Corporate Website Redesign Checklist

The most expensive mistake in a redesign isn't about design: it's a new site that throws away everything the old one accumulated over years. Addresses change, redirects are never written, and pages that ranked disappear overnight.

So the work should start with an inventory, not with design. The order below puts the items that hurt most when skipped first.

Before launch

1. Produce a page inventory

List every address on the current site — not the ones in the menu, the ones that actually exist. Sitemap, server logs and search console are all needed; any one alone leaves gaps.

2. Measure what each page brings

Without visit and search data, decisions about what to migrate are made blind. On most sites a third of the inventory gets no visits at all.

3. Separate keep, merge and close

Migrating every page as-is ages the new site on day one. But every closed page needs a redirect to the nearest relevant page; a page deleted quietly is a page lost.

4. Write the URL map line by line

Old address → new address, with no blank rows. This table is the most important document of the redesign. Mapping one by one is safer than writing automatic rules: patterns always leave an exception.

5. Keep existing titles and descriptions

Changing titles that already work is unnecessary risk during a migration. Don't rewrite a title without knowing which query the page appears for.

6. Take a measurement baseline

Record it before launch: which page appears for which query, which address brings what, what the page speed is. A measurement with no "before" makes the "after" meaningless.

At launch

7. Make redirects permanent

Every moved address should go to its new counterpart with a permanent redirect. A temporary redirect tells the search engine "this change isn't final" and doesn't carry the value.

8. Leave no chains

A → B → C chains lose value at every step. Old addresses should point directly at the final destination.

9. Refresh the sitemap and robots file

The new sitemap should contain only pages that genuinely open, are indexable and point at their own canonical. The most common redesign mistake is old addresses lingering in the sitemap.

10. Check canonicals and language tags

Every page should declare its own address as canonical. On a multilingual site each language should point at its counterpart in both directions.

11. Test every redirect one by one

Request every row of the URL map and confirm the first response is right. A hand-written map always contains a typo; the only way to find it is to try them all.

12. Don't skip broken internal links

Links inside pages may still point at old addresses. Redirects rescue them but add an unnecessary hop.

13. Compare against the baseline

Repeat the measurement in the weeks after launch. Temporary fluctuation is normal; lasting loss usually comes from a missing redirect or content deleted quietly.

14. Measure speed again

New sites turning out slower than the old one is common — especially when images weren't optimised.

What can't be promised

Read carefully any proposal that commits to more visits or better rankings after a redesign. The honest commitment is this: moving the accumulated value correctly. Temporary fluctuation can happen; lasting loss comes from skipping the items above.

I've written how this runs at Creative House on the website redesign page. If you'd like to build the inventory of your site together, you can book a conversation.