The Complete Redesign Checklist

A website redesign is one of the highest-impact investments a business can make — and one of the easiest to get wrong. Most redesign projects fail not because of bad design or poor development, but because of inadequate planning. Pages get lost. Rankings drop. Content gaps appear. Launch dates slip by months. This checklist exists to prevent all of that. Whether you are managing the project internally or working with an agency like ours, use it as your blueprint from first conversation to post-launch monitoring.

Before you start

The work that happens before any design or development begins determines whether the project succeeds or stalls. Do not skip this phase.

• Define your goals. What specifically should the new website achieve that the current one does not? More enquiries, higher conversion rates, better search visibility, a refreshed brand presence? Pin down measurable objectives. "We want a better website" is not a goal. "We want to increase contact form submissions by 30% within six months" is.
• Audit your current site. Run a performance audit to establish baselines for page speed, SEO scores, accessibility compliance, and Core Web Vitals. Document what is working and what is not. You cannot improve what you have not measured.
• Analyse your competitors. Look at the websites of your top five competitors. Note what they do well, where they fall short, and where opportunities exist for you to differentiate. Pay attention to their content depth, page speed, mobile experience, and the clarity of their calls to action.
• Build a content inventory. List every page on your current site, its URL, its primary purpose, its traffic, and its ranking keywords. This becomes your migration map. It tells you what to keep, what to merge, what to rewrite, and what to remove entirely.

Strategy and planning

With your audit complete and your goals defined, the strategic framework takes shape.

• Define your target audience. Create clear profiles of the people who will use your site. What are they looking for? What questions do they have? What would make them choose you over a competitor? Every design and content decision should serve these people.
• Map user journeys. Plot the paths your most important visitors take from landing page to conversion. Where do they enter the site? What do they need to see before they trust you enough to act? Where are the current drop-off points? A redesign is your opportunity to eliminate friction at every step.
• Create a new sitemap. Based on your content inventory and user journeys, structure the pages your new site actually needs. Most businesses have too many pages, not too few. Fewer, better pages outperform sprawling sites with thin content on every topic imaginable.
• Develop wireframes. Before any visual design begins, wireframe the key pages — homepage, service pages, contact page, and any high-traffic landing pages. Wireframes establish information hierarchy and conversion pathways without the distraction of colour and typography.

Design considerations

Design is where the strategic work becomes visual. Get these elements right and everything else flows from them.

• Brand alignment. Your website should feel like a natural extension of your brand — not a departure from it. If your branding needs updating, tackle that before or alongside the redesign. A new website on top of an outdated brand identity creates confusion rather than clarity.
• Mobile-first approach. Over 60% of web traffic in the UK now comes from mobile devices. Design for the smallest screen first, then scale up. This is not just a best practice — Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning your mobile site is what determines your search rankings.
• Accessibility. Build to WCAG 2.1 AA standards as a minimum. Proper heading hierarchy, sufficient colour contrast, keyboard navigation, descriptive alt text, and clear focus states are not optional extras — they are legal requirements under the Equality Act and they improve the experience for every user.
• Typography and spacing. Readable type at appropriate sizes, generous line heights, and consistent spacing create a sense of quality that users feel even if they cannot articulate it. Rushed designs cram content together. Confident designs give it room to breathe.

Development essentials

The build phase is where planning either pays off or falls apart. These are the non-negotiables.

• Performance budgets. Set hard limits before development begins. Target a Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, a Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, and a total page weight under 1MB. Page speed directly affects conversion rates — every 100ms of delay costs you revenue.
• SEO migration plan. Document every URL on your current site and map it to its equivalent on the new site. Any URL that changes needs a 301 redirect. Any page that is being removed needs its link equity redirected somewhere relevant. Skipping this step is the single most common cause of traffic loss after a redesign.
• 301 redirects. Set up redirects before launch, not after. Test every single one. A broken redirect chain is invisible to you but very visible to Google and to any visitor who clicks an old link from search results, social media, or external sites.
• Cross-browser and device testing. Test on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge at a minimum. Test on actual mobile devices, not just browser emulators. Test on slow connections. The site needs to work flawlessly for everyone, not just people with fast MacBooks on fibre broadband.

Content migration

Content is the most frequently underestimated element of any redesign. It takes more time than most businesses expect, and getting it wrong undermines every other investment you have made.

• Decide what to keep. Not everything on your current site deserves a place on the new one. Use your analytics to identify which pages drive traffic, generate leads, or rank for valuable keywords. These are your keepers — preserve them carefully.
• Identify what to rewrite. Pages that have good rankings but weak content should be rewritten and improved, not replaced. Upgrade the copy, add depth, and optimise for current search intent. The URL stays the same; the content gets better.
• Plan new content. Your content inventory will reveal gaps — topics your competitors cover that you do not, questions your audience asks that your site does not answer. Fill these gaps as part of the redesign rather than treating them as a post-launch afterthought.
• Lock down your URL structure. Define your URL patterns before development begins and do not change them afterward. Clean, descriptive URLs improve both user experience and search engine visibility. Use lowercase, hyphens between words, and keep them as short as possible while remaining descriptive.

Launch and post-launch

Launch day is not the finish line — it is the starting point for the next phase of your site's life. Here is what needs to happen around and after launch.

• Pre-launch testing checklist. Test every form submission. Test every link. Test the site on mobile, tablet, and desktop. Test page speed on real devices. Check that all images have alt text. Verify that the robots.txt file and XML sitemap are correct. Run a final Lighthouse audit and confirm scores meet your targets.
• Analytics and tracking setup. Verify that Google Analytics (or your preferred analytics platform), Google Search Console, and any conversion tracking pixels are installed and firing correctly before launch. Losing even a week of data creates a gap in your baseline measurements.
• 301 redirects. Final verification. Test every redirect using a crawling tool or manual spot-checks. Confirm that old URLs resolve to the correct new pages. Check for redirect chains (one redirect pointing to another redirect) and fix them — each hop degrades page speed and dilutes link equity.
• Post-launch monitoring. Monitor search rankings, organic traffic, and crawl errors daily for the first two weeks, then weekly for the following month. Some fluctuation after a redesign is normal. Significant drops in specific pages indicate a redirect issue or content loss that needs immediate attention.

If you want expert guidance through this entire process, get in touch. We have managed dozens of redesigns and migrations for London businesses, and we know where the pitfalls are before you hit them.