10 Things to Check Before Redesigning Your Website
A redesign is an opportunity to reflect a business change, not simply to refresh an old appearance. Before choosing a visual direction, establish whose decision the website needs to support, what is worth protecting, and who will be able to improve the site after it is live.
You do not need every answer before the first conversation
These ten checks give stakeholders a shared starting point. Where an answer is unknown, record it as something to investigate rather than guessing.
- The business change behind the work
- The people the site needs to help
- The job of each important page
- Information and evidence worth retaining
- URLs already in use
- Enquiry and measurement routes
- Available copy, photography and examples
- Required functions and integrations
- Review and publishing responsibility
- How the site will be improved after launch
1–3. What is changing, for whom, and toward what action?
“The website looks old” is a valid signal, but it is not a useful end point. A new offer, recruitment need, sales explanation, or international audience gives the work a clearer purpose. Then identify what a first-time visitor needs to understand on each page and the action they should be able to take, whether that is an enquiry, application, download or another conversation.
4–6. Find what must not disappear by accident
The existing site may contain sales explanations, pages reached from search, or URLs referenced in documents and emails. Decide what should stay, be rewritten, combined or retired, and record the old-to-new relationship when a URL changes. Forms, recipients, measurement and connected services also need a before-and-after check. No process can guarantee rankings or enquiries, but it can prevent a useful route from being changed without understanding its value.
7–8. Set a practical scope from real material and conditions
Sales material, company information, recurring questions, photography, examples and the people who can confirm specialist facts are a sound starting point for content. They do not all need to be complete. At the same time, share conditions that affect the site: bookings, payments, member functions, current systems and internal approvals. This makes it easier to judge whether a focused improvement is enough or the structure itself needs to change.
9–10. Do not treat launch as the finish line
Agree who will check news, services and recruitment information, and what will be reviewed after publishing. The first few months are useful for looking at the pages people reach, the questions behind enquiries, search entry points and places the team finds difficult to update. A site that can be improved responsibly is often more valuable than one that tries to solve every idea on day one.
RENEW WITH CLARITY
Could the current website give you a clearer starting point for the next stage?
Even if the purpose, material and practical conditions are only partly known, we can help organise the next useful priorities.
Review and source
Reviewed 2 August 2026. For planning a move involving changed URLs, see Google Search Central’s guide to site moves with URL changes.
