Test on Safari, Firefox, Edge. Test on iOS and Android. Test on older devices. Test with screen readers.

Content migration

Migrate content carefully. Don’t just copy and paste. Review every piece of content during migration. Update anything that’s outdated. Improve anything that’s weak. Remove anything that’s redundant.

Preserve your metadata. Page titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph tags, alt text. These need to be migrated or rewritten for every page. Losing your metadata during a redesign is losing months or years of SEO work.

Check your internal links. After migration, every internal link should point to a valid page. Broken internal links are bad for users and bad for SEO.

Pre-launch

Run a full technical audit. Check for broken links, missing alt text, duplicate titles, missing meta descriptions, orphaned pages, redirect chains, and missing schema markup.

Test all forms and integrations. Contact forms, newsletter signups, CRM integrations, analytics tracking, conversion pixels. Test every one of them. Then test them again.

Set up analytics and tracking. Make sure Google Analytics 4 (or your preferred analytics platform) is properly configured. Set up conversion tracking for your key goals. Verify Search Console is connected.

Get stakeholder sign-off. Before you launch, make sure everyone who needs to approve the site has seen it and agreed. Last-minute changes on launch day are stressful and avoidable.

Post-launch

Monitor everything for the first two weeks. Watch your analytics. Check Search Console for crawl errors. Monitor your rankings. Look for 404 errors. Keep an eye on page load times.

Verify all redirects are working. Spot check your redirect map. Use a crawler to check for broken links and redirect chains.

Submit your updated sitemap. Tell Search Console about your new sitemap so Google can crawl and index your new pages.

Gather user feedback. Ask real users what they think. Not your team, not your friends. People who match your target audience. Their feedback will reveal things you missed.

Plan for ongoing optimisation. The redesign is a starting point, not a destination. Set a cadence for reviewing performance data and making improvements. The best websites are the ones that keep getting better.

The one thing people always underestimate

Content. Every time. The design gets done. The development gets done. And then the project stalls for weeks because nobody wrote the copy for the new About page, or the case studies haven’t been photographed, or the team bios are still sitting in someone’s drafts folder.

If you take one thing from this checklist: start your content early. Start it before the design phase if you can. It’s the single biggest factor in whether a redesign launches on time.

Need help planning your redesign? Talk to us.