Redesign · 7 min read
Published October 3, 2026
Website Redesign Checklist: What to Audit Before You Redesign
A redesign is expensive. Most people pay first and measure later — which means they never know whether the new site actually beat the old one. This checklist flips the order: audit first, redesign second, compare after.
Why audit before you redesign (not after)
Here's the question a redesign almost never answers: did it actually work? Launch day gets a round of applause, and six weeks later nobody can say whether conversion went up, down, or sideways. Not because the data doesn't exist — because nobody captured a starting point.
So run an audit before the redesign. It takes about a minute: paste your URL into BurnRate's free audit and you get a baseline BurnRate Score across conversion, UX, speed, and trust — plus a prioritized list of what's costing you customers today.
Then redesign. Then run the same audit again and put the two reports side by side. The before/after scores show exactly what improved after the redesign — and, just as usefully, what quietly got worse. Maybe conversion clarity jumped while page speed dropped because the new hero video is heavy. That's the kind of thing you want to catch in week one, not quarter three.
If you're a designer or an agency, this is also the cleanest way to show a client the value of your work: hand them a before/after comparison instead of a launch email. If you're a website owner hiring a designer, ask for it — any redesign worth paying for should move the numbers, and a before/after audit shows whether it did. A Starter plan ($9 one-time) covers it with room to spare: one audit before, one after, one spare. Agencies running before/after across multiple client redesigns will want Pro's unlimited audits and monthly re-audits.
Start with the baseline — it takes about 60 seconds, free.
Audit my current site free →The 15-point pre-redesign audit checklist
Work through these before a designer opens a file. Each one takes a few minutes, and each answer shapes what the new site should keep, fix, or throw away.
Conversion
1. The headline names the outcome, not the product
Open your current homepage as a first-time visitor. Can you tell in 5 seconds what the site sells, who it's for, and why it matters? If not, a fresh coat of paint won't fix it — the words will carry over to the new design.
2. One primary CTA per page
Count the buttons competing in your hero. Three styled buttons means visitors click none of them. Note which single action you'd pick if you could only keep one — that decision should drive the new layout.
3. Forms ask for the minimum
Every field you can delete before the redesign is a field you don't have to argue about after it. Audit each form and mark every field that doesn't gate the next step.
4. Sections follow the order buyers decide
Problem → solution → proof → how it works → pricing → CTA. If your current page orders sections by internal politics instead, flag it now. Reordering sections is often worth more than the redesign itself.
Content
5. Inventory which pages bring traffic today
Open your analytics and list the pages that get organic search traffic. These are your assets. A redesign that quietly breaks or buries them can erase months of SEO work overnight.
6. Copy sells outcomes, not features
Read your H2s out loud. If they say "AI-powered platform" instead of what the buyer gets, rewrite the messaging before the designer touches anything. New design + old copy = the same conversion rate.
7. Decide what dies, and where it redirects
Most sites carry zombie pages nobody visits. Delete them deliberately, and map a 301 redirect for every URL that changes. A redesign without a redirect plan leaks rankings and broken links.
UX
8. Walk the funnel on a real phone
Not a resized browser window — your actual phone. Try to complete your main action. Whatever frustrates you will frustrate visitors, and a redesign that ignores mobile is a redesign of half your traffic.
9. Check load speed with PageSpeed Insights
Note your current LCP and CLS scores before you start. Redesigns routinely make sites slower (bigger hero images, more scripts). You want a number to compare against, not a vague feeling that it "used to be faster."
10. Navigation matches how visitors think
Write down what a first-time visitor is looking for, then check whether they can find it in one click from the homepage. Rename nav labels that describe your org chart instead of the visitor's goal.
11. Accessibility basics pass
Text contrast at least 4.5:1, tap targets 44px tall, alt text on images. Cheaper to design correctly now than to retrofit after launch — and low contrast is one of the most common redesign regressions.
Trust
12. Social proof is real and visible
Full names, photos, titles, numbers. "Great product!" from "Sarah K." is a placeholder, not proof. Gather the real quotes, logos, and metrics before the redesign so they make it into the new layout.
13. Pricing is visible without a form
If your pricing is hidden behind "Contact sales," that's a deliberate choice to keep — but if it's hidden by accident or embarrassment, the redesign is the moment to fix it. Show tiers or a starting price.
14. Contact and About feel human
A real address, a real email, faces on the About page. Anonymous sites convert worse, and a redesign that strips the humans out usually strips the trust out with them.
15. Trust signals sit next to every CTA
A guarantee, "no credit card required," a security badge, a testimonial — within sight of every conversion button. Check where these live now so the new design keeps them close.
What to keep, what to kill
The most expensive redesign mistake isn't ugly — it's invisible. It's the page that ranked #4 on Google for two years, redesigned into a different URL with thinner content, quietly dropping off page one. Your analytics inventory (checklist item 5) tells you which pages to protect: keep their URLs stable, keep or improve their content, and redirect anything that must change.
Everything else is fair game. Kill zombie pages deliberately, with a redirect map, instead of letting the redesign kill them accidentally.
How to measure redesign success
Six weeks after launch, compare the same numbers you captured before. Your before/after BurnRate audit gives you the qualitative half — scores and findings side by side. Add these three metrics from your analytics for the quantitative half:
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| BurnRate Score (audit) | from your pre-redesign audit | from the post-redesign audit |
| Conversion rate | signups ÷ visitors, last 30 days | same window after launch |
| Largest Contentful Paint | PageSpeed Insights, before | PageSpeed Insights, after |
| Organic traffic to protected pages | from your inventory | same pages, 6 weeks after |
If conversion and the audit scores both moved in the right direction, the redesign paid for itself. If a score dropped, you now know precisely which finding regressed — and what to fix before you spend anything else.
Run the "before" audit now
Paste your current URL and get a baseline score and prioritized fixes in about 60 seconds — free. Run it again after the redesign and compare.
Run my free audit →Want documented before/after reports you can save and share? See plans.