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Getting your team involved and onboard is key to the success of your website redesign. This post looks at how to go about this from the outset.
A website redesign is an exciting opportunity to enhance your brand’s online presence, but it’s also a significant undertaking that requires careful coordination across your organisation.
The success of your project doesn’t just depend on your agency’s expertise, it hinges on how well your internal team prepares and engages throughout the process.
Having guided hundreds of businesses through website redesigns, we’ve seen firsthand how proper preparation can transform a project from stressful to seamless. Here’s how to set your team up for success from day one.
Before you brief your agency or start thinking about design, you need internal clarity on what you’re trying to achieve.
Your redesign should solve specific problems or capitalise on clear opportunities. Are you addressing poor conversion rates? Struggling with an outdated brand perception? Expanding into new markets?
Your objectives will guide every decision throughout the project, so make them concrete and measurable. For example, “increase lead generation by 40%” is far more actionable than “improve our website.”
Website redesigns touch multiple departments. Marketing and sales, customer service, IT, and senior leadership all have valid interests. Identify who needs to be involved and at what level.
You’ll typically need a core project team for day-to-day decisions, plus a steering group for strategic sign-offs. Crucially, involve these people from the start. Nothing derails a project faster than a senior stakeholder appearing halfway through with entirely different expectations.
Be clear about who has final approval on what. Who signs off on the sitemap? The design direction? The content? Having too many decision-makers creates bottlenecks, but having too few means important perspectives get missed. Document your decision-making structure and share it with everyone involved, including your agency.
One of the biggest causes of project delays is missing or outdated content and assets. Start gathering everything you’ll need well before your kickoff meeting.
Work through your existing site and catalogue what you have.
This isn’t just about copying and pasting. It’s an opportunity to improve quality, accuracy, and SEO performance.
If you have hundreds of pages, focus first on your core pages; your homepage, key service or product pages, about page, and high-traffic blog posts.
Do not simply cull or dramatically change pages or posts on a hunch. These kind of decisions should be data led, and ideally managed by an SEO expert. I’ve heard many horror stories of brands culling content with no data behind the decision, and later finding out they had removed high performing pages.
Content optimisation can continue after the launch of your new website. Don’t rush this process.
Your agency will need access to your brand guidelines, logo files (in multiple formats), fonts, photography, videos, and any other visual assets. Save everyone time by creating a shared folder with everything organised and clearly labelled.
If you don’t have high-resolution versions of your logo or brand colours properly documented, now is the time to sort this out, not three weeks into the project.
Where will you need new content? Perhaps you’re launching new services, or your product descriptions haven’t been updated in years? Flag these gaps early so you can plan who will create this content and when.
If you’re commissioning new photography or video, book this well in advance, as creative services often have long lead times.
If your site has specific functionality, for example, a member portal, booking system, live chat, or integrations with your CRM, document exactly how these work now and what needs to carry forward.
Include login details for any third-party services. Your developers will need this information to plan the technical architecture properly.
Good content is what transforms a beautifully designed website into an effective business tool. Don’t leave content creation as an afterthought.
Who are you actually talking to? Create clear audience personas that go beyond basic demographics. What are their pain points? What questions are they asking? What objections do they have?
This understanding should inform every piece of content you create. If you have existing customer data, user research, or support tickets, mine these for insights.
Think about the path someone takes from first discovering you to becoming a customer. What information do they need at each stage?
Someone just learning about their problem needs different content than someone ready to buy. Plan content that serves users at every point in their journey, and make it easy for them to progress to the next step.
Your website’s copy should sound distinctly like your brand. Are you authoritative and professional? Friendly and approachable? Bold and disruptive?
Document your tone of voice with clear examples so everyone creating content, whether internal teams or an external agency, maintains consistency. If you’re working with multiple content creators, this is essential.
Be realistic about who will write, review, and approve content. If you’re expecting your subject matter experts to write pages while juggling their day jobs, build in plenty of time.
Alternatively, consider whether a marketing agency partner can help with copywriting, as many have experienced writers who can interview your team and craft content that converts.
Clear processes and communication channels prevent confusion and keep your project on track.
Someone from your organisation needs to own this project day-to-day. This person becomes the central point of contact with your website agency, coordinates internal feedback, manages deadlines, and keeps stakeholders informed. This role requires significant time commitment, so don’t ask someone to do it alongside their full workload.
How will you communicate with your agency? Weekly calls? A shared Slack channel? Email updates? Whatever you choose, be consistent. Also agree on how urgent issues will be flagged and who should be copied on what.
Nothing frustrates agencies more than sending something to one contact, only to have it blocked by someone else who wasn’t in the loop.
Website projects take longer than you think. Factor in time for multiple rounds of feedback, internal approvals, content creation, testing, and the inevitable unexpected issues.
If you have a hard deadline, like a trade show, product launch, or rebrand, work backwards from that date and add buffer time. A rushed website is rarely a good website.
Decide in advance how you’ll gather and consolidate internal feedback. Having fifteen stakeholders all emailing their opinions directly to the agency creates chaos. Instead, have your project lead collect feedback, remove contradictions, and present a unified response.
Be specific in your feedback. “I don’t like this” isn’t helpful, but “the call-to-action isn’t prominent enough for our primary conversion goal” gives your agency something actionable.
The technical side of preparation often gets overlooked until it becomes a blocker.
Your agency will need access to your current website, hosting environment (if you are not hosting through them), domain registrar, analytics, tag manager, and any integrated systems.
Gathering login credentials can take time, especially if they’re held by former employees or external IT providers. Start this process early and ensure credentials actually work. We’ve lost days to incorrect or missing passwords.
If you’re moving platforms, consider what data needs to migrate. Contact forms, user accounts, e-commerce orders, blog comments, etc. What’s essential and what can be archived?
The more data you’re moving, the more complex and time-consuming this becomes, so ensure your agency are aware of what needs to be migrated from the start. This avoids any last minute delays.
Your agency will typically provide a staging or development site where you can review the work in progress. Make sure relevant team members know how to access it and understand that it’s not the live site.
Clear communication about development/staging versus live environments prevents embarrassing moments when someone shares a work-in-progress URL with customers.
A new website represents change, and people often resist change, even when it’s for the better.
Don’t let the first time most employees hear about the new website be when it launches. Keep your team informed about why you’re redesigning, what to expect, and how it might affect their work.
If customer service staff will need to learn a new CRM interface, or sales teams will need to update their demo process, give them advance warning and training time.
Some team members may worry that ‘their’ page will be removed or that the new site will be harder to use. Listen to these concerns, as they’re often valid and can help you anticipate user issues. Where concerns are unfounded, take time to explain the rationale behind decisions.
Who will need to know how to update the new website? Content editors, administrators, and anyone managing products or services should receive proper training before launch.
Some agencies like Impact Media, include training videos, which live in the dashboard of your site and can be accessed whenever required.
If you agency doesn’t include training materials, budget additional time for this and consider recording training sessions for future reference. The easier you make it for your team to maintain the site, the longer it will remain effective.
A website redesign represents months of work from many people. When you launch, acknowledge everyone’s contributions. This isn’t just about morale. It builds organisational buy-in for maintaining and improving the site going forward.
Your website redesign doesn’t end at launch. In many ways, that’s where the real work begins.
From day one, you should be tracking performance against your original objectives. Set up analytics correctly, monitor for technical issues, and watch user behaviour closely in those first weeks. Small problems caught early are far easier to fix than issues discovered months later.
No website is perfect at launch. You’ll learn things from real user behaviour that no amount of testing can predict. Budget time and resources for improvements in the weeks and months following launch. Your agency can help prioritise these based on what will have the most impact.
Create clear documentation on how your website works, where content is stored, how to perform common tasks, and who to contact for what. When team members change or your project lead moves on, this documentation becomes invaluable.
Your website shouldn’t be a ‘set and forget’ project. Plan in reviews of analytics, user feedback, and performance against objectives. Digital best practices evolve, your business changes, and your website should evolve with them.
The most successful website redesigns happen when agencies and clients work as true partners. Your agency brings technical expertise, design skills, and project experience, but you bring intimate knowledge of your business, your customers, and your market.
By investing time in proper preparation, you’ll move through the project more smoothly, make better decisions, and ultimately launch a website that delivers real business value. More importantly, you’ll build a foundation for continuing to improve and optimise your website and online presence long after launch day.
Start preparing early, communicate clearly, and remember that a website redesign is as much about people and process as it is about pixels and code. Get those elements right, and you’ll set yourself up for success.
