Before deciding what your new website should look like, determine why you’re redesigning it in the first place.

Maybe your current website:

• Looks outdated or no longer reflects your brand
• Is difficult to navigate
• Doesn’t perform well on mobile devices
• Loads too slowly
• Is difficult for your team to update
• Isn’t generating enough leads or conversions
• No longer represents your services or business structure
• Has grown disorganized after years of adding pages and content
• Your redesign should solve specific business and user problems—not simply give your website a new appearance.

Start by identifying your top three to five goals for the project. You may want to increase contact form submissions, simplify navigation, improve organic search visibility, better showcase your services, or create a website that can scale as your company grows.

Having clear goals gives your design and development team something measurable to build around.

Your website isn’t really designed for your company. It’s designed for the people your company wants to reach.

Before beginning a redesign, make sure you understand who those people are.

Consider:

• Who are your primary customers or clients
• What problems are they trying to solve?
• What information do they need before making a decision?
• What questions do they regularly ask your sales team?
• What matters most to them when choosing a company like yours?
• What action do you want them to take when they visit your website?

If your company serves several audiences, identify each one and consider whether they need different paths through the website.

A prospective customer, existing client, job applicant, and industry partner may all arrive with completely different goals. Good website architecture helps each visitor quickly find what matters to them.

Your existing website contains valuable information about what should—and shouldn’t—carry over into the redesign.

Start by reviewing your current:

• Pages
• Blog posts
• Forms
• Downloads and resources
• Calls to action
• Landing pages
• Integrations
• SEO metadata

Then decide what should be kept, updated, combined, redirected, or removed.

At the same time, review your analytics to understand how visitors are currently using the website.

Look at metrics such as:

• Most-visited pages
• Organic search traffic
• Conversion rates
• Form submissions
• Traffic sources
• Device usage
• Engagement
• Exit pages
• Landing page performance

This helps you avoid redesigning based entirely on assumptions. If a certain page consistently performs well, you probably don’t want to bury it. If an important page receives traffic but few conversions, it may need stronger messaging, better calls to action, or a more intuitive layout.

One of the most important parts of planning a redesign is deciding how information will be organized.

Create a preliminary sitemap showing the pages your new website will need.

A typical business website may include:

• Home
• About
• Services
• Individual Service Pages
• Industries or Markets Served
• Portfolio or Case Studies
• Resources or Blog
• Careers
• Contact

Your exact structure should reflect your customers’ needs and your business goals.

Try to avoid forcing visitors through complicated navigation just because that’s how your company is organized internally. Your website structure should make sense from the visitor’s perspective.

Someone landing on your website should be able to quickly understand:

• What do you do?
• Who do you do it for?
• What should I do next?

If those answers are difficult to find, your website structure may need simplifying.

A website redesign should strengthen your brand, not unintentionally reinvent it.

Before design begins, gather your existing brand materials, including:

• Logo files
• Brand colors
• Typography
• Icon styles
• Graphic elements
• Brand standards
• Messaging guidelines
• Voice and tone documentation

You should also review the photography and visual assets available for the new site.

You may need:

• Team photos
• Office or location photography
• Product photography
• Service imagery
• Project photos
• Videos
• Testimonials
• Partner or client logos
• Portfolio examples

If professional photography is needed, schedule it early. Waiting until the site is nearly complete can delay the project or force designers to work around temporary imagery.

Content is one of the most common causes of website project delays.

Before starting, determine whether you’re:

• Keeping most existing copy
• Updating existing copy
• Completely rewriting the website
• Hiring someone to write the content

For each major page, consider:

• Who is this page for?
• What do they need to know?
• What action should they take next?

That last question is especially important.

Every page should give visitors a logical next step, such as:

• Request a Quote
• Schedule a Consultation
• Contact Our Team
• Book a Tour
• Download a Guide
• View Our Services
• Call Today
• Apply Now

Determine your primary conversion goal before the redesign begins. You can still use secondary calls to action, but having one main goal creates clearer visitor pathways.

Don’t wait until development is halfway finished to mention that your website needs a CRM integration or custom search tool.

Create a list of all required functionality beforehand.

This might include:

• Contact forms
• CRM integrations
• Email marketing integrations
• Online scheduling
• Payment processing
• Ecommerce
• Property or location directories
• Search functionality
• Interactive maps
• Event calendars
• Job listings
• Member portals
• Third-party software
• Live chat
• Analytics and conversion tracking

Separate your list into must-haves and nice-to-haves.

Doing so makes it much easier to establish an accurate scope, budget, and timeline.

A redesign can create significant SEO opportunities—but it can also cause problems if existing visibility isn’t considered.

Before making changes, document:

• Existing page URLs
• High-performing organic pages
• Target keywords
• Page titles and meta descriptions
• Existing backlinks
• Current rankings
• Internal linking structure

If URLs change, proper redirects should be implemented so visitors and search engines are sent to the correct new pages.

You’ll also want to gather access to important technical accounts, including:

• Website hosting
• Domain registrar
• DNS settings
• Current CMS
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google Tag Manager
• CRM
• Email marketing platform
• Form or SMTP services
• Third-party integrations

You don’t necessarily need to send every password immediately, but knowing who owns each account and where it is managed can prevent major headaches at launch.

Too many decision-makers can quickly turn a website project into an endless revision cycle.

Before starting, determine:

• Who is the primary project contact?
• Who will provide content and assets?
• Who needs to review designs?
• Who has final approval?
• Which stakeholders need to be consulted?

Establishing an approval process upfront helps prevent conflicting feedback and keeps the project moving.

It can also be helpful to gather a few websites you like and explain why.

Maybe you appreciate:

• The navigation
• The amount of white space
• The photography
• The typography
• The way services are organized
• The animations
• The overall level of simplicity
• The calls to action

The goal isn’t to copy another website. It’s to give your design team a clearer sense of the styles and experiences that resonate with you.

If your website needs to launch before a specific event, announcement, campaign, opening, or organizational change, communicate that deadline from the beginning.

Remember that a website redesign involves more than design and development.

Projects often include:

Strategy → Sitemap → Content → Design → Development → Review → Revisions → Testing → Launch

Internal feedback, content approvals, photography, and technical setup can all affect the schedule.

Building realistic time into each phase creates a much smoother process.