Website Redesign: Your Guide to Key Steps, Costs, & Mistakes to Avoid

Website Redesign: Your Guide to Key Steps, Costs, & Mistakes to Avoid

Website Redesign: Your Guide to Key Steps, Costs, & Mistakes to Avoid

50 milliseconds. That’s all you have to make a good first impression on your users. And if you’re reading this, your website doesn’t quite hit the mark where first impressions are involved.

At Fivecube, we help website owners boost conversions, sales, and engagement with empathy- and data-driven website redesign services. Here’s what you should know about website redesign, from when to opt for it to key steps and mistakes to avoid.

Be Warned: Redesign ≠ Refresh

Website redesign isn’t about cosmetic changes to how your website looks. Such changes, like replacing fonts or illustrations with more modern ones, require a simple website refresh.

Redesigning a website, in turn, means reviewing and overhauling its structure, user flows, navigation, layout, and sometimes even features. So, as you can imagine, it’s a more complex project than a basic website refresh.

3 Signs It’s Time to Redesign Your Website

How do you know it’s time for a complete overhaul? Reasons may vary from one case to another. That said, in our experience, these are the three telltale signs you should consider a redesign:

  • Subpar user feedback or metrics. Dissatisfaction with the website’s UX can manifest itself in negative reviews, high bounce rate, high churn, low user engagement, and low conversion metrics.

  • Rebranding. If you’re radically changing your whole brand, your website should reflect your new brand story and visual identity.

  • Technical issues. High error rates, slow loading speed, and persisting bugs undermine the UX and hurt your SERP rankings.

How to Redesign a Website: 10 Key Steps

So, it’s settled: you need a website redesign. Now what? Here are the 10 key steps to follow, based on our approach to website and app redesign services.

Full Website Audit

Before revamping every single page, you need to understand what works and what doesn’t in your current design, as well as who your users are. So, take note of:

  • Traffic sources

  • Engagement metrics: bounce rate, conversion rate

  • Page load time

  • Mobile responsiveness

  • User feedback

  • SERP rankings

  • Top lead-generating and sales-generating pages

  • On-page user behavior via heatmaps

Competitor & Market Research

Next, take a look at your competitors and evaluate their websites’ navigation, content strategy, layout, design, and marketing tactics. Market research, in turn, will help you better understand your target audience and their online habits, needs, and preferences.

Planning

You should have a full grasp of what you want to achieve with the redesign. Is it a sales increase? Higher conversions on the newsletter? Well-defined goals are a must if you want to find the right design solutions.

Sitemap & UX Design

A sitemap is a scheme of your website’s pages and how they relate to each other. It describes which pages your new website will include, as well as how users will be able to navigate between them. Think of it as a blueprint for your new website’s structure.

Wireframing & Prototyping

Designers create wireframes to redesign website page layouts. Those wireframes are then iteratively transformed into high-fidelity mockups with sleek typography, appealing visual elements, a balanced color scheme, and animations.

Implementation

Depending on your current tech stack and whether you want to change it during the redesign, you might need a development team to turn mockups into a fully functional website. Or, if you need a WordPress website redesign, for example, you’ll need someone experienced in WordPress to implement the changes.

Content Migration/Creation & SEO Configuration

Next, you may need to migrate your existing content to the redesigned website and/or create new copy for it. You’ll also need an SEO specialist to ensure your redesigned website is crawled as soon as possible and tweak its keywords, alt text, and meta tags if necessary.

Redirect Map

If the redesign involves URL changes, you’ll need a 301 redirect map to ensure you don’t miss out on traffic flocking to your old URLs. The redirects will also help you preserve your former SEO rankings.

Testing

Your new website needs to be thoroughly tested to prevent bugs, errors, and performance hiccups. Besides checking functionality and performance, test the website for usability and user experience.

Launch & Monitoring

Once your redesign is ready, it’s time for it to go live. Roll it out, keep a close eye on its reception by monitoring relevant metrics, and don’t forget about conducting A/B testing where appropriate.

So, it’s settled: you need a website redesign. Now what? Here are the 10 key steps to follow, based on our approach to website and app redesign services.

Full Website Audit

Before revamping every single page, you need to understand what works and what doesn’t in your current design, as well as who your users are. So, take note of:

  • Traffic sources

  • Engagement metrics: bounce rate, conversion rate

  • Page load time

  • Mobile responsiveness

  • User feedback

  • SERP rankings

  • Top lead-generating and sales-generating pages

  • On-page user behavior via heatmaps

Competitor & Market Research

Next, take a look at your competitors and evaluate their websites’ navigation, content strategy, layout, design, and marketing tactics. Market research, in turn, will help you better understand your target audience and their online habits, needs, and preferences.

Planning

You should have a full grasp of what you want to achieve with the redesign. Is it a sales increase? Higher conversions on the newsletter? Well-defined goals are a must if you want to find the right design solutions.

Sitemap & UX Design

A sitemap is a scheme of your website’s pages and how they relate to each other. It describes which pages your new website will include, as well as how users will be able to navigate between them. Think of it as a blueprint for your new website’s structure.

Wireframing & Prototyping

Designers create wireframes to redesign website page layouts. Those wireframes are then iteratively transformed into high-fidelity mockups with sleek typography, appealing visual elements, a balanced color scheme, and animations.

Implementation

Depending on your current tech stack and whether you want to change it during the redesign, you might need a development team to turn mockups into a fully functional website. Or, if you need a WordPress website redesign, for example, you’ll need someone experienced in WordPress to implement the changes.

Content Migration/Creation & SEO Configuration

Next, you may need to migrate your existing content to the redesigned website and/or create new copy for it. You’ll also need an SEO specialist to ensure your redesigned website is crawled as soon as possible and tweak its keywords, alt text, and meta tags if necessary.

Redirect Map

If the redesign involves URL changes, you’ll need a 301 redirect map to ensure you don’t miss out on traffic flocking to your old URLs. The redirects will also help you preserve your former SEO rankings.

Testing

Your new website needs to be thoroughly tested to prevent bugs, errors, and performance hiccups. Besides checking functionality and performance, test the website for usability and user experience.

Launch & Monitoring

Once your redesign is ready, it’s time for it to go live. Roll it out, keep a close eye on its reception by monitoring relevant metrics, and don’t forget about conducting A/B testing where appropriate.

So, it’s settled: you need a website redesign. Now what? Here are the 10 key steps to follow, based on our approach to website and app redesign services.

Full Website Audit

Before revamping every single page, you need to understand what works and what doesn’t in your current design, as well as who your users are. So, take note of:

  • Traffic sources

  • Engagement metrics: bounce rate, conversion rate

  • Page load time

  • Mobile responsiveness

  • User feedback

  • SERP rankings

  • Top lead-generating and sales-generating pages

  • On-page user behavior via heatmaps

Competitor & Market Research

Next, take a look at your competitors and evaluate their websites’ navigation, content strategy, layout, design, and marketing tactics. Market research, in turn, will help you better understand your target audience and their online habits, needs, and preferences.

Planning

You should have a full grasp of what you want to achieve with the redesign. Is it a sales increase? Higher conversions on the newsletter? Well-defined goals are a must if you want to find the right design solutions.

Sitemap & UX Design

A sitemap is a scheme of your website’s pages and how they relate to each other. It describes which pages your new website will include, as well as how users will be able to navigate between them. Think of it as a blueprint for your new website’s structure.

Wireframing & Prototyping

Designers create wireframes to redesign website page layouts. Those wireframes are then iteratively transformed into high-fidelity mockups with sleek typography, appealing visual elements, a balanced color scheme, and animations.

Implementation

Depending on your current tech stack and whether you want to change it during the redesign, you might need a development team to turn mockups into a fully functional website. Or, if you need a WordPress website redesign, for example, you’ll need someone experienced in WordPress to implement the changes.

Content Migration/Creation & SEO Configuration

Next, you may need to migrate your existing content to the redesigned website and/or create new copy for it. You’ll also need an SEO specialist to ensure your redesigned website is crawled as soon as possible and tweak its keywords, alt text, and meta tags if necessary.

Redirect Map

If the redesign involves URL changes, you’ll need a 301 redirect map to ensure you don’t miss out on traffic flocking to your old URLs. The redirects will also help you preserve your former SEO rankings.

Testing

Your new website needs to be thoroughly tested to prevent bugs, errors, and performance hiccups. Besides checking functionality and performance, test the website for usability and user experience.

Launch & Monitoring

Once your redesign is ready, it’s time for it to go live. Roll it out, keep a close eye on its reception by monitoring relevant metrics, and don’t forget about conducting A/B testing where appropriate.

A Word on Website Redesign Cost & Duration

How much can your redesign cost you? Well, that depends on multiple factors, such as:

  • Tech stack, platform, or CMS used

  • Number of web pages

  • Functionality involved, including e-commerce capabilities

  • Need for custom design elements and visuals

  • Need for custom forms, third-party integrations

All of this also impacts how long a website redesign takes, which can be anywhere from up to a week to several weeks or even months.

3 Redesign Mistakes to Avoid

Ready to start redesigning your website? Keep these three common mistakes in mind: 

  • Going full DIY without the right skills. Overlooking this increases the risk you’ll need reworks sooner rather than later.

  • Ignoring the mobile design. This will hurt your SEO rankings (Google crawls mobile versions by default).

  • Not having clear goals. Your goals will dictate UX/UI design choices, tech stack selection, and every other project decision.

In Conclusion: Your Website Redesign Checklist

Here’s your quick recap of the key website redesign steps:

  1. Audit your website

  2. Research competitors and the target audience

  3. Define goals

  4. Create a sitemap

  5. Design wireframes and prototypes

  6. Turn mockups into a functional website

  7. Migrate existing content or create new one

  8. Set up redirects

  9. Test the redesigned website

  10. Go live and monitor metrics

Need a reliable expert to enhance your website’s UX? Our product redesign services can help you transform user journeys into your website’s value-adding strength. Contact us to discuss your needs in detail and get a budget and timeline estimate for your specific project.

Jul 15, 2025

By

Fivecube Team

Want a tailored solution?

Let’s build something great together!

By clicking ‘Submit,’ you consent to our Privacy Policy and marketing use of your information.