Business website checklist: 15 things to get right before you redesign

Most website projects go wrong before a single screen is designed. The brief says "modern and clean", the agency shows three homepage concepts, and six weeks later the business has a prettier site that brings in the same number of enquiries as the old one.

This checklist is what we go through before designing or redesigning a business website. It is ordered the way the work should happen: first what the site is for, then what visitors need to see, then the technical foundations that decide whether anyone finds it and whether you can tell what it earns.

Part 1: Purpose and structure

1. One main action per site

Decide the single action that matters most: a quote request, a booked call, a purchase, a sign-up. Every other action (newsletter, social follow, download) is secondary. When a site asks for five things equally, visitors do none of them.

Write it down as a sentence: "The site exists so that [who] can [do what] without having to call us first."

2. Pages built around what people search for

List the services or products you sell and the words customers actually use for them. Each distinct service that people search for separately deserves its own page, with its own heading, description and URL, instead of a single "Services" page with six paragraphs.

This is the foundation of SEO and also of good ads: a campaign for "technical SEO audit" should land on a page about technical SEO audits, not on your homepage.

3. A structure you can explain in one line

A good structure fits in one sentence: "Home, one page per service, a few guides that answer real questions, pricing, about, contact." If the sitemap needs a diagram to explain, visitors and search engines will both get lost.

Keep important pages within two clicks of the homepage and link related pages to each other: each service to the guides that support it, each guide back to its service.

4. Clean, permanent URLs

Decide URLs before the build and keep them short, lowercase and descriptive: /services/web-design, not /page?id=17 or /our-amazing-web-design-services-2026. If you are replacing an existing site, list every old URL that has traffic or links and map it to its new address with a permanent (301) redirect. Skipping this step is the most common reason a redesign loses search traffic.

Part 2: Message and trust

5. A headline that says what you do, for whom

A visitor decides in seconds whether they are in the right place. The first screen should answer three questions without scrolling: what you offer, who it is for, and what to do next. "Websites and SEO for B2B companies in Germany" beats "We craft digital experiences".

6. Proof near every claim

Every claim needs evidence close by: a result with a number, a short case, a client name you are allowed to use, a certification, a guarantee you actually honour. Generic stock photos and anonymous five-star quotes reduce trust instead of building it.

7. Prices or at least a starting point

Visitors who can't find any idea of price assume it is too high or leave to compare elsewhere. You don't need a fixed price list; a range, a typical project, or an estimate tool lets the right people self-qualify and makes the first call more productive.

8. Real contact details

Show an email address, a messaging channel your customers use (WhatsApp, for example) and where you are based. A form alone, with no other way to reach anyone, looks like a business that doesn't want to be contacted.

Part 3: Forms and conversion

9. Short forms that ask the right questions

Ask only what you need to give a useful first answer. Name, a way to reach them and what they need is often enough. If you need more, split it into small steps with progress shown, and keep optional questions clearly optional.

10. A clear success state

After a visitor submits, show a real confirmation page or message: what happens next, by when, and how to reach you in the meantime. This page is also where your conversion tracking fires, so it must only appear after a successful submission.

11. Calls to action on every key page

Each service page and guide should end with the next step, not a dead end. One primary button with a specific label ("Get an estimate", "Book a 20-minute call") works better than "Submit" or "Learn more".

Part 4: Technical foundations

12. Fast on a mid-range phone

Most visits come from phones on mobile data. Test on a real mid-range device, not just your office laptop. Google's Core Web Vitals give a useful target: content visible quickly (LCP under 2.5 seconds), no layout jumping (CLS under 0.1) and quick response to taps (INP under 200 ms). Oversized images, heavy sliders and too many third-party scripts are the usual culprits.

13. SEO built in, not added later

Every page needs a unique title and meta description, one clear H1, readable headings, descriptive image alt text, a canonical URL, structured data where it fits (Organization, Service, Article, FAQ), an XML sitemap and a sensible robots.txt. If the site serves several languages, each version needs hreflang tags pointing to the others. Our technical SEO checklist covers these in detail.

14. Security and ownership

HTTPS everywhere, software kept up to date, admin areas protected, and backups you have actually restored once. Equally important: the domain, hosting, analytics and ad accounts should be registered in the business's name, not the agency's. If you part ways, you keep everything.

15. Measurement from day one

Install analytics before launch, not after, and track the main action from point 1 as a key event. Without it, you can't tell whether the redesign worked, which channel brings customers, or what your ads are really worth. The complete GA4 setup guide walks through it step by step.

Before you sign off on a design

Run through this short list with whoever is building the site:

• The main action and the sentence describing it are agreed
• Every service people search for has its own page and URL
• Old URLs are mapped to new ones with 301 redirects
• The first screen says what, for whom and what next
• Every claim has proof nearby; there is some indication of price
• Forms are short, with a real success page
• Tested on a mid-range phone on mobile data
• Titles, descriptions, headings, schema, sitemap and hreflang are in place
• Domain and accounts are in the business's name
• Analytics and the key event are live before launch

If you are weighing which platform to build on, read Next.js vs WordPress for business websites. If you would rather hand the whole list to someone, see our web design service.