Seven questions to ask before you redesign your website

A redesign usually starts with “it looks dated”. Looks matter, but on their own they aren’t a good enough reason. If the new site doesn’t solve a problem the old one couldn’t, you’ll be back where you started within months. These questions are a good starting point for a first conversation with your team and with any agency you’re considering.

1. What is the site’s main job?

Generating enquiries, selling products, taking bookings or building trust. They may all matter, but one comes first. Design without a clear main job ends up speaking a little to everyone and moving no one.

2. Where do visitors come from, and where do they leave?

Look at your analytics: your most visited pages, the pages people exit from most, and your mobile share. Those three numbers tell you much of what to keep and what to change.

3. Which pages bring traffic from Google?

The most common redesign mistake is deleting old URLs that bring in traffic without redirecting them. Export those pages from Search Console and make sure each one has an equivalent on the new site.

4. Who will write the content?

Weeks spent waiting for copy after the design is finished are the most common cause of delays. Decide early who writes, who approves and when it’s due.

5. Who will update the site after launch?

Name the person on your team who’ll make updates, and ask for the CMS to be set up with them in mind. A CMS that’s hard to use is how sites go stale within a few months.

6. How will we measure success?

Enquiries, sales, search traffic or time on page. Choose the measure in advance, and check that tracking works on the new site from launch day.

7. How much of the budget is set aside for after launch?

The work doesn’t end at launch. Adding content, driving traffic with ads and improving based on data all take budget, so we recommend reserving part of it for the first six months.

Once these questions have answers, design conversations become shorter and far more productive, and your site ends up not just newer but more useful.