Strategy
The Website Redesign Checklist: 12 Things to Get Right
By the Coast Creative team8 min read
A redesign is the highest-stakes project most businesses ever run on their website: done right, everything compounds; done wrong, you can lose years of SEO in a weekend. Here's the checklist we run on every rebuild.
Before design starts
1. Inventory what works. Pull analytics before touching anything. Which pages bring traffic? Which convert? Those pages get protected, not 'reimagined.'
2. Map every URL. Every old URL needs a destination — same address or a 301 redirect. Skipped redirects are the #1 way redesigns torch search rankings.
3. Define the one action. Every page should have a primary action you want visitors to take. If you can't name it, the design can't support it.
4. Write content first. Design around real words, not lorem ipsum. Copy-last projects always run late and always read like filler.
During design and build
5. Design mobile honestly. Most of your traffic is a phone. Design the phone experience as the real one, not as a squished afterthought.
6. Keep pages fast. Performance is a ranking factor and a conversion factor. Compress images, skip bloated plugins, measure with real tools before launch.
7. Bake in schema. Structured data on every page — business info, services, FAQs, reviews. This is how search engines and AI assistants understand you.
8. Make it AI-readable. llms.txt, semantic markup, crawlable content. The next generation of customers asks assistants, not search bars.
9. Accessibility isn't optional. Real headings, contrast that passes, keyboard navigation, alt text. It's the law in more places every year, and it's just good design.
At launch and after
10. Test the forms. The most expensive bug on the internet is a contact form that silently fails. Test every form, every device, the day you launch.
11. Watch Search Console for 30 days. Crawl errors and 404s show up in the first weeks. Catch them while they're cheap.
12. Measure against the old baseline. That analytics snapshot from step 1 is your scoreboard. Traffic, rankings, conversions — thirty, sixty, ninety days out.
A redesign should feel like the same business wearing much better clothes. Protect what worked, fix what didn't, and measure the difference.