What should a website redesign checklist cover?
It should cover the whole job, not just the look. A redesign is five stages: audit, plan, content, build and launch, then a short period of watching what happens.
The look is the part everyone enjoys talking about. The audit and the launch are where the risk sits, because that's where rankings, links and tracking get lost if nobody owns them.
What should you record before a redesign?
Record everything that's working, so you know what the new site must keep. Half an hour in Search Console and your analytics is usually enough.
- A full list of current URLs, from your sitemap or a crawl.
- The pages that bring in search clicks, and the searches they appear for, from Search Console.
- The pages other sites link to, from the Search Console links report.
- The pages that produce enquiries, calls or sales, from your analytics.
- How fast the main pages load on a phone today, so you can compare after launch.
- The questions customers ask most, from your inbox and phone calls. They're the best brief for new copy.
What does the website redesign checklist look like, step by step?
Work through these in order. Each one depends on the one before.
- Audit the current site: URLs, top pages, linked pages, converting pages and speed.
- Write down the goal in one sentence, such as more quote requests from commercial buyers.
- Name one decision-maker who can sign off copy and design without waiting for a meeting.
- List the pages the new site needs, and mark every old page as keep, merge or retire.
- Map each old URL to its new home. Anything retired points to the closest relevant page.
- Write the copy for the key pages before design starts, answering the questions customers actually ask.
- Gather brand assets, photos and logins (domain, hosting, analytics) in one shared folder.
- Design and build on a preview link, and review it on your own phone, not just a desktop.
- Set up page titles, meta descriptions, schema and a sitemap for every page.
- Set up tracking for forms, calls and sales, and test each one.
- Launch with the redirects live, then run the launch checks on the new site.
- Watch Search Console, rankings and enquiries for the next few weeks, and fix anything that drops.
How do you redesign a website without losing Google rankings?
Keep the content that ranks, redirect every old URL that changes to its closest new page with a permanent redirect, and check Search Console after launch. Google's own guidance on site moves follows the same pattern.
The common mistake is cutting a page because it looks dull, when it quietly brings in a steady stream of searches. If a page earns traffic, rewrite it and keep it. Our guide to website migration SEO covers URL mapping and redirects in more detail.
What usually goes wrong in a website redesign?
The same few things, and they're all avoidable with a list like the one above.
- Pages that ranked are deleted or moved with no redirect.
- The new site launches still blocked from search engines, a setting left on from the preview.
- Contact forms or tracking break, so enquiries vanish without anyone noticing.
- Copy is left until the end and holds up the whole launch.
- Too many people sign off, so feedback arrives days apart and contradicts itself.
- The design is approved on a big screen and only checked on a phone after launch.
Do you need a full redesign or just a refresh?
If the site is fast, easy to edit and brings in enquiries, a refresh of the copy and design may be all you need. If it's slow, hard to change or built on a platform nobody wants to touch, a rebuild usually costs less in the long run than patching it.
A good test: list the five changes you want most. If the current site can make them in a day, refresh it. If each one turns into a project, rebuild.