Websites
Before you redesign: seven things a new website should fix first
A redesign that only changes how a site looks rarely changes results. These are the problems worth solving before anyone opens a design tool.
Short answer: a redesign should fix how the website performs as a business tool — clarity, the path to enquiry, mobile experience, speed, search visibility, editability and measurement — not just its appearance. Decide what those fixes are before design starts, or you risk paying for a new look on the same old problems.
1. Can a visitor tell what you do in five seconds?
Read your homepage headline as a stranger would. Does it say what you do, for whom, and why you are different? Many sites lead with a slogan that could belong to any company. Clarity beats cleverness in the first line; personality can come straight after.
2. Is there an obvious next step on every page?
Every important page should end with one clear action: request a quote, book a call, view pricing, see the work. If a visitor has to scroll back to the top or hunt through the menu to contact you, some of them will not bother.
3. Does the mobile experience stand on its own?
Look at your analytics: a large share of your visitors are probably on phones. Check the mobile site properly — menu, forms, tap targets, text size, how quickly the main content appears. A mobile layout should be designed, not just squeezed.
4. How fast is it, really?
Run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights and look at the field data if it is available. Large images, unused plugins, heavy sliders and third-party scripts are the usual culprits. Speed affects both conversions and search visibility, and it is much easier to design for from the start than to fix later.
5. What happens to your search traffic during the move?
Redesigns are where rankings are most often lost. Before launch you need a list of every existing URL that receives traffic or links, a decision for each — keep, merge or redirect — and 301 redirects in place on launch day. After launch, monitor Search Console for errors and crawl the new site for broken links.
6. Can your team update it without breaking it?
If adding a team member or a case study requires a developer, the site will go stale. A good build gives your team editable, structured templates with sensible limits, so pages stay consistent with the design.
7. Will you know if it worked?
Agree what success means before the redesign starts — more enquiries, a better conversion rate, more organic traffic to service pages, faster load times — and make sure analytics and conversion tracking are in place on day one. Otherwise, “the new site feels better” is the only evidence you will have.
A practical pre-redesign checklist
- Export your current top pages and their traffic from analytics and Search Console.
- List the questions customers ask before they buy; make sure the new structure answers them.
- Identify your most important conversion paths and how many steps each one takes today.
- Record current Core Web Vitals for key templates.
- Inventory integrations: forms, CRM, booking, payments, analytics, chat.
- Decide who will own content after launch.
A redesign is a rare chance to fix the foundations. Spend the first part of it on these questions, and the design work that follows will have something real to aim at.
If you are planning a redesign, our web design and development team starts every project with this kind of audit.