Website redesign checklist

Digital presence is essential for companies in every field, as modern customers search things on the web more frequently than they do offline. The good news is that there are many free or affordable tools, which allow companies with not enough experience and budget to construct their websites. 

From the other point of view, the availability of affordable resources makes the competition among websites harsher. Firstly, the number of websites significantly increases. Secondly, even with the carefully customized design, users might identify that the same templates stand behind different websites, making the website less unique and creative in the users' eyes. 

That's why the common approach among many companies is building an affordable initial version of websites at the beginning of their operations. Later, when that website helps them reach particular levels of popularity, income, and expertise, companies redesign their websites to upgrade their brand image in the customers' eyes. 

For that more profound level of website design, companies usually refer to professional web agencies. Here, specialists approach the redesign project from the aesthetic point of view and consider the UX and functionality of the website. 

From the perspective of web agencies

It's not easy to redesign a website, as the new design's success is generally a subjective thing and highly depends on the communication with the clients. Web agencies may justify the certain design, claiming that it corresponds to the modern trends and the functionality requirements of the industry. However, the redesign requestors may still be unsatisfied because, in their turn, they want to have something close to their branding and imagination. 

Therefore, project managers in web agencies have a crucial role in successfully connecting clients with the project team and finding the compromising middle point of negotiations. 

Usually, it's practical to have an initial face-to-face meeting, where designers and developers have the opportunity to meet their clients and better understand what kind of mood the new design should have. Personal communication is usually the best way to transfer ideas and create a productive environment for future work. 

Later, the ongoing communication is usually carried out with the project management tools like Trello, Teamwork, etc. Via those tools, clients have the opportunity to do the follow-up on how the project is going. In this way, clients can also share feedback on every step of the implementation phase and do not request to change everything in the end completely. 

However, in many communities, people do not find step-by-step communication via the project management tools comfortable. Especially if the clients are not from IT or other tech-advanced industries, they might prefer face-to-face and mobile communication over any PM innovative tool web agencies suggest. 

Clustdoc suggests a short, condensed, and organized checklist for the website redesign projects to make this process easier and more convenient for web agencies and project managers. With this digital document, all the main steps of the redesign project can be quickly filled in and become available for both sides. 

The main sections of the checklist include:

• Moodboard
• The current branded assets
• The new content that should be filled in
• Additional services like content localization and content proofread

For the cases when clients might require something extra of the above-mentioned fields, there is an opportunity to add, remove or edit any section of the checklist.