Website redesign checklist: what to do before you start

Access, before anything else

• The domain registrar login (where the domain is registered and renewed). Make sure it’s in the business’s name and you can log in yourself.
• The DNS settings, which may be somewhere else (your host, Cloudflare, the registrar).
• The email provider. Changing the website must not touch your email, and the person doing the redesign needs to know where it lives so they don’t break it.
• Google Search Console, Google Business Profile and analytics, with you as an owner.
• The current site’s admin login and hosting account, so the old content can be exported.

Save what Google already likes

1. List every pageExport the list of pages from your sitemap and from Search Console. Every one of those addresses needs either a matching page on the new site or a redirect to the closest one.
2. Export Search Console performanceThe last 12 months of queries and pages. This is your record of which pages bring in searches, so they can be kept and improved, and the benchmark you’ll compare against after launch.
3. Note the pages with linksPages other sites link to carry weight. Losing them without a redirect wastes it.

Save what customers use

• Form entries and any customer accounts or bookings stored in the old site.
• Photos and files you don’t have anywhere else.
• Every tool the site connects to: booking, payments, newsletter, chat, call tracking, pixels for ads.

Decide what the new site is for

• What do you want a visitor to do: call, book, buy, request a quote? Everything on the home page should push toward that.
• Which services and towns need their own pages.
• What you want to be able to change yourself, and what you’d rather ask someone to change.

After launch

• Test every old address and confirm it redirects.
• Resubmit the sitemap in Search Console and watch the Pages report for errors for a few weeks.
• Tap every phone number and submit every form.
• Compare Search Console clicks with the same weeks before launch.