Website Redesign Process

Don't have time to read this? Schedule a 30-minute call and we will walk you through exactly how this applies to your business. Book a call

Key Takeaways

• A professional website redesign follows a defined sequence of phases: each phase produces specific deliverables that the next phase depends on.
• The phases most clients underestimate are discovery and content. Both take longer than expected and have the most impact on whether the final site performs.
• Client involvement is not limited to feedback rounds. The client team owns specific deliverables throughout the process: access, content, approvals, and decisions.
• Understanding the process before signing a contract helps set realistic expectations and prevents the frustration that comes from misaligned assumptions about how redesigns work.

The Full Redesign Process, Start to Finish

A professional website redesign runs across six to seven distinct phases. Here is what each phase involves, what it produces, and who does the work.

Phase 1: Discovery

Duration: 2–3 weeks

Who does it: The agency, with active client participation

What it produces: A documented understanding of the current state, the goals, and the constraints

Discovery is the phase most often skipped or compressed by clients who want to move directly to design. It is also the phase that determines whether the redesign produces results or just looks better.

What discovery covers:

• Analytics audit: Current traffic sources, top-performing pages, conversion funnel, mobile vs. desktop breakdown, exit pages
• SEO baseline: Current keyword rankings, organic traffic by page, technical SEO issues, backlink profile
• Stakeholder interviews: What does each internal stakeholder think the site needs to do better? What are the goals, the constraints, the non-negotiables?
• Competitive review: What are the strongest competitor sites doing, and where are the gaps?
• Content audit: What exists on the current site? What is worth keeping, what needs to be rewritten, what should be eliminated?
• Audience analysis: Who is the primary visitor? What are they looking for? How do they evaluate vendors?

Discovery deliverables typically include an audit report, a goals document, and a brief that defines the strategic direction for the redesign.

Phase 2: Strategy and Architecture

Duration: 1–2 weeks

Who does it: The agency; client approval required

What it produces: Sitemap, navigation structure, content brief, technical specification, redirect map

With discovery complete, the strategy phase translates findings into structural decisions:

• Sitemap: Every page that will exist in the new site, organized by hierarchy
• Navigation structure: What appears in the primary nav, what is in dropdowns, what is in the footer
• Content brief: What each page needs to say, what questions it must answer, what evidence it needs to include
• Technical specification: CMS structure, integrations, performance targets, accessibility requirements
• Redirect map: Every URL on the current site mapped to its destination in the new site

This phase must be client-approved before design begins. A design built on an unconfirmed sitemap or navigation structure will require redesign if the architecture changes.

Phase 3: Design

Duration: 3–4 weeks

Who does it: The design team; two client review rounds typical

What it produces: Wireframes, visual design, design system

Design happens in two stages:

Wireframes (1–1.5 weeks): Low-fidelity layouts that establish content hierarchy, component placement, navigation behavior, and CTA positioning without committing to visual style. Wireframe review is the cheapest time to make structural layout changes.

Visual design (2–2.5 weeks): High-fidelity mockups of key page templates, built to the approved wireframe structure. Includes typography, color palette, imagery direction, component library, and spacing system.

Design review rounds work best when:

• All stakeholders review simultaneously and provide feedback as a single consolidated document
• Feedback distinguishes between "this must change" and "this is a preference"
• One decision-maker has final approval authority

Unmanaged design rounds, where multiple stakeholders provide conflicting feedback at different times, are the primary source of design phase delays.

Phase 4: Content

Duration: 2–4 weeks (often the critical path)

Who does it: Copywriter (agency or client), with client approval

What it produces: Final copy for every page, image direction, case study content

Content is the most commonly underestimated phase. The site cannot launch without it, and it cannot be finalized after development without causing layout problems.

Content work includes:

• Page copy written to the content brief from the strategy phase
• Case studies written with client-provided outcome data
• Team bios and leadership profiles
• Image and photography direction or sourcing
• Video scripts if applicable

The critical dependency: development cannot be finalized until content is locked. Pages built to placeholder copy often need to be rebuilt when actual copy does not fit the layout.

Projects that front-load content, starting copy in parallel with wireframes, consistently launch on schedule. Projects that treat content as something to handle "after design is done" consistently do not.

Phase 5: Development

Duration: 3–5 weeks

Who does it: The development team

What it produces: A fully functional site on staging, ready for QA

Development builds the approved design in the CMS and implements all integrations.

What development includes:

• CMS build: page templates, content blocks, global components (header, footer, navigation)
• Responsive implementation across desktop, tablet, and mobile breakpoints
• Form creation and CRM integration
• Analytics and conversion tracking setup
• 301 redirect implementation from the redirect map
• Performance optimization: image compression, script management, lazy loading
• Schema markup implementation at the template level

Development scope is fixed to the approved brief. Requests for features or pages that are not in the original specification add time and cost that were not budgeted.

Phase 6: QA and Testing

Duration: 1–2 weeks

Who does it: The agency QA team, followed by client UAT (user acceptance testing)

What it produces: A launch-ready site with no open issues

QA covers:

• Cross-browser testing: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge on both Mac and Windows
• Cross-device testing: Desktop, tablet, iPhone, Android
• Form testing: Every form submits correctly and triggers the correct notification or CRM action
• Redirect testing: Every redirect in the map verified with a redirect checker tool
• SEO verification: Title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, sitemap, robots.txt
• Performance: Core Web Vitals vs. targets set in the brief
• Accessibility: Contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, alt text, ARIA labels
• Broken links: Internal links, navigation, footer

Client UAT is the client team's review of the fully built staging site before approving launch. This is the final opportunity to catch issues before the site goes live.

Phase 7: Launch

Duration: 1 week

Who does it: The agency with client coordination

What it produces: The live site, with monitoring in place

Launch is a structured process, not a single event.

What the Client Is Responsible For

A redesign is a collaborative project. The agency drives the work, but the client team owns specific deliverables that block progress if they are not delivered on schedule.

Every delay in a client deliverable pushes every downstream phase. The agencies that consistently deliver on time are the ones whose clients treat these deliverables with the same urgency as the agency treats its own work.

The website redesign communication plan that defines review windows, decision-makers, and escalation paths at the project start is the most effective tool for keeping client deliverables on schedule.

What a Good Redesign Process Feels Like

At each phase transition, the client team should feel informed and in control: they know what decisions have been made, why, and what comes next.

A redesign process that feels like a black box, where work disappears for weeks and then reappears as a finished product for approval, is a process that produces surprises. Surprises at the design review stage are expensive. Surprises at launch are very expensive.

The discovery phase expectations cover what good discovery looks like from the client's perspective and what questions to ask the agency to confirm that the process is being run correctly.

LOW/CODE Agency is a leading AI product team for SMBs and startups. We have shipped 450+ products for companies including Medtronic, American Express, and Sotheby's.

Every client gets a project timeline at the start of the engagement with phase milestones, review windows, and client deliverable dates all specified. There are no surprises about what is needed from the client team or when.

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

Ready to Start the Process?

LOW/CODE Agency is a leading AI product team for SMBs and startups. We have shipped 450+ products for companies including Medtronic, American Express, and Coca-Cola.

The 30-minute call is the first step: a scoping conversation to understand your current site, your goals, and whether this is the right time and investment for your business.

We build in Webflow, which gives us efficient development cycles, clean CMS architecture, and a strong performance foundation at the build level.

Website projects start at $10,000+. Let's talk