A redesign can lift conversions, or quietly destroy years of search visibility. Use this checklist to stay on the right side of that line.
Before you start
- Set goals you can measure, such as enquiries per month, bookings or online sales.
- Record your baseline: traffic, top pages, conversion rate and speed, so you can judge the result.
- List the pages that bring traffic and leads. Those are the ones you must not break.
Plan the structure
- Map old pages to new pages one by one.
- Keep URLs where possible. Where they must change, plan a 301 redirect for each.
- Decide what to merge, remove or improve, based on data instead of opinion.
Design and content
- Put the main action (call, book, buy) above the fold on mobile.
- Write for the questions customers actually ask.
- Check contrast, tap-target size and keyboard navigation for accessibility.
Technical checks before launch
- Test on real phones and at least three browsers.
- Check page speed, especially images and fonts.
- Confirm titles, descriptions, headings and structured data.
- Test every form, booking flow and payment.
- Set up analytics and conversion tracking.
- Prepare the redirect map and a new sitemap.
After launch
- Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Watch crawl errors, traffic and conversions daily for the first two weeks.
- Fix broken links and missing redirects promptly.
Planning a redesign? Talk to us about a safe migration plan, or read about our SEO services.