What happens during a website redesign project

A typical website redesign process has five stages: reviewing the current site, planning pages and content, design with rounds of feedback, building and testing, and launch followed by careful checks in the weeks after. Each stage needs specific input from you, such as decisions, content and approvals. Knowing what happens when, and what is expected of you, is the best way to keep a redesign on time and on budget.

A redesign changes how a website looks and often how it is organised. It may also move the site to a new platform. Done well, it makes the site clearer for visitors and easier for your team to manage. Done carelessly, it can lose content and search traffic that took years to build. If you are planning a redesign, our website service page explains how we work.

The website redesign process starts with reviewing the current site

Before designing anything new, understand what the current site does well and badly. This review prevents you from losing what works while fixing what does not.

1. Look at what visitors do. Check your analytics for the most visited pages, where visitors come from and which pages lead to enquiries or sales.
2. List every page. Record all current page addresses, including old pages that still receive visits. This list is essential later for redirects.
3. Note the search performance. Record which pages bring visitors from search engines and for which terms. These pages need special care in the redesign.
4. Gather feedback. Ask staff and some customers what is confusing, missing or frustrating. Sales and support teams often know exactly what visitors ask about.
5. Check the technical basics. Page speed, mobile usability, broken links, forms and security. Some problems can be fixed in the redesign; others may explain why a redesign is needed.
6. Agree the goals. Decide what the redesign should achieve, such as more enquiries, clearer service pages or easier updates for your team.

The result should be a short document: what to keep, what to fix and what success will look like.

It also helps to decide early whether the redesign is mainly visual or also structural. A visual refresh keeps most pages and addresses, so it carries less risk. A structural redesign that merges pages, changes addresses or moves to a new platform needs more planning, especially around redirects and content.

Planning pages and content

With goals agreed, plan the structure of the new site before any visual design begins.

1. Draft the sitemap. A sitemap, in this sense, is a simple list or diagram of all pages and how they are grouped. Decide which pages stay, which merge and which are new.
2. Plan the navigation. Choose the main menu items based on what visitors look for most, not on your internal department structure.
3. Decide each page's purpose. For each key page, write one sentence on what it is for and what visitors should do next.
4. Plan the content. Decide which existing content is reused, updated or rewritten, and who is responsible for each page.
5. Map old addresses to new ones. For every page whose address will change, note the new address. This becomes the redirect plan that protects search traffic.
6. Set a content deadline. Content is a frequent cause of delay. Agree dates for drafts and final copy early.

Many teams find it helpful to write a short brief at this stage. Our guide on how to write a website brief a developer can quote from explains what to include.

Our guide on what a business website costs explains how pages, features and content affect the budget.

Design and feedback rounds

Design usually starts with structure and moves to visual detail.

Wireframes

Wireframes are simple layouts showing what goes where on each key page, without colours or images. They let you agree on structure and priorities quickly, and changes at this stage are cheap.

Visual design

The designer then applies your brand: colours, typography, images and details. Usually a few key templates are designed first, such as the home page, a service page and a contact page. Other pages reuse these templates.

Giving useful feedback

1. Name one person to collect feedback. Scattered comments from many people slow things down and often contradict each other.
2. Give feedback against the goals. "This hides our main service" is more useful than "I do not like the blue".
3. Group your comments. Send one clear set of feedback per round rather than many small messages.
4. Respect the agreed rounds. Most projects include a set number of feedback rounds. Extra rounds usually add time and cost.
5. Approve in writing. A clear approval before building starts prevents expensive changes later.

Check how many rounds your quote includes, and our guide to reading a website quote explains what revisions and change requests should cover.

Building and testing

Once designs are approved, the site is built on a staging server, a private copy where you can review everything before it goes live.

1. Templates are built first, then pages are created and content is added.
2. Features are connected, such as contact forms, booking tools or newsletter sign-ups.
3. You review the staging site and test it yourself, including forms and key journeys.
4. The site is tested on phones, tablets and computers, in common browsers.
5. Speed and accessibility are checked, so the site loads quickly and can be used by as many people as possible.
6. Search engine basics are set up, including page titles, descriptions, structured data where relevant, and the redirects planned earlier.

Our website launch checklist covers the final checks to make before switching the new site on.

What slows a redesign down

Most delays in a redesign are not technical. The common ones are:

• Late content. Pages cannot be finished until the text and images are ready.
• Unclear decisions. Designs wait while several people give different opinions.
• Changing scope. New pages or features added after design approval push back every later stage.
• Missing access. The developer cannot move forward without logins for the domain, hosting or existing tools.
• Surprises in the old site. Forgotten pages, integrations or forms appear late and need to be rebuilt.

Most of these can be prevented at the start: agree who decides, set content deadlines, collect account access early and list every existing page and feature during the review.

Launch and the first weeks after

Launch day is the start of the new site's life, not the end of the project.

1. Launch at a quiet time, when your team and the developer can react quickly if something goes wrong.
2. Switch on the redirects so visitors and search engines using old addresses reach the right new pages.
3. Check forms, tracking and key pages immediately after launch.
4. Remove any block on search engines that was set on the staging site.
5. Monitor search performance over the following weeks and compare it with the records from your review.
6. Collect feedback from staff and customers, and fix small issues quickly.
7. Train your team on updating content, so the site stays current.

Search traffic deserves particular care. Our guide on how to migrate a website without losing search traffic explains redirects, content and monitoring in detail.

Summary

• Start by reviewing analytics, pages, search performance and feedback, and agree clear goals.
• Plan the page structure, content ownership and redirect map before design begins.
• Agree wireframes first, then visual design, with one person collecting feedback.
• Build and test on a staging site across devices, including speed, accessibility and search basics.
• Launch at a quiet time, switch on redirects and monitor closely in the weeks after.

A redesign that follows a clear process is calmer for everyone and protects what your current site has already achieved. If you're planning a website redesign, you can tell us about it here.