Planning a website redesign

A website can look dated and still help people choose your business. It can also look impressive while hiding the service, proof, or contact route a visitor needs. Before commissioning a redesign, separate the appearance you want to improve from the journeys that need repair.

For an owner preparing a brief, the most useful starting point is a preservation list alongside a problem list. Keep effective photography, recognizable branding, useful content, working forms, and valuable URLs unless there is a specific reason to change them.

Walk through the site as a prospective customer

Choose three common reasons someone visits. For a home-service business, those might be checking whether you do the work, looking for comparable projects, and asking about an estimate. Start each journey from a likely landing page, not automatically the homepage.

Write down the question at each step and the evidence that answers it. If a visitor has to read a package comparison to discover whether you install windows, the sequence needs work. If the enquiry form never explains what happens next, the friction may be at the end of the journey.

Check mobile use early. Can a person read the service, examine a project, and complete the enquiry without losing their place? A desktop screenshot will not answer that.

Decide between repair and redesign

These are planning judgments. Confirm them with available analytics, customer questions, and direct usability observation. Low traffic alone does not tell you that the design is the cause.

Turn a journey into a page brief

Here is an illustrative brief for a remodeling service page:

• Reader: A homeowner comparing providers for a specific project.
• Decision: Whether the company does this work and is worth contacting.
• Evidence: Relevant project photographs, service boundaries, and a clear process.
• Next step: Request an estimate with enough context for a useful reply.
• Uncertainty to address: Service area, project type, and what happens after submission.

This brief gives the designer a job beyond arranging attractive sections. It also makes content responsibilities visible. Decide who supplies photographs, writes or approves service descriptions, checks project permissions, and owns future updates.

The Epic Exteriors project is relevant published work for service journeys and homeowner enquiries. The Jared Looser website shows a different audience split: buyers and sellers. Neither example supplies a claimed conversion uplift.

See the Website Design scope →

Protect discovery and accessibility during the change

Make an inventory of existing pages before renaming or removing them. Preserve useful URLs where possible. Where a URL must change, map it to the most relevant replacement and test the redirect. Google's migration guidance also calls for monitoring old and new URLs after a move. Google Search Central: site moves.

Forms deserve the same care as the visual introduction. Keep labels visible, explain required inputs, and give instructions before users need them. W3C's form guidance describes why instructions and examples matter for accessible completion. W3C: form instructions.

Search visibility and inclusion in AI answers are not guaranteed by a redesign. Google's guidance emphasizes useful content and sound search foundations; it does not require a separate set of AI-specific pages or special markup. Google's AI search guidance.

Agree what “ready to launch” means

Your acceptance list should cover small-screen layouts, keyboard use, meaningful image descriptions, forms, confirmation messages, booking links, redirects, and analytics. Test submissions should reach the right destination without being counted as genuine enquiries.

Record a baseline before launch: relevant organic landing pages, enquiries, service selections, and known usability problems. Compare equivalent periods later and account for seasonality or campaign changes. A button click is an intermediate action, not a completed sale.

Ask the proposal to separate the initial pages and integrations from maintenance and later additions. Jiberish Labs estimates website projects after discovery; the agreed scope determines the price and schedule.

For a concrete visual comparison, read real-estate website journeys. If your brief includes member accounts or private dashboards, also review custom web applications.