How to Prepare for a Website Redesign

Knowing how to prepare for a website redesign is what separates clients who get exceptional results from those who spend project budget on information-gathering that should have happened weeks earlier.

The clients who get the best redesigns are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who arrived at the first agency meeting with their homework done.

Preparation is entirely the client's responsibility. It happens before the agency is engaged and before discovery begins. This guide covers every task that belongs in that pre-agency window, in the order they should be completed.

Key Takeaways

• Preparation is separate from planning: Preparation happens before the agency is briefed; planning happens with the agency in discovery.
• Analytics are the foundation of every brief: Without current performance data, the redesign is built against assumptions rather than evidence.
• Content preparation is the longest lead-time task: Gathering, auditing, and deciding on content must begin before the design process starts.
• Stakeholder alignment is a preparation task: Getting key stakeholders to agree on goals and priorities before the agency arrives prevents costly reversals later.
• Access and credentials must be ready: Handing the agency analytics, CMS, hosting, and domain access on day one prevents the most avoidable early delays.

Webflow Development Services

Webflow Experts On-Demand

Whether you're starting fresh or need a full revamp—we create fast, modern Webflow sites built for growth.

Let's talk

Preparation vs Planning: What's the Difference

Understanding the difference between prepare and plan is the first conceptual step. Confusing them produces incomplete briefs and wasted discovery time. Preparation is the client's work. Planning is collaborative work with the agency.

What Preparation Involves (Client-Side Work)

Preparation covers gathering analytics data, auditing current content, running stakeholder interviews, documenting business goals, and compiling brand assets.

This work is done entirely before agency engagement. Arriving without it forces the agency to extract it from you in discovery, at the agency's hourly rate.

What Planning Involves (Client and Agency Work)

Planning happens in the discovery phase with the agency. It translates preparation inputs into a formal brief, project plan, scope, and timeline.

Planning builds on preparation. It cannot replace it. An agency cannot plan effectively with an unprepared client because the inputs are missing.

Why the Distinction Saves Time and Money

Agencies that begin projects without prepared clients spend the first weeks of discovery extracting information that should have been ready on day one.

This costs both time and project budget. Content delays account for 45 percent of website redesign delays. Starting preparation before the agency is briefed eliminates much of this risk.

Gathering and Auditing Analytics

Analytics preparation is the foundation of the brief. Without current performance data, the redesign is designed against assumptions rather than evidence. The data gathered here also establishes the baseline for post-launch ROI measurement.

Every design decision that follows is better when it is informed by real performance data from the current site.

Pull 12 Months of Traffic and Conversion Data

Export data covering organic versus paid versus direct traffic, conversion rate by source and landing page, mobile versus desktop traffic split, and the top 20 pages by traffic volume.

These become the core brief inputs and the comparison points for post-launch reporting.

Document Current Baseline Metrics

For every KPI the redesign will be measured against, document the current value before any work begins.

Conversion rate, bounce rate, organic traffic volume, and lead count are the minimum. This documentation is the only way to answer "did the redesign work?" after launch.

Identify the Best and Worst Performing Pages

The pages generating the most organic traffic and conversions must be protected in the redesign. The pages with the worst performance are the primary redesign targets.

This segmentation tells the agency where to focus and where to be careful. Review requirements to capture early to ensure your analytics prep covers every brief input.

Running Stakeholder Interviews

Stakeholder questions for redesign must be gathered before the agency arrives. Unresolved stakeholder conflicts discovered during design reviews cause expensive rework. Surface and resolve them during preparation.

Stakeholder alignment before the agency is engaged prevents the most costly form of scope change: a decision reversal in the middle of a phase.

Who to Interview and Why

Interview the CEO or MD for strategic goals, the sales or business development lead for prospect feedback, the marketing lead for conversion context, and the support team for common user frustrations.

Each brings a different lens that a brief built from one perspective will miss.

What to Ask in Each Interview

Ask every stakeholder four standard questions: What do you most want the redesign to achieve? What are you most proud of about the current site?

What are you most embarrassed about? Who does this better than us and why? The answers will surface both the shared priorities and the conflicts that need resolution before briefing.

How to Synthesise the Inputs

After interviewing, compile the common themes and the key conflicts. Present the synthesis back to the group for alignment before the agency is briefed.

Unresolved stakeholder conflicts belong in preparation, not in a design review meeting.

Auditing and Preparing Content

Content preparation is the most time-consuming preparation task and the one most commonly skipped. Agencies who receive a content audit on day one can design around real content structure.

Agencies who never receive a content audit design around filler text and then rebuild when real content is different.

Starting content preparation before briefing is the single most impactful timeline decision a client can make.

Page-by-Page Content Inventory

Create a spreadsheet listing every page on the current site. For each: URL, page title, current traffic volume, content quality rating covering keep, rewrite, or archive, and content owner for the new site.

This inventory is a scope input, not just an asset list.

Brand Asset Audit

Gather all current brand assets: logo files in all formats, brand guidelines documents, approved photography, and font files.

Identify what is current, what is outdated, and what needs to be created or updated. Missing brand assets that surface mid-design cause delays and additional cost.

Content Gaps Against New Goals

If the redesign is targeting new keywords, new audiences, or new service areas, list the pages and content types that need to be created from scratch. Content gaps are a scope input.

Discovering them during development means adding them to an active build project. Use how to write the creative brief as a reference for translating your content audit into brief inputs.

Preparing Technical and Access Information

Technical preparation prevents the most avoidable delays in any project. Missing access to hosting, CMS, or analytics on week one of discovery is the most common, most preventable cause of early project delays.

Have every access detail documented and tested before the agency kickoff, not gathered in response to their request.

Compile All Credentials and Access Details

Gather and document login access for: hosting platform, domain registrar, CMS admin, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any third-party integration tools.

Test each login before the project begins. Missing access on week one of discovery is the most avoidable delay in any redesign project.

Document Current Technical Setup

List the current platform, hosting provider, any custom code or plugins, and all third-party integrations. This technical inventory is a prerequisite for an accurate agency scope and quote.

An agency that discovers a complex custom plugin during development will raise a change order for the time that was not scoped.

Identify Technical Constraints and Hard Requirements

Document systems the new site must integrate with, security or compliance requirements, and hosting restrictions before the brief is issued. These constraints affect platform choice and architecture decisions.

Discovering them after the platform is selected creates expensive change scenarios. Use what the discovery phase covers to understand how your technical preparation feeds into discovery.

How Preparation Feeds Into Each Phase

How phases use your preparation is the clearest argument for doing the preparation work thoroughly. The downstream benefits of complete preparation compound through every phase.

Every hour invested in preparation typically saves two to three hours of agency time and client management time in later phases.

How Preparation Speeds Up Discovery

An agency that receives prepared analytics, a content audit, a stakeholder summary, and documented goals can complete discovery in half the time of an agency that must extract this information from an unprepared client.

The brief produced is more accurate and the scope is tighter.

How Preparation Improves Design Decisions

When the designer receives real content, accurate brand assets, and a clear understanding of the audience and goals, design decisions are grounded in reality rather than assumption.

Pages designed around placeholder text rarely survive first contact with the actual content.

How Preparation Reduces Post-Launch Surprises

Access issues, missing redirects, and content delays are the top three causes of launch day problems.

Preparation addresses all three before the project begins. Clients who complete preparation thoroughly have noticeably smoother launches than those who skip it.

Conclusion

Preparation is the client's contribution to the redesign's success. The more complete it is before the agency arrives, the faster, cheaper, and better the project will go.

Agencies can only work with what they are given, and what they are given determines what they can produce.

Create a preparation checklist from this article's sections and assign each task to a team member with a due date.

Target having everything ready one week before the agency kickoff so there is time to address any gaps before the first discovery session begins.

Webflow Development Services

Webflow Experts On-Demand

Whether you're starting fresh or need a full revamp—we create fast, modern Webflow sites built for growth.

Let's talk

LOW/CODE Agency Provides a Preparation Checklist Before Every Project Starts

LOW/CODE Agency's client onboarding process guides clients through preparation before discovery begins, so the project starts from a position of clarity rather than extraction.

LOW/CODE Agency operates as a strategic product team, not a dev shop.

We provide every new client with a structured preparation checklist, a pre-discovery briefing document, and a dedicated point of contact to answer preparation questions before day one.

• Client Preparation Checklist: Structured task list covering analytics export, content audit, stakeholder interviews, brand assets, and technical access before discovery begins.
• Pre-Discovery Briefing Document: Template brief clients complete before the first discovery session to ensure inputs are ready when the agency team needs them.
• Stakeholder Interview Facilitation: Structured interview process for gathering and synthesizing internal stakeholder input before design begins.
• Analytics Baseline Capture: Pre-launch baseline documentation covering all KPIs the redesign will be measured against, completed before any design work starts.
• Content Audit Support: Framework for completing a page-by-page content inventory and gap analyzis before the design brief is finalized.
• Technical Discovery Checklist: Pre-engagement technical inventory covering platform, integrations, constraints, and access requirements.
• Access Verification Protocol: Checklist ensuring all platform access is confirmed and tested before discovery day one.

Our expert redesign preparation support has helped 450+ products launch successfully, with clients including Coca-Cola, American Express, Sotheby's, Medtronic, Zapier, and Dataiku. Start with a scoping call to get your preparation checklist today.