A website redesign strategy is not a design document. It is the set of decisions that make the design possible to brief, quote and judge: what the current site is failing to do and how you will know when the new one does it, which pages and features are kept, restyled, rewritten or dropped, whether the platform changes, and how the launch will be checked so that nothing earned by the old site is lost. Businesses that skip these decisions get a prettier site and the same problems. This page sets out the four decisions in the order they need making and what each one produces for the project record.
Decision one: the job the site is failing to do
Write down, in one sentence each, what the site should produce (enquiries, bookings, sales, applications) and what it produces now. Then list the reasons, from evidence rather than taste: it is slow on a phone, the prices are hidden, the enquiry form is three pages deep, the services described are out of date, the town pages do not exist. That list is the redesign's brief and its acceptance test. A redesign whose brief is that the site looks tired has no acceptance test and will be judged on whether the owner likes the colours.
Decisions two and three: the scope and the platform
Mark every page kept, restyled, rewritten or dropped, and every feature surviving or rebuilt. That is the scope, and it is what turns three incomparable quotes into three comparable ones. Then decide whether the platform changes, and decide it on capability rather than fashion: if the current platform can do everything on the brief, staying is cheaper and safer, and if it cannot, the change is a migration with a page map, redirects and rebuilt features, and it should be planned as one rather than discovered halfway through.
Decision four: how the launch is proven
Before the design starts, write the launch checklist: every old address redirects to its new page, the titles and headings of pages that kept their subject survived, the phone number and the enquiry route are visible on a phone without scrolling, the forms deliver to the right inbox, the analytics and the search console see the new site, the legal pages are present. Then the launch is a checklist worked through with a name and a date against each line, and the redesign is finished when the list is, not when the designer sends the invoice.
Questions people ask about website redesign strategy
What is the difference between a redesign strategy and a design brief?
The strategy decides what the redesign is for, what is in scope and how it is judged. The brief tells the designer what to make. The second cannot be written without the first, which is why so many briefs are a list of adjectives.
Who should make these decisions?
The owner or the person accountable for what the site produces, with the designer consulted on what is possible. Handing all four decisions to the designer means the site is designed for the designer's judgement of success.
How long should the strategy take?
An afternoon for a small site, if the evidence about what the site does now is to hand. Most of the time goes on the page-by-page scope, which is also the part that saves the most money at the quote.