You’ve made the decision. Maybe you’ve even picked the agency. Now comes the part nobody warns you about: the work you need to do before the work begins.
If you search for how to prepare for a website redesign, you’ll find checklists of logo files and login credentials. That’s not preparation. That’s admin. The preparation that actually determines whether you get a great website or an expensive disappointment happens before you ever see a wireframe.
Here’s what we’ve learned after hundreds of website redesign projects: your preparation directly determines your outcome. Not just the quality of the final site, but the budget, timeline, and whether the whole process feels like a collaboration or a hostage negotiation.
This guide covers everything you need to do before kickoff. Not just what assets to gather, but what internal conversations to have, what decisions to make, and what realistic expectations to set. Use it whether you’re working with us or anyone else.
Why preparation matters more than you think
The quality of what goes in determines the quality of what comes out.
Your agency can research your industry. They can study your competitors. They can analyze your analytics. But they can’t know what it actually feels like to work with your company. They can’t articulate your real differentiation unless you can articulate it first. They can’t represent your brand DNA without your input.
When agencies work from limited information, they fill gaps with assumptions. Generic assumptions produce generic websites. Websites that look like every other company in your industry because that’s all the agency had to work from.
The companies that get exceptional results from redesign projects share one thing: they invested serious time in knowledge transfer. They treated discovery as a genuine partnership, not a checkbox to rush through.
This isn’t just about the agency understanding you. It’s about you understanding yourself well enough to communicate it clearly.
The internal alignment problem
Before you can tell an agency what you want, you need internal agreement on what you want.
This sounds obvious. It isn’t. We’ve walked into discovery meetings where the CEO, VP of Sales, and Marketing Director each described fundamentally different visions for the website. Different target audiences. Different success metrics. Different ideas about what makes the company special.
That’s not an agency problem. That’s a preparation problem.
If your leadership team hasn’t aligned on website goals before the project starts, you’ll spend agency hours (and your budget) working through internal disagreements. Or worse, you’ll end up with a website designed by committee that tries to serve everyone’s vision and succeeds at none of them.
Questions to answer internally before kickoff
Get your key stakeholders in a room and work through these before your first agency meeting:
What business outcome does this website need to create? Not “more leads” or “better brand perception.” Specific outcomes. Are you trying to support a funding round? Enable a higher price point? Enter a new market? Reduce sales cycle length? The website serves business strategy. Define the strategy first.
Watch for internal contradictions here. If your business strategy is to move upmarket to enterprise clients, but your website preparation focuses on “preserving our friendly small-business vibe,” your redesign is already at war with your business goals. Better to surface that tension now than midway through design.
Who is this website actually for? Your customers, obviously. But which customers? Your ideal customers or everyone who might buy? Current customers or prospects? If you’re trying to attract enterprise clients but your current base is SMB, that’s a specific positioning challenge the website needs to solve.
What do visitors need to do? Not what you want them to feel. What specific action should they take? Request a demo? Download a resource? Call a phone number? If your leadership team can’t agree on the primary conversion goal, your website will have competing calls-to-action fighting for attention.
What makes you genuinely different? Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Most companies think their differentiators are things like “great customer service” or “quality products.” Those aren’t differentiators. Those are baseline expectations. Your agency will push back on weak positioning. Better to do that hard thinking before you’re on the clock.
How will you measure success? Define the metrics before the project, not after. If you wait until launch to decide how you’ll measure ROI, you’ll either claim victory based on vanity metrics or feel disappointed without knowing why.
Real talk: if your team can’t reach consensus on these questions, pause the redesign. A website project won’t fix strategic misalignment. It will just make it more expensive.
Turn alignment into a document
Once you’ve had these conversations, write down what you decided. You don’t need a 20-page deck. A simple one-to-three page website design brief is enough.
At minimum, capture: your business goals for the website, who it’s for, what you want visitors to do, your key messages and proof points, and any technical or compliance requirements that aren’t negotiable.
If you’re still selecting a vendor, this brief becomes the foundation of your website RFP or proposal request. If you’ve already chosen an agency, it becomes the starting point for their discovery process. Either way, the thinking you do here keeps everyone grounded in the same reality throughout the project.
This document will evolve. As the project gets more detailed, that simple brief can grow into a lightweight website requirements document that spells out must-have functionality and scope. But having even a basic written brief prevents the drift that happens when alignment exists only in people’s heads.
What you’ll need to gather
Beyond the strategic conversations, there’s practical preparation. Most agencies will need the following from you, organized by when you’ll need it.
Before the first meeting
Brand assets. Logo files in multiple formats (vector preferred). Brand guidelines if you have them. Color codes. Fonts. Any visual standards documentation.
Access credentials. Current website hosting login. Domain registrar access. Google Analytics (or whatever analytics you use). Google Search Console. Any marketing tools connected to your site. Don’t scramble for these during the project. Gather them now.
Current website documentation. Any existing sitemap. Content inventory if you have one. Past analytics reports. Previous SEO audits. Performance reports. The more context you can provide about where you are, the better the agency can plan where you’re going.
Competitive context. A list of 5-10 competitors you’d want someone to study. Include both direct competitors and aspirational comparisons. If there’s a company in another industry whose brand presence you admire, include that too.
During discovery
Stakeholder availability. The agency will want to interview key people at your company. Block time on calendars now. Discovery interviews typically run 30-60 minutes per person, and scheduling conflicts cause more project delays than almost anything else.
Customer access (if possible). The best website projects include actual customer input. If you can provide introductions to 3-5 customers willing to share their perspective, the insights will be worth the coordination effort.
Historical context. What’s been tried before? What worked? What failed? What do you wish your current website did that it doesn’t? The agency shouldn’t recreate problems you’ve already solved, and they can’t learn from your past experiments if you don’t share them.
Before content development
Existing content audit. Which pages on your current site perform well? Which can be killed? Which need significant revision? If you have a 200-page website, don’t expect to evaluate every page during the project. Do that homework in advance.
Subject matter expert availability. Someone at your company knows your products, services, and customers better than anyone. That person needs blocked time to review content, answer questions, and provide feedback. If they’re “too busy,” your content will suffer.
Content assets. Case studies. Testimonials. Photography. Video. Awards and certifications. Client logos you have permission to use. These take time to gather, organize, and clear legally. Start now.
Setting realistic timeline expectations
Here’s where most preparation guides fail you. They don’t talk about how long this actually takes.
A professional website redesign for a mid-market company typically takes 4-8 months from kickoff to launch. Some projects run faster. Complex projects run longer. But if someone promises you a strategic, custom website in 6 weeks, be skeptical.
Why does it take that long? Because good work requires iteration, and iteration requires time.
What happens in those months
Discovery (2-4 weeks). Research, interviews, competitive analysis, strategic planning. This phase sets the foundation. Rushing it means building on assumptions instead of insights.
Strategy (2-4 weeks). Sitemap development, content strategy, messaging framework, conversion planning. This is where the thinking happens. It’s also where internal alignment gets tested.
Design (4-8 weeks). Wireframes, visual design, revisions, and approval. Most projects need 2-3 rounds of design refinement. Each round requires your feedback, your internal review, and your decisions.
Development (4-8 weeks). Building the actual website. This is often faster than design because decisions have already been made. But it still requires your review at key milestones.
Content (ongoing). Content development typically runs parallel to design and development. This is often the longest pole in the tent because it depends on your team’s availability to review and approve.
Launch preparation (1-2 weeks). QA testing, redirect mapping, training, and final preparations.
The part you control
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you are part of the schedule.
When the agency sends something for your review, that review time is on your timeline, not theirs. If you need to schedule internal meetings, gather stakeholder feedback, and get executive sign-off before responding, build that into your expectations.
We’ve seen projects that should take 5 months stretch to 10 because the client took 3-4 weeks to respond to each deliverable. The math doesn’t work. If you want a website done by a specific date, work backward from that date and commit to the review turnaround times required.
Quick reality check: if your organization takes two weeks to make decisions by committee, your project will take longer than if one person has final authority. That’s not bad or good. It’s just reality. Plan accordingly.
How much time you’ll actually spend
Something agencies rarely tell you upfront: you have a time commitment too.
Expect your internal project lead to spend 3-5 hours per week during active phases.
That includes reviewing deliverables, gathering stakeholder input, coordinating approvals, and communicating with the agency. During intensive periods like content development or launch prep, it might spike higher.
Subject matter experts across your organization will each spend 5-10 hours total across the project for discovery interviews, content reviews, and feedback sessions. If you have five SMEs involved, that’s 25-50 hours of collective internal time.
If those numbers sound impossible given your team’s current workload, you have three options: extend the timeline, reduce the scope, or accept that the project will stall when people can’t make time. Decide which trade-off you’re making before you start.
What realistic budgets look like
This is where agency content usually goes quiet. Talking about money is uncomfortable. But you can’t prepare properly without understanding investment reality.
Website redesign costs vary dramatically based on scope, complexity, and who’s doing the work. Here are rough ranges for mid-market companies working with professional agencies:
Template-based websites with light customization: $10,000-$25,000. These are often good options for simple businesses with straightforward needs. Don’t expect strategic differentiation.
Custom-designed websites with strategic foundation: $25,000-$75,000. This is where most mid-market companies land. You’re paying for research, strategy, custom design, and professional development. The wide range reflects differences in scope, functionality, and agency positioning.
Complex enterprise websites or full rebrands: $75,000-$200,000+. Multiple audience segments, complex integrations, extensive content needs, or combining brand strategy with website development. At this level, you’re not just buying a website. You’re buying a dedicated team working on strategy, user experience, content, design, and development simultaneously, often with significant custom functionality or data integration.
Factors that affect cost
Number of unique page templates. Every distinct page layout requires design and development. A 50-page website might only need 8-10 templates, but 50 completely unique pages would cost significantly more.
Custom functionality. Calculators, configurators, portals, integrations with your CRM or other systems. These require development time beyond standard website work.
Content creation. Are you providing finished content, or does the agency need to write it? Professional copywriting adds cost but often improves results.
Photography and video. Stock imagery versus custom photography. Simple headshots versus video production. Visual assets often represent a significant budget component.
Ongoing needs. Will you need hosting? Maintenance? Ongoing updates? Build recurring costs into your total investment planning.
Build in contingency
Here’s something most agencies won’t tell you during the sales process: once research starts, better ideas emerge.
Maybe discovery reveals a market positioning opportunity you hadn’t considered. Maybe user research suggests a different site architecture would convert better. Maybe competitive analysis shows a gap you could own with additional content.
These aren’t bait-and-switch tactics. They’re the natural outcome of doing the work properly. Research creates clarity. Clarity often suggests adjustments.
Budget an additional 10-20% as contingency for good ideas that emerge during the project. You don’t have to spend it. But having it available prevents good strategic thinking from being killed by budget constraints.
How to evaluate agencies and proposals
You’re probably already past this stage if you’re reading preparation content. But if you’re still evaluating options, or want to pressure-test your current choice, here’s what actually matters.
Questions that reveal capability
“What specifically will you research during discovery?” Vague answers like “we’ll learn about your business” signal surface-level discovery. You want specifics: stakeholder interviews, customer research methods, competitive analysis depth, analytics audit approach.
“Who will I work with day-to-day?” The people in the pitch meeting aren’t always the people doing the work. Ask directly. Meet the actual project team if possible.
A weak answer sounds like “our talented team of designers and developers.” A strong answer sounds like “You’ll work primarily with Sarah, your project manager, and have direct access to Mike, the lead designer, in weekly reviews. Here’s their background.” Names and specifics signal that real people are assigned. Vague “team” language often means they’ll figure it out later.
“What did your designer learn from the last discovery process?” This tests whether the agency actually practices integration. If designers just receive filtered briefs, that’s coordination, not integration. If they participate in research firsthand, insights flow directly into design decisions.
“Show me research deliverables from a past project.” Not case studies showing the finished website. Actual strategic documents, research summaries, competitive analyses. If they can’t show process artifacts, they may not produce them.
“What would make you recommend a competitor instead?” Agencies confident in their capabilities can articulate when they’re not the right fit. Agencies desperate for any work will promise to be good at everything.
Red flags in proposals
Identical process for every client. Your project has specific needs. If the proposal reads like a template with your name filled in, the work might be equally generic.
Unrealistic timelines. Quality custom work takes time. If someone promises what others quote in 6 months delivered in 8 weeks, something will be cut. Usually strategy.
Vague deliverables. “Website design and development” isn’t specific enough. You should know exactly what you’re getting: how many page templates, revision rounds, what’s included in development, what requires additional investment.
No discussion of your role. A proposal that doesn’t acknowledge what you need to contribute is either assuming you’ll figure it out or planning to work around your limited input. Neither approach produces great results.
Pushy close tactics. Artificial urgency, aggressive discounting, or pressure to sign immediately are sales tactics, not signs of a healthy partnership. Good agencies have enough demand to be patient and selective.
The knowledge transfer conversation
This is where preparation becomes partnership.
The best website projects include a genuine knowledge transfer process. Not just the agency asking questions. A real exchange where you help them understand your business deeply enough to represent it authentically.
What the agency needs to know
Your actual differentiation. Not your marketing copy. What genuinely makes working with you different? What do customers say when they refer others? What would competitors never be able to claim?
One warning: your perspective on what makes you unique might not actually be unique. You’ve been inside your business so long that things feel distinctive when they’re actually industry standard. Good agencies have a thousand-foot view. Be open to hearing that your differentiation needs work.
What it feels like to work with you. This is harder to articulate than features and benefits. Is your company buttoned-up and professional or casual and friendly? Fast-moving or deliberate? This feeling needs to come through in design, content, and user experience.
Your customers’ actual experience. Not the idealized customer journey. The real one. What problems do they actually have? What questions do they ask? What makes them choose you over alternatives? What nearly made them walk away?
Where you’re headed. Is this website meant to support the company as it is today, or the company you’re building? Are you entering new markets? Launching new products? Targeting different customers? The website should serve your strategy, not just document your current state.
How to show up for discovery
Complete the discovery document thoughtfully. If your agency sends pre-work, invest real time in it. One-line answers to important questions force the agency to make inferences. Those inferences might be wrong.
Be available for the deep conversation. Written answers capture facts. Conversation captures nuance. The meeting where someone asks clarifying questions, challenges assumptions, and digs deeper is where real understanding develops.
Allow recording. Let the agency record discovery calls. They’ll capture details that notes miss. Better documentation means less repeated explanation and more accurate representation of your perspective.
Include more than the decision-maker. A project where the agency only talks to the CEO produces a website that reflects one perspective. Including department heads, customer-facing staff, and other stakeholders creates a more complete picture.
Here’s what good looks like: we ran a project where we interviewed each department head separately. We uncovered that different parts of the organization described the company’s value proposition differently. They didn’t realize they were misaligned until we showed them the patterns. That discovery became an opportunity for internal alignment that made the website dramatically more focused.
Here’s what doesn’t work: clients who are “too busy” give one-line answers to discovery questions. We have to guess at their goals, tastes, and expectations. The project becomes throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping something sticks. That’s a waste of everyone’s time and money.
Content preparation: the hidden timeline killer
More website redesigns are delayed by content than by any other factor.
Design and development can run on schedule while content sits incomplete. Then the entire launch waits on copy that should have been started months earlier.
Why content takes longer than expected
Subject matter experts are busy. The people who know your products and services well enough to write about them accurately have day jobs. Carving out time for website content competes with their primary responsibilities.
Approval processes are slow. Content needs review. Legal might need to weigh in. Leadership wants to see it. Each review cycle adds time, especially when reviewers have competing priorities.
Writing is harder than it looks. People underestimate how long it takes to write clear, compelling content. What seems like “just a few paragraphs” becomes hours of work when accuracy and persuasion both matter.
Migration decisions are complicated. If you have 200 pages, which ones come to the new site? Each page requires a decision: migrate as-is, revise substantially, consolidate with another page, or kill entirely. That’s 200 decisions.
Start content work early
Don’t wait for design to be finalized. Start content preparation during discovery.
Audit your current content now. Go through your existing site and categorize each page: keep and migrate, revise and migrate, consolidate, or delete. Make preliminary decisions your team can react to.
Identify content gaps. What pages does your current site lack that the new site needs? Case studies? Service detail pages? Resource content? New content takes longer than revised content. Identify gaps early.
Assign content owners. Every page needs someone responsible for providing or approving content. Assign those owners now, before the project starts. Get commitment for their availability.
Start collecting proof points. Testimonials, case studies, data points, client logos, certifications, awards. These take time to gather, format, and get permission to use. Begin that process immediately.
Content and SEO
Content decisions are SEO decisions. If your current site has search visibility, every page you rewrite, consolidate, or delete affects your rankings.
Identify high-performing pages. Check your analytics for pages that drive significant organic traffic. These pages need careful handling during migration. URL changes require redirects. Content changes require consideration of what’s working.
Plan redirects early. Every URL that changes needs a redirect to its new location. Every page that’s deleted needs a redirect to the most relevant remaining page. This mapping takes time, and mistakes can cost traffic.
Preserve what’s working. If a page ranks well, understand why before changing it. Sometimes pages rank for reasons that aren’t obvious. Wholesale rewrites can destroy visibility you’ve built over years.
Create a keyword map. Before writing new content, understand what search terms you want each page to target. This prevents internal competition where multiple pages fight for the same keywords.
Managing the project internally
Even after you’ve hired an agency, you have a job to do throughout the project.
Designate a single point of contact
Someone at your company needs to own the project internally. This person:
Coordinates stakeholder input. When feedback is needed, they gather it from the right people. When decisions are required, they drive to resolution. The agency shouldn’t have to navigate your org chart.
Manages internal review timelines. If the executive team needs to see designs before approval, this person schedules that meeting. If legal needs to review content, this person makes it happen. Internal coordination happens on your side.
Speaks with authority. This person’s feedback represents the company’s feedback. If they can’t make final decisions, they know who can and how to reach them quickly.
Protects the project’s priority. When competing priorities threaten to delay the website, this person advocates internally for maintaining momentum.
The alternative, where the agency waits for feedback from multiple people who disagree, each with different levels of authority, is how projects stall indefinitely.
Set internal expectations
Block time on calendars. Key stakeholders need scheduled time for reviews and feedback sessions. Don’t let the website project compete with their daily responsibilities in the moment. Book the time in advance.
Agree on decision-making authority. Who can approve design? Who has final say on content? Who can authorize budget adjustments? Clarify this before the project starts, not during a time-sensitive review cycle.
Establish feedback norms. How will you compile feedback from multiple reviewers? What happens when stakeholders disagree? Will you consolidate input before sending to the agency, or send conflicting opinions for them to resolve?
Communicate the timeline. Make sure everyone involved understands the project schedule and their role in it. Delays from one stakeholder affect everyone downstream.
Prevent the late-stage executive restart
This happens more than anyone admits: a website project proceeds through discovery, strategy, and design. The team is happy. Then, two weeks before launch, a senior executive sees the site for the first time and wants fundamental changes.
The project restarts. Budget evaporates. Timelines collapse. Everyone is frustrated.
The fix is simple but requires discipline: show work to senior stakeholders early, before it’s polished. Get the CEO’s reaction to wireframes, not finished designs. Show rough concepts before investing weeks in refinement.
Early feedback on unfinished work feels uncomfortable. But “I don’t like the direction” at the wireframe stage costs you a meeting. The same feedback on a finished design costs you weeks and tens of thousands of dollars.
If an executive is “too busy” to review early work, make clear what that means: they’re accepting whatever the team decides. You can’t have it both ways. Either engage early or trust the process.
What good feedback looks like
Your feedback directly affects the outcome. Learning to give useful feedback is a preparation exercise.
Be specific. “I don’t like it” gives the agency nothing to work with. “The tone feels too corporate for our brand, which is more casual and friendly” is actionable.
Explain the why. “Make the headline bigger” is a solution. The actual problem might be that the headline doesn’t stand out, which could be solved multiple ways. Share the underlying concern so the agency can find the best solution.
Reference your goals. Connect feedback to objectives. “Our target customer is technical buyers, and this feels too basic” is more useful than subjective preference.
Consolidate before sending. Internal disagreements should be resolved internally. Sending conflicting feedback from multiple stakeholders creates confusion and delays.
Respect the expertise you’re paying for. You hired professionals for a reason. When they recommend something different from your instinct, hear them out. They may be seeing patterns from their experience that you can’t see from inside your organization.
Post-launch: what most guides skip
Launching is not the finish line. What happens after launch determines long-term results.
Immediate post-launch
Monitor for issues. Broken links, display problems, missing content, form failures. Things slip through even comprehensive QA. Have a plan for rapid fixes in the first week.
Watch analytics closely. Traffic patterns, conversion rates, user behavior. Compare to pre-launch benchmarks. Some fluctuation is normal. Significant drops require investigation.
Check indexed pages. Monitor Google Search Console for indexing issues. Make sure your important pages are being found and that errors are addressed quickly.
Gather user feedback. If possible, talk to actual users about their experience. Real feedback reveals issues that internal testing misses.
Ongoing optimization
The best websites aren’t static. They improve based on real performance data.
Establish baseline metrics. You set success metrics before the project. Now measure them. What’s actually happening compared to what you planned?
Plan for iteration. Budget for ongoing changes based on what you learn. The sites that perform best treat launch as the starting point, not the finish.
Schedule regular reviews. Monthly or quarterly, look at performance data. What’s working? What isn’t? Where are the opportunities? Don’t let the website sit static while the world changes around it.
Keep the relationship. If your agency delivered well, they know your business deeply now. That institutional knowledge has value for ongoing optimization. Consider the value of partnership over project-based transactions.
The preparation checklist
Everything above, distilled into a working checklist you can print and use.
Strategic preparation
- Leadership alignment meeting completed
- Business objectives for the website defined
- Target audience clearly identified
- Primary conversion goal agreed upon
- Differentiation articulated (and pressure-tested)
- Success metrics established
- Simple brief document written and shared
Asset gathering
- Logo files collected (vector formats)
- Brand guidelines documented
- Color codes and fonts specified
- Website hosting access secured
- Domain registrar access confirmed
- Analytics access ready to share
- Competitor list prepared
Content preparation
- Current content audited
- Page-by-page decisions documented
- Content gaps identified
- Subject matter experts assigned
- Approval process defined
- Existing assets gathered (testimonials, case studies, imagery)
Internal organization
- Single point of contact designated
- Key stakeholders identified
- Decision-making authority clarified
- Review time blocked on calendars
- Feedback norms established
- Executive review scheduled at wireframe stage
Budget and timeline
- Investment range understood
- Contingency budget set aside
- Timeline expectations realistic
- Review turnaround commitments made
- Internal time commitment acknowledged (3-5 hrs/week for lead)
The preparation that matters most
After all these logistics, the single most important preparation is mindset.
Your website redesign is not something being done to you by an agency. It’s a collaborative process where your input directly shapes the outcome.
The clients who get the best results approach the project as partners. They website redesigninvest time in knowledge transfer. They’re available for discovery conversations. They give thoughtful feedback. They make decisions efficiently. They trust the expertise they’re paying for while contributing the expertise only they can provide.
The clients who get disappointing results treat the project as a transaction. They hand off requirements and wait for delivery. They’re too busy for the conversations that matter. Then they’re surprised when the output doesn’t feel like them.
You’ve already made the decision to invest in a redesign. That investment only pays off if you invest the preparation time to make it successful.
Ready to start that preparation? Here’s what to do next.
Schedule the internal alignment meeting with your stakeholders. Use the questions in this guide. Get agreement on objectives, audience, and success metrics before you ever talk to an agency about timelines and budgets.
That conversation is the foundation everything else builds on.
Need help thinking through your specific situation? Let’s talk.
