How Do Agencies Handle Website Redesign Projects

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Key Takeaways

• Professional agencies run redesigns in structured phases, not in one continuous stream of work. Each phase has a defined output and an approval checkpoint before the next begins.
• The client's role is not passive. Discovery, content delivery, design reviews, and launch approvals all require active participation.
• Most project delays are caused by client-side bottlenecks, not agency execution gaps. Knowing this in advance helps you prepare.
• Understanding the agency's process before signing makes you a better client and leads to better project outcomes.

Most clients hire a redesign agency knowing what they want at the end but having little clarity on what happens between the signed contract and the live site.

That gap creates anxiety and friction.

Here is exactly what a professional agency does across the full lifecycle of a website redesign project.

Phase 1: Project Kickoff

The first week after signing sets the tone for the entire project.

What happens at kickoff:

• The agency schedules a kickoff call with all stakeholders to align on scope, goals, and decision-making authority
• A project manager is assigned as the primary point of contact
• Access is requested: CMS credentials, Google Analytics, Search Console, hosting, brand assets
• A project calendar is shared showing key milestones, review dates, and internal delivery deadlines
• The client is introduced to the project management tool the agency uses (Asana, ClickUp, Basecamp, or similar)

What you provide:

• Brand assets (logos, fonts, brand guidelines if they exist)
• Access credentials
• Confirmation of who has final approval authority on design decisions

A well-run kickoff produces a shared project calendar and clarity on who owns what before discovery begins.

Phase 2: Discovery

Discovery is the research phase. The agency is building the foundation the entire project stands on.

What agencies do in discovery:

• Stakeholder interviews with key team members (leadership, marketing, sales, customer-facing staff)
• Review of current site analytics to understand traffic patterns, high-exit pages, and conversion data
• Competitor analysis to identify gaps and industry conventions
• Content audit to determine what stays, what gets cut, and what needs to be created
• Technical audit of the existing site (speed, mobile performance, SEO baseline)
• Definition of user personas and the primary goals each persona has when visiting the site

Discovery outputs:

• Sitemap: the full page structure of the new site
• User flows: how each persona moves through the site to reach a goal
• Content brief: what content exists, what needs to be written, and who is responsible for each

Discovery typically runs two to three weeks. Agencies that skip it are guessing. Guessing is expensive.

Phase 3: UX Design and Wireframes

Before any visual design begins, a strong agency builds the structural layout of each page.

Wireframes are grayscale blueprints. They show where content goes, how the page hierarchy works, and how users interact with key elements, without any visual styling applied.

Why wireframes come before visual design:

• Structural problems are easier and cheaper to fix in wireframes than in full visual mockups
• Stakeholders can evaluate layout and content hierarchy without getting distracted by colors or fonts
• Wireframes force content decisions early, preventing the common "we will fill this in later" trap

What you review and approve:

• Page wireframes for all unique templates (homepage, service page, blog, contact, etc.)
• Navigation structure and mobile behavior
• Key interaction states (hover, form fields, menu expansion)

Expect one to two rounds of wireframe revisions before moving to visual design.

Phase 4: Visual Design

This is the phase most clients are waiting for. It is where the site starts to look like something.

What agencies build:

• A design system: typography scale, color palette, button styles, form styles, spacing rules, iconography
• High-fidelity mockups for each unique page template
• Responsive designs showing how each page looks on desktop, tablet, and mobile
• Interactive prototypes for key user flows (homepage to contact, product to demo request)

The review process:

Professional agencies present designs in structured review sessions, not by sending a file and waiting for comments.

A good design review:

1. Walks you through the design before asking for feedback
2. Explains the rationale for key decisions
3. Collects consolidated feedback in one round (not email threads from five different people)
4. Defines what constitutes a revision versus what constitutes a scope change

"The agencies that deliver the best results are the ones that explain design decisions, not just present them."

What this phase is not:

It is not a moment to redesign the entire scope. Changes to information architecture, major content additions, or navigation structure changes at this stage are scope changes, not revisions. Most agencies have a defined change order process for these.

Phase 5: Development

Once designs are approved, development begins. For most professional agencies, this means building the site on a staging environment the client can review before anything goes live.

What happens in development:

• Front-end build of all approved designs into a functioning website
• CMS setup and configuration (templates, content types, permissions)
• Integration with third-party tools: CRM, marketing automation, chat, scheduling, payment processing
• Form setup and lead routing
• Analytics and tracking installation (GA4, Meta Pixel, LinkedIn Insight Tag, etc.)
• Cross-browser and device testing

Platform context:

LOW/CODE Agency is a leading AI product team for SMBs and startups that builds all websites on Webflow. Webflow provides a visual CMS with a clean editor for non-technical teams, no plugin dependencies, and native performance optimization.

Client involvement during development:

• Content entry (either by the agency or by the client team, depending on scope)
• Review of integrations: test form submissions, confirm CRM data routing, verify analytics tracking
• Staging review: a full walk-through of the built site before launch approval

Phase 6: Pre-Launch Review and SEO Setup

Before launch, a professional agency runs a structured pre-launch checklist.

Technical pre-launch items:

• Redirect map implementation: every old URL redirected to its new equivalent
• Meta title and meta description review for every page
• XML sitemap generation and submission
• Robots.txt review to confirm nothing is accidentally blocked
• Core Web Vitals check on staging: LCP, CLS, INP targets
• 404 audit on staging
• SSL certificate confirmation
• Form testing: every submission tested and confirmed routing correctly

SEO-specific checks:

• Canonical tags confirmed on all pages
• No accidental noindex tags on public pages
• Heading structure (H1, H2, H3) reviewed for each page
• Schema markup implemented where appropriate

For the complete breakdown of how agencies approach this phase, the website redesign process covers each pre-launch step with its corresponding risk.

Phase 7: Launch

Launch day on a professional project is not a surprise. It is a scheduled event with clear responsibilities.

What happens on launch day:

1. DNS is updated to point to the new hosting environment
2. Redirects are confirmed live (agency checks a sample of critical URLs)
3. Forms are tested on the live domain
4. Analytics confirms tracking is firing
5. Search Console is updated with the new sitemap
6. The team monitors for crawl errors in the first 24 hours

What clients should avoid on launch day:

Making content changes. Launch day is not the time for last-minute edits. Any changes that are not pre-approved create risk and slow the technical confirmation process.

Phase 8: Post-Launch Support

The work does not end at launch. Professional agencies include a defined post-launch window.

What post-launch support covers:

• Bug fixes for any issues discovered after go-live (broken layouts on specific devices, form routing errors, integration problems)
• Search Console monitoring: watching for crawl errors, indexing issues, and ranking changes
• Core Web Vitals monitoring: confirming performance holds under real traffic
• 30-day check-in call to review analytics, address questions, and confirm the site is performing as expected

What post-launch support does not typically cover:

• New page additions
• Design changes based on preference rather than bugs
• New integrations
• Content updates beyond what was in scope

A 30-day post-launch support period is standard for professional engagements. Projects that define launch as the final deliverable with no support window create risk for the client.

The Client's Role Throughout

The most common source of project delays is not agency performance. It is client-side bottlenecks.

Where delays typically originate:

Knowing these in advance lets you remove the bottlenecks before they happen.

The agency selection process covers how to evaluate whether an agency's process is structured enough to handle your specific project complexity.

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What to Ask Your Agency Before Signing

Use these questions to assess whether the agency's process matches what you have read here:

• How is the project structured? Walk me through your phases.
• What does a revision round include, and what would trigger a change order?
• Who will be my day-to-day contact?
• What does post-launch support include and for how long?
• How do you protect SEO during the redesign?
• How do you handle situations where we want a change that is outside the original scope?

An agency that answers these confidently and specifically is ready to run your project well.

Understanding agency process deeply means you can hold any agency accountable to a professional standard. Schedule a 30-minute call with LOW/CODE Agency to see how our eight-phase process applies to your specific project, team, and timeline.

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