Your website is the foundation of your digital presence. It is where potential customers form their first impression of your brand, evaluate your offerings, and decide whether to do business with you. If your website is outdated, slow, or difficult to navigate, it is costing you customers and revenue every single day.
A website redesign is a significant investment, and getting it right requires careful planning. This checklist covers everything you need to consider before, during, and after your redesign.
Before You Start: Strategy and Planning
Define Your Goals
Every redesign should start with clear objectives. Common goals include:
- Increasing organic search traffic through improved SEO
- Improving conversion rates (more leads, sales, or signups)
- Updating brand identity to reflect business evolution
- Improving mobile experience and page speed
- Adding new functionality (e-commerce, booking, client portal)
- Consolidating multiple sites into one cohesive platform
Write down your top three to five goals and make sure every decision throughout the redesign process supports them.
Audit Your Current Site
Before building something new, understand what is and is not working on your current site:
- Analytics review — Which pages get the most traffic? Where do visitors drop off? What are your current conversion rates?
- SEO audit — What keywords are you ranking for? Which pages have the most backlinks? Are there technical issues holding you back?
- User feedback — What do customers say about your website? Are there common complaints or requests?
- Competitive analysis — How does your site compare to your top competitors? What are they doing better?
Preserve Your SEO
This is the single most important technical consideration in a redesign. Businesses lose significant organic traffic during redesigns because they fail to properly handle URL changes, redirects, and content migration.
- Document all current URLs and their rankings
- Plan 301 redirects for every URL that will change
- Preserve or improve title tags, meta descriptions, and header structure
- Maintain or improve internal linking structure
- Keep high-performing content intact or improve it
- Submit updated sitemap to Google Search Console after launch
Design and User Experience
Mobile-First Design
Over 60 percent of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. Your redesigned website must look and function flawlessly on smartphones and tablets. This is not optional. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily evaluates the mobile version of your site for ranking purposes.
Clear Navigation
Visitors should be able to find what they are looking for within two to three clicks. Your navigation should be intuitive, with clear labels and a logical hierarchy. Include a prominent search function for larger sites.
Fast Load Times
Page speed directly impacts both user experience and search rankings. Target load times under three seconds. Optimize images, minimize code, leverage browser caching, and use a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure fast performance globally.
Consistent Branding
Your website should be a seamless extension of your brand. Colors, typography, imagery, and tone of voice should be consistent across every page and align with your offline brand presence.
Accessibility
Design your site to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. This means proper contrast ratios, alt text on images, keyboard navigation support, and compliance with WCAG guidelines. Beyond being the right thing to do, accessibility can also help with SEO and protect you from legal liability.
Content Strategy
Write for Your Audience
Every page on your website should serve a clear purpose and address the needs of your target audience. Avoid jargon, get to the point quickly, and make it easy for visitors to understand what you offer and why they should choose you.
Strong Calls to Action
Every page should have a clear next step for the visitor. Whether it is scheduling a consultation, requesting a quote, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase, your calls to action should be prominent, compelling, and easy to find.
SEO-Optimized Content
Create content around the keywords your target audience is searching for. Each key service or product should have its own dedicated page optimized for relevant search terms. Blog content should target informational queries that bring potential customers to your site.
Technical Requirements
SSL Certificate
Your site must use HTTPS. This is a basic security requirement and a Google ranking factor. Any site without SSL will display a “Not Secure” warning in browsers, which destroys trust.
Analytics and Tracking
Set up Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console before launch. Configure conversion tracking for all important actions (form submissions, phone calls, purchases). Without proper tracking, you cannot measure the success of your redesign.
Schema Markup
Implement structured data markup to help search engines understand your content and display rich results. LocalBusiness, Organization, Service, FAQ, and Review schemas are particularly valuable for service-based businesses.
XML Sitemap and Robots.txt
Generate a clean XML sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console. Ensure your robots.txt file is not blocking important pages from being crawled.
Post-Launch Checklist
- Test all forms, buttons, and interactive elements
- Verify 301 redirects are working correctly
- Check for broken links and 404 errors
- Test on multiple devices and browsers
- Verify Google Analytics is tracking properly
- Submit new sitemap to Google Search Console
- Monitor rankings and traffic closely for the first 30 days
- Fix any issues immediately to minimize SEO impact
When to Hire a Professional
A website redesign involves strategy, design, development, content, and SEO. While DIY website builders have improved significantly, businesses that depend on their website for leads and revenue typically benefit from working with a professional team that can handle all of these elements cohesively.
Brandastic designs and develops high-performing websites for businesses across Southern California. Our approach integrates design, content, SEO, and conversion optimization from the start, so your new website drives measurable business results from day one.
Planning a website redesign? Schedule a free consultation and let us help you build a website that grows your business.
Resources
- Nielsen Norman Group — UX research and design best practices
- Web.dev by Google — web performance and best practices
Planning a website redesign? See our Orange County web design services or explore our work in Los Angeles.
