FAQs: Website Redesign Lessons

In this list of frequently asked questions, our clients and other stakeholders share website redesign lessons they learned, some the hard way, to help you navigate the process with ease.

Website Redesign Lessons from Experts Who Know

To create this article, we asked several clients and others in the industry a series of questions about the most important lessons they learned during website redesign projects. Their answers and insights are below. To increase candor, we anonymized their responses.

Soup-to-Nuts Website Redesigns

Also, for the purpose of this article, we asked about the entire process of a full website redesign, from initial strategy through launch, ongoing maintenance, and support over time. We also include articles and other resources to dig deeper on each topic.

1. How should I find a good firm to redesign my website?

Many people we spoke to advocate for referrals and suggest starting with your network. “Word of mouth is often the best way to find a resource,” one noted.

However, this might not generate responses from a diverse list of candidates. By staying within your network, you could miss out on finding the best fit.

For a more equitable approach, others also use search engines and AI tools to narrow down their search. Since SEO is often an important component of a website redesign project, some clients want to be sure the partner they choose also ranks well in search engines.

You don’t need to define your entire scope of work in an initial conversation. However, you do need to understand whether a potential candidate has the chops to successfully execute your project. Be sure to interview enough potential candidates to make an educated decision. If possible, call references.

2. Should I create an RFP?

Given the level of resources and risk involved in a website redesign project, it can be tempting to issue an RFP for your project. We don’t recommend this. Due to their limitations, RFPs restrict flexibility and undermine your ability to improve a project based on continuous learning.

Instead, consider looking at qualifications-based criteria to help you make a more educated decision about your next website redesign partner.

3. How can I improve clarity on a website redesign project?

Clear communication is key to the success of any project, especially a site redesign. Getting clarity from stakeholders on their wants and needs for the redesign is critical. “I want it to be better” has to translate into actionable information through stakeholder interviews, user testing, and research.

A focus group exercise in which you ask site visitors “what are the three reasons you come to this website?” can be useful. You might find that users want to do something entirely different than what you want them to do. In fact, you can probably count on that.

This website redesign lesson can guide a site’s architecture, and frame site priorities moving forward. Several people we spoke to highlighted the importance of clear communications and a rigorous discovery process during a site redesign.

4. How can I effectively manage website redesign expectations?

A collaboration is not a democracy. You should always get input from important stakeholders, but that doesn’t mean that all staff has decision making power. It’s critical to give people insight but to be clear that they are being consulted, not deciding.

Emphasize to project stakeholders that this is a PROCESS. Needs must be prioritized, and getting to everything will take time. It is not uncommon to prioritize items, then re-prioritize them as you learn new things.

Clearly understand your goals, your budget, and who your users are. This will help to manage expectations and move the project along more smoothly.

5. How can we improve the website design process?

Third-party designers will be more objective, especially when it comes to critical decision-making about your organization. This is incredibly useful. Experienced designers will also remove as much subjectivity from the design process as possible and provide clear expectations around process, number of revisions, defining success, and so on.

If they don’t do this, consider finding another designer.

Provide your design team with key information and the assets necessary for them to succeed. From there, let them run with it. You hire experts in web design. Take their advice.

6. How can we better use data to drive website redesign decision-making?

Content audits and product roadmapping sessions offer incredibly useful ways to incorporate data into your decision-making process. But you have to be ruthless.

People want to hang on to tradition, i.e. “this is on our website because it’s always been on our website.” Using performance data from analytics tools can help drive important decisions during a website redesign. For example, if someone asks why a page is no longer on your site, can you use data to tell them why?

7. Can we guarantee success over time?

A successful site launch is one thing, but it’s just as important to maintain and create continued success over time. No digital project is ever “finished”. Instead, it becomes a series of measurable experiments that help you improve upon previous successes.

The only way to guarantee success over time is to continuously measure performance progress and adjust accordingly based on insights learned from your measurements.

In other words, you need to understand what’s working for you and what’s not working. More importantly, you need to know what’s working for your visitors and what’s not working. This changes over time as you add new features and content to your website. Measuring this becomes the basis for an ongoing focus on continuous improvement.

Website Redesign Lessons in Practice

Website redesign projects can go off the rails for any number of reasons. They can also strengthen relationships between an organization, its users, and its agency partner.

The answers above came from real website lessons learned by our clients and other people we spoke to about past projects. We hope you found their insights useful. As always, if you have questions, please reach out.