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It’s very easy to get wrapped up or sidetracked when managing the process of a website redesign. A new website is a big deal. Trying to remember everything and map out what needs to be done can be overwhelming.
I’ve talked before about web design mistakes to avoid, so now let’s look at important things to include when planning a website redesign.
Whether it’s your 1st website redesign or your 50th, it’s important to be strategic and approach it with a thorough plan.
Your web development agency will have its process and timeline, but it’s important that you have your own which runs alongside theirs. This will need to cover everything that is the responsibility of you, your team, and your other suppliers.
There will be workshops and meetings with your website agency to attend, feedback stages to get to promptly so as not to hold up the project timeline, planning for launch day and promotion of your new website. But what else?
Having worked on many website redesigns throughout my career (some as the client, some as a supplier), here are some key things that I‘ve noticed often get overlooked or left to the last minute.
Factor these into your plan, and your website redesign will run more smoothly.
SEO should never be an afterthought. Even more so, if organic traffic is an important source of leads or sales for your business.
A website redesign always poses a risk to organic search performance. As such, it should be managed carefully.
Lots of businesses will view a redesign as a chance to cull lots of content, or consolidate. To mitigate the risks, this must be done with a solid strategy in place. Careful redirect mapping is also required.
Avoid making decisions based on hunches or for aesthetic reasons at all cost. If you insist that your development agency cull half of your content, then it isn’t their fault if you find your organic traffic plummets. Every decision you make should be backed up with research and data.
If you have an in-house SEO specialist, or an SEO agency, get them involved in the process from day one. If you don’t, consider perhaps hiring an SEO agency to help with the migration process. We have trusted SEO partners we can recommend to customers without their own.
Whilst going through the agency selection process, look for a web design agency that understands the importance of SEO, and is happy to include your SEO specialist or agency in the process.
First steps should be full SEO and Content audits of your existing website. These audits will tell you what you need to protect, what you can improve, and what you can remove.
Is your domain name staying the same? If it is changing this will have further implications come with more risk. Ensure this decision has been fully assessed, and that your SEO specialist or agency is aware, and experienced in managing migrations.
When creating your new sitemap and structure with your website agency, try to keep things the same where possible. Avoiding unnecessary changes and redirects is for the best.
For example if your blog posts are www.yourdomain.com/blog/blog–post-name/ is there any good reason to change this? The posts are properly nested, to give a clear indicator of site hierarchy, and they have meaningful names in the slug.
However, if your blog posts are www.yourdomain.com/blog-post-name/ or www.yourdomain.com/blog/21kjd002sdf/ then it may be wise to create some hierarchy on your site, or give your blog posts meaningful slugs. This will require redirects, but in this case it would be for a good reason.
Are there issues on your existing site that you can fix before moving to the new site? It is good practice and means you’re not creating future problems for yourself, which will be harder to correct.
Deal with any outstanding 404s or internal 301s (where internal links haven’t been updated and are relying on redirects). Correcting these will save on having to create additional redirects, and reduce the chances of redirect chains on your new website.
Is your site currently slow or failing Core Web Vitals? What factors are contributing to this, and how can they be remedied in the redesign?
What can your SEO specialist or agency recommend, and how can they work with your website development agency to ensure a new website which satisfies Google with good page experience.
If you’re changing domains, it is best to keep your existing titles and meta, at least for a time.
Don’t forget that your new sitemap will need to be submitted to Search Console.
Your SEO specialist or agency will likely have some suggestions, depending on your site, its features, and how it’s built. For example, it is important for eCommerce sites to disallow the crawling of pages like user accounts, checkouts, and so on.
For additional information on SEO tasks that you can manage in-house, check out our post Simple SEO Tasks For WordPress Websites.
Another huge topic to consider, and one that regularly slows down website projects is content.
If you’re adding new sections to existing pages which will require content, don’t forget to assign tasks for creating this content. A short paragraph to sit in a hero section may seem like nothing, but when you realise you need 50 of them, and you’re a couple of days away from launch you’ll kick yourself.
Remember that what might be common language internally, might be meaningless or confusing for your audience.
Always keep in mind that you’re writing for your users, not your colleagues. Make sure you’re writing clear, easy-to-digest content, which meets their needs and answers their questions.
This can be easily forgotten in all the excitement of a launch.
You will need to make sure that any dedicated campaign landing pages are considered in the redesign process.
Whether you manage your paid activity in-house or an agency does, make sure that if any landing pages are changing, being removed, or being given a new url path, you update your campaigns.
Pull a list of all destination urls and make sure they’ll still exist. If not, provide the new destination or instructions if the ad needs removing.
Getting this right is vital if you’re to know how your new site is performing. Making sure that tracking code is properly implemented is important. If done incorrectly it can lead to all kinds of issues with your data.
Make sure it has been decided what needs to be added, who will be adding it, and how.
For example, we generally add Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Yoast, and Redirection as standard for our customers. If you use different tools, make sure your agency knows, and come to an agreement on the best way to add those tools.
Make sure that you make all parties aware of how conversions are to be managed and tracked, so that this can be factored in. Then tasks can be delegated to the right person, with a clear timeframe.
Also ensure that any website form completion notifications go to the appropriate email addresses, so that important leads aren’t missed.
Don’t forget to make sure goal tracking is updated, or set-up for any new goals.
Make sure this is clear, so everything is working and tracking correctly when you launch.
Make sure your web agency knows exactly what connections and plugins you require from the outset.
Adding things that you’ve remembered last minute will only slow things down. They may also come with an extra cost if they’re out of scope.
Some examples:
A redesign is the perfect time to get your images in good order. Name your images properly, give them appropriate alt text, upload them at the correct dimensions.
Ensure that your developers include an image compression tool on your new website.
The fewer you rely on the better. When you do use them, use trustworthy and well maintained plugins.
Your development agency should be able to guide you on this, and help you to keep your list of plugins streamlined, and reliable.
Don’t forget that a new site might mean new cookies you need to reference in your policy. This should be updated before your website is launched.
If you are operating within an industry with its own specific rules and regulations for digital, ensure your web development agency is aware, and that you provide them with all of the relevant information to enable them to ensure your website is compliant.
The more complex your website is ,the more likely it is that extra work will be required to set-up a cookie management tool. This isn’t something to drop into the mix at the last minute.
Don’t neglect these important factors until the last minute. Hosting can make or break a site, and ongoing support is often forgotten until issues arise down the road.
It is important to discuss launch with your developers and hosting provider (if they’re not one and the same) to have a clearly defined plan for launch.
Hosting will play a major role in website performance.
There are lots of considerations here, and it is wise to talk to your web development company about this very early on in the process. This will allow you to make the best decision for your website.
Having a support and maintenance provider in place will give you peace of mind. Your website will be kept up-to-date, secure, and functional. They will monitor for, and deal with vulnerabilities. Not all development agencies support the websites they build, so make sure you know.
I hope this has helped and given you some useful reminders before you embark on your website redesign. It’s hard to cover absolutely everything, so keep an eye out for future posts and guides, where I’ll discuss some of these areas in greater detail.
Here’s a little summary list of what we’ve covered, so you can copy and paste into your notes when getting your plan together:
If you’re planning a website redesign, why not chat with our team about it?
We’ve been designing and developing websites for 20+ years, which has allowed us to refine and hone our process. If you’d like to see a handful of our projects, you can check out our case studies here.
