A redesign can improve clarity and conversion while accidentally destroying useful content, working integrations or search visibility. The safest process begins with an inventory, not a moodboard.
Before design: establish the baseline
Record what the current site already does well. Export high-traffic pages, search queries, conversions, backlinks and form submissions. Speak to the people who answer enquiries, because they know which questions and objections appear repeatedly.
Create a complete URL inventory before changing navigation. Every current page needs an explicit decision: keep, improve, merge or remove.
- Analytics and conversion baseline
- Search Console page and query exports
- Complete URL and content inventory
- Forms, integrations and tracking map
- Customer questions and sales objections
During design: protect meaning
A cleaner layout is not useful if important context disappears. Check that the new hierarchy preserves the reasons people trust the business, the details they need to self-qualify and the next action for each page.
Design mobile layouts intentionally. Google indexes the mobile version of a page, and customers often arrive from a phone. Mobile should contain the same important content and crawlable links as desktop.
- One descriptive H1 per page
- Logical heading order
- Visible proof beside relevant claims
- Accessible contrast and focus states
- Useful image alternatives
- Equivalent mobile content and links
Before launch: map every address
If a URL changes, redirect the old address to the closest relevant new page. Do not send every removed page to the homepage. Update internal links, canonicals, sitemap entries and structured data to use the final public URLs.
Test forms, email delivery, booking, analytics events, payment flows and consent behavior. A visually finished site is not launch-ready until the commercial paths work.
- One-to-one 301 redirect map
- Canonical URL check
- Broken-link crawl
- Form and integration tests
- Metadata and social-share previews
- Performance and accessibility checks
After launch: watch the transition
Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and inspect the most important URLs. Monitor indexing, redirects, search traffic, form completion and errors for several weeks. Search movement can happen during a migration, but unexpected drops need investigation rather than patience alone.
Keep the old analytics exports and URL inventory. They make it possible to distinguish a normal transition from missing content or a broken redirect.