Website Redesign Checklist: 15 Things to Do Before and After Launch

A redesign is a chance to modernise your website, fix structural problems and improve how visitors experience your business online. It can also break links, lose search visibility and remove content people relied on. This checklist helps avoid those problems.

Before the redesign

1. Define goals. What should the new website do better? More enquiries, clearer services, better mobile experience, easier updates?
2. Record your current data. Note important pages, traffic and enquiry sources from analytics and Google Search Console, if available.
3. List every existing URL. Crawl the current site or export URLs so none are forgotten.
4. Audit content. Decide what to keep, improve, merge or remove. Pages that bring visitors or enquiries should not disappear without a plan.
5. Keep your brand consistent. Use your existing logo and brand assets unless a rebrand is planned separately.
6. Plan the new structure. Map pages, navigation and service pages around what customers look for.
7. Map old URLs to new ones. Every old URL that changes should redirect (301) to the most relevant new page.

During the redesign

8. Design mobile first. Most visitors will see the site on a phone.
9. Preserve on-page SEO. Carry over or improve titles, meta descriptions, headings and image alt text.
10. Optimise speed. Compress images, remove unused scripts and keep plugins lean.
11. Build on a staging site. Keep the new site private, and blocked from search engines, until launch.

At and after launch

12. Remove staging blocks. Make sure the live site is not set to "noindex" by mistake.
13. Test redirects and links. Check old URLs redirect correctly and there are no broken internal links.
14. Submit the new sitemap. Submit it in Google Search Console and monitor coverage reports.
15. Test contact paths. Try every form, WhatsApp button, phone link and email link on real devices.

In the weeks after launch

Watch Search Console for errors, check analytics for unexpected drops and fix issues quickly. Some fluctuation in search visibility after a major change is normal; significant drops usually point to missing redirects or content.