Prepare a website redesign without losing what already works
A redesign changes more than appearance. URLs, content, navigation, analytics and operational habits can all be affected. The safest programme identifies valuable assets first, then improves the experience while preserving evidence, access and discoverability.
What to remember.
- Inventory useful pages and data before design begins.
- Map every changed URL to a relevant destination.
- Test real tasks, tracking and recovery procedures before launch.
Establish a reliable baseline
Collect search, analytics, support and business evidence for the existing site. Identify pages that attract qualified visits, answer recurring questions or support important transactions. Low traffic alone is not a reason to delete a page.
Decide what to keep, improve or retire
Assign every page an owner and a decision. Consolidate overlap, update facts and preserve content that has a clear audience and purpose. Record why something is retired so it is not recreated without context later.
Redesign around priority journeys
Prototype the tasks that matter most before polishing every template. Navigation labels should reflect user language, and important information should remain reachable through ordinary HTML links.
Build a URL and redirect map
Keep stable URLs where practical. When a URL must change, provide a permanent redirect to the closest useful destination and update internal links, canonicals, hreflang and sitemaps. Avoid sending unrelated pages to the home page.
Define acceptance criteria
Test content, forms, keyboard access, responsive layouts, metadata, structured data, status codes and analytics. Include error and empty states, not only the ideal path shown in a design file.
Plan launch and observation
Choose owners for deployment, rollback and post-launch checks. Monitor crawl errors, rankings, conversion, performance and support feedback, then resolve material regressions before starting optional enhancements.