Websites
The B2B website redesign checklist: questions to answer before design starts
Use this practical checklist to plan buyer journeys, content, redirects, forms and measurement before a B2B website redesign. Includes an editable version.
The short answer
Before a B2B redesign, agree on the buyer tasks, the problems to fix, the content and URLs worth keeping, who owns decisions and how the launch will be checked. Design goes further when those choices are clear.
Start with what the website needs to do.
“Make it more modern” leaves a lot open to interpretation. A useful redesign brief names the job: help an engineering buyer find the right application, make a newly acquired capability understandable or turn relevant inquiries into a better first conversation.
Write the three most important visitor tasks in plain language. Ask sales and customer-facing colleagues where the current experience breaks down. Use available analytics and search data to check those observations, not simply to decorate the brief.
Work through this before the first design review.
The checkboxes are for working through the page; they are not saved. Download the editable checklist to record owners and open questions with your team.
Don’t throw away the useful parts.
A page that looks dated may still earn relevant search traffic or help sales close a knowledge gap. Review the purpose and performance before deleting it. Sometimes the right move is a substantial improvement at the same URL.
If the location changes, map the old page to the closest useful replacement. Sending every retired URL to the homepage can leave visitors without the answer they expected. Keep a record so the redirects can be checked rather than guessed.
Also preserve the less visible work: form notifications, the thank-you experience, privacy links and approved measurement. A redesign should not quietly disconnect the inquiry path.
Make content a design input.
Identify proof early. A page built around a customer result needs an approved result. A capability page needs input from someone who understands the process. A brand claim needs an explanation buyers can inspect.
In the UFP MedTech work, research and positioning informed the website. That relationship is useful: design has a clearer job when the team knows what the customer needs to understand.
Give writers, subject-matter experts and designers shared questions to solve. It is easier to create a clear layout around meaningful content than to force the content into a finished collection of boxes.
Define what “ready” means.
A launch review should include representative desktop, tablet and small-phone screens, the key forms and the important buyer paths. Check the actual public URLs after deployment, including redirects and missing-page responses.
For search, confirm each intended public page can be crawled, has the right canonical and is not carrying a preview noindex setting. Include it in the sitemap and link it from relevant existing pages. These checks support discovery; they do not guarantee indexing or rankings.
After launch, compare like-for-like periods and look beyond total visits. Are the right questions finding the right pages? Are the inquiries useful? Use those answers to choose the next improvement.
Put it to work
B2B website redesign checklist
Download the editable text file and use it with your team. No form needed.
Download the worksheet