Website Redesign Checklist: 10 Things to Nail Before You Launch

A redesign that looks better and performs worse is a common and expensive outcome. It usually happens because the visual work got all the attention and the launch mechanics got none.

This is the list worth working through before a new site goes live.

1. Map every old URL to a new one

This is the single most common cause of traffic collapsing after a redesign. If your page addresses change and nothing tells search engines where they went, you lose the accumulated value of every one of them.

Export a complete list of current addresses, decide the destination for each, and put permanent redirects in place before launch. Any page you are removing still needs a sensible destination.

2. Test on a real phone

Not a desktop browser resized. An actual handset, on mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi. Most visitors will experience the site this way and it is consistently the least-tested path.

3. Check speed with real content

Sites are usually tested with a handful of pages and placeholder images. Performance problems appear once real photography and the full page count land. Test the heaviest page you will actually publish, not the lightest.

4. Get accessibility right before launch

Retrofitting accessibility is far more expensive than building it in. The basics cover most of it:

• Every meaningful image has alternative text that describes it
• Text has sufficient contrast against its background
• The whole site can be operated by keyboard alone, with a visible focus indicator
• Forms have real labels, not just placeholder text
• Headings run in a sensible order rather than being chosen for their size

5. Verify analytics before, not after

Confirm tracking fires on the new site in staging. Launching without it means a gap in your data exactly when you most want to compare before and after.

6. Submit and confirm indexing

Make sure your sitemap is generated and submitted, and — critically — that the settings which kept the staging site out of search engines have been removed.

7. Test every form end to end

Submit each form as a real customer would and confirm the message actually arrives where someone will see it. A contact form that silently fails is worse than no contact form, because you never find out about the enquiries you missed.

8. Confirm the legal pages

Privacy policy, terms, cookie handling, and any accessibility statement should be present and current — not copied from the old site with a previous year on them.

9. Check the details that only show up elsewhere

Favicon, social sharing previews, page titles, and meta descriptions. These are invisible while you are building and immediately visible the moment someone shares a link.

10. Have a way back

Keep a working copy of the previous site and know how to restore it. You will almost certainly not need it. The one time you do, it is the difference between an inconvenience and a very bad week.

After launch

Watch your search console and analytics closely for the first fortnight. Crawl errors and traffic drops are easy to fix in the first week and much harder once they have settled in.

If you would rather have someone run this properly, our web design team handles launches for Bay Area businesses.