Most founders decide on a website redesign the way they decide to clean the garage. Something embarrassing happens, usually in front of a prospective client, and suddenly it’s urgent.
That’s a fine reason to start and a terrible reason to skip the planning, because a rushed launch can erase years of search rankings in one weekend. This website redesign checklist follows the website redesign process we use with clients, in four phases: before the build, during it, launch day, and the first 30 days after. If you searched for a redesign website checklist because a launch date is already set, start at the top anyway.
When does a website need a redesign?
We look for specific warning signs before recommending one:
- The website no longer reflects the business you run today, because you’ve added services or changed who you sell to.
- Your sales team emails prospects a PDF because they don’t trust the site to explain the offer.
- Traffic holds steady while the conversion rate keeps declining.
- Nobody on staff can update a page without calling the developer.
If three or more sound familiar, a redesign is probably overdue, and our post on what founders miss in a brand audit covers the positioning questions to answer first.
Website redesign checklist: Before you touch the design
Set business goals and define the target audience
Write down what the new site has to accomplish in measurable terms, such as 20 booked calls a month from organic search. Then describe your target audience in a sentence or two, including the job titles that sign contracts and the questions they ask on a first call.
Assign roles to team members
Redesigns stall when five people have opinions and nobody has the final say, so before kickoff, name the team members responsible for each piece: one decision-maker who approves the design and copy, one person who gathers the content by an agreed deadline, a developer who owns the build and the redirects, and someone who reviews analytics after launch.
Run a content and URL inventory
Export every URL on the current site into a spreadsheet, then record each page’s monthly traffic and ranking keywords and mark whether it stays, merges, gets rewritten, or goes. The pages that generate inquiries, such as service pages, pricing, and any case study your sales team sends around, should keep their URLs whenever possible.
Record benchmarks in Google Analytics and Google Search Console
You can’t prove the redesign improved anything without a baseline, so save a snapshot of the previous 12 months before anyone changes the code:
- Record key events, such as form submissions, and the conversion rate for each page in Google Analytics.
- Export clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position for your top 50 queries from Google Search Console.
- Note the current page speed scores for your homepage and your two biggest landing pages, along with a list of the outside websites that link to you.
During the development phase
Plan landing pages and calls to action first
Every service page and landing page that brings in money needs one primary action, such as booking a consultation or requesting a quote, and the button should say exactly that, near the top and again after the testimonials.
Build for page speed and Core Web Vitals
Slow load times cost you visitors, and Google’s Core Web Vitals measure that part of the user experience on real pages. The targets on web.dev are a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads on mobile and desktop separately. Start by compressing oversized images and removing plugins you don’t use.
Check mobile layouts and alt text
Prospective clients research you on their phones between meetings, so review every template on an actual phone, and check the forms and how far a visitor scrolls before the first call to action appears. Then write alt text for every meaningful image, and describe each photo for screen readers and search engines the way you would describe it to a client over the phone.
Map every 301 redirect
Every URL that changes needs a permanent redirect to its closest new equivalent. Google’s guide to site moves with URL changes recommends server-side permanent redirects, says 301 redirects don’t cause a loss in PageRank, and warns against redirect chains. Add a “new URL” column to your inventory spreadsheet and leave nothing blank, because dumping everything on the homepage frustrates visitors.
Test with a real user
Before launch, give a real user from your target audience the one task the site exists for, such as “find out whether we serve your area and book a call,” and stay silent while they try. Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group found that a test with five users uncovers about 85% of usability problems.
On launch day
Launch during your slowest traffic period, as Google’s guide suggests, so fewer visitors hit early problems, then work through this list:
- Activate the redirects and test your top 20 old URLs from Search Console.
- Remove any “noindex” tag or password left over from staging, and confirm that robots.txt doesn’t block search engines.
- Submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Complete every form, confirm the notifications arrive, and check that Google Analytics is recording visits and key events.
The leftover staging “noindex” tag is the classic launch-day mistake, since one ticked checkbox in WordPress can hide an entire site from Google.
The first 30 days after launch
Google’s guide says rankings can fluctuate while it recrawls the site, and that most pages on a small to medium-sized website can take a few weeks to move, so run these checks every week:
- Check the Pages report in Search Console for new “not found” errors, and fix each one with a redirect.
- Compare search clicks and each landing page’s conversion rate with your benchmarks.
- Review Core Web Vitals on real traffic, since the live site often behaves differently from staging.
- Contact the directories and partner websites still linking to old URLs, and request updated links.
Keep the redirects long after that first month, because Google recommends keeping them as long as possible, generally at least one year.
We rebuilt the website for OrangeBag, a laundry logistics company, as part of our SEO and AEO work, and the business now brings in 24+ commercial leads a month. If the new site is part of a bigger push for new business, our 90-Day Revenue Sprint studies how you win work before building anything.
Your next step
Print this redesign checklist, assign an owner to each item, and start with the benchmarks, since you can’t recreate them later. For a team that handles the build and the redirects in one project, see our web design and development services.