1. Decide why you're redesigning

"It looks old" is a valid reason, but write down the business outcome you want: more enquiries, more online sales, fewer support calls, a new service to promote. That outcome decides what the new site must do, and it's how you'll judge whether the redesign worked.

Also decide whether you need a redesign (new look and structure on the same platform) or a rebuild (new platform or code). A rebuild carries more risk to URLs and search visibility, so the rest of this list matters even more.

2. Record a baseline before you touch anything

  • Monthly enquiries or sales from the website, and where they came from.
  • Organic clicks and impressions by page from Google Search Console.
  • Your top landing pages and the queries that bring people to them.
  • Core Web Vitals and mobile usability for your key pages.
  • Screenshots of every important page, for reference.

3. Inventory every URL

Export every URL from your sitemap, analytics and Search Console, then mark each one: keep (same address on the new site), move (new address, needs a redirect) or retire (no equivalent; redirect to the closest relevant page, or let it return 404 if nothing fits).

Pages with traffic or links from other websites deserve the most care. Losing them without a redirect throws away the trust they have built.

4. Plan redirects properly

Use permanent server-side redirects (301 or 308) from each old URL straight to its final new URL. Google's guide to site moves with URL changes (opens in a new tab) walks through the process, and its redirects documentation (opens in a new tab) explains the types.

  • Avoid chains (A → B → C); point A directly at C.
  • Don't send everything to the home page; redirect to the most relevant equivalent.
  • Keep redirects in place long-term, not just for the first month.

5. Carry over what search engines already understand

  • Page titles and meta descriptions that perform well: improve them, don't discard them.
  • Headings and body content on pages that rank. A beautiful page with half the text may rank worse.
  • Structured data such as organisation details, breadcrumbs and articles.
  • Image alt text and internal links between related pages.
  • Canonical tags pointing at the correct, live domain.

6. Pre-launch technical checks

  • View the page source of several pages: is the real content in the HTML? If the new site is built with React or Vite, read our guide to prerendering.
  • Every page has a unique title, description and one clear H1.
  • The canonical URL on each page loads that same page.
  • robots.txt doesn't block the site (staging sites often ship with a block that gets forgotten).
  • No stray noindex tags left from staging.
  • The XML sitemap lists only live, canonical URLs.
  • Unknown URLs return a real 404 status, not a 200 page.
  • Every redirect on your list resolves in a single hop.

7. Test every route to an enquiry

  • Submit every form and confirm the message arrives where it should.
  • Tap every phone, WhatsApp and email link on a real phone.
  • Check booking links, payment flows and thank-you pages.
  • Confirm analytics and conversion tracking still fire on the new pages.

8. After launch: watch, then improve

Submit the new sitemap in Search Console, then check the Pages (indexing) report and your 404s weekly for the first month. Some movement in rankings after a large change is common; compare against your baseline rather than day-to-day noise, and judge the redesign by enquiries and sales, not traffic alone.

Need help planning one? See our website design and development service, or ongoing maintenance if you mainly need the current site looked after.