The Website Redesign Project Plan Template You Actually Need

Times change, and so do design trends. A website’s design can make or break a website. An old design can make a site look outdated or even make it underperform. That is why a company needs to keep up with the trends and update its website design from time to time.

Or else, it can be left out and watch other websites take quality leads. And if a business happens to be an eCommerce store, then it is imperative to redesign its website to meet user needs and improve user engagement.

So, how do you go about redesigning your website? Well, there are a lot of considerations that go into redesigning a website, such as cost, time, functionality, setting business goals, and a handful of other factors.

But above all, and perhaps the most important one, is the website redesign project plan. That is because it all starts off with the website redesign project plan template.

After all, in the famous words of Benjamin Franklin, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” And with a redesign project plan, you’ll not only meet project deadlines but also avoid costly revisions.

So, what is a project plan after all, and what does it entail? That’s what I am here to discuss in this blog. In this blog, we’ll give you a comprehensive website redesign checklist and outline the steps you need to take to redesign your website.

While every project is different, it can serve as a guideline, so that when you hire an outsourced web design agency, you know what to do and what not to do.

So, without any further ado, let’s get right into this blog.

What is a Website Redesign?

To put it simply, a website redesign or website revamping is the process of making major changes to your website.

These changes are made either by recreating the site from the ground up or by using a website redesign project plan template.

The goal of a website redesign is to improve the site and give it a fresh look by making changes in the code, design, content, structure, and site layout.

With a website overhaul, you get a site that has fast loading times, low bounce rates, and provides a better user experience.

Apart from that, the upgraded and updated website can have better online visibility and get more clicks.

Why Should You Follow a Website Redesign Project Plan?

A website redesign project plan helps you pull off the project by meeting deadlines and avoiding costly revisions down the line.

But a website project plan does much more than that. It acts as a roadmap and keeps you from taking the wrong turns or making mistakes that can put your project off track.

So, let’s look at some more reasons why a project plan brings value and why you should create one:

Clarifies Project Vision and Goals

A project plan helps set clear and realistic goals that determine business outcomes. More so, it looks into the vision and objects, by elaborating them for the redesign.

The plan helps you answer which business goals are making you redesign the website. The business goals could be to increase sales, improve customer engagement, or enhance user experience.

When you define these goals, the project plan guides you to make the right moves when redesigning your website.

Aligns Team and Communication

The project plan helps align different teams that are involved in the website redesign process. It creates a structured coordination that allows teams to communicate and work with each other.

More so, it defines the tasks for different roles. This means defining who is responsible for what, which task needs to be done first by which team, and when the redesign project needs to be finished.

With the plan becoming a map for your team, confusion, miscommunications, and mishaps go out the door.

Improves Decision-Making

The website development plan gives you a blueprint on what needs to be done and when it needs to be done.

So, when every role knows what he or she needs to do, then they act accordingly and make decisions swiftly.

Teams do not have to think long and hard when choices and changes come up. That is because they can make decisions by following the plan.

Allows Progress and Performance Tracking

When the plan is set into motion, you can keep track of what has been done so far, what’s in progress, and what still remains. All teams know what’s up without having to ask around.

The plan sets milestones, and you can track your project’s progress and compare it against those milestones to see if the project is on course or not.

Helps Manage Budget 

Project plan steps realistic budgets so that you know what you’re dealing with and what you have to pay.

But it also helps keep the budget under control, as during the redesign process, it can get really out of hand.

Each phase is allocated a certain budget. That way, you do not overspend and make the project too costly.

Prevent Delays

The worst thing that can happen to your project is it getting delayed. A project plan keeps that from happening by setting milestones to make sure each phase is completed on time.

This way, you can launch your site on a date you set out from the start without having to push it forward.

Improves Overall Performance

One of the main reasons why you redesign a website by following a project plan is that it boosts your site’s performance.

When you develop the project plan, you choose the latest and greatest technologies available for web design and development.

This ensures that once the web re-design is completed, your site has improved performance and functionality with faster loading times.

Increases Sales and Conversion

Once your site performs up to the mark and provides an enhanced user experience, it is inevitable that the leads start flowing and you start getting the sales.

When you get targeted customers who want what you are offering, then conversions are bound to happen.

When Do You Need to Redesign a Website

While I did go through why you should follow a website redesign project plan template, I need to cover when it is imperative to redesign a website or create a redesign project plan for that matter.

So, let’s look at when redesigning a website becomes a must:

Change in Business Strategy

A business’s offerings change, and so does its business model. And if your business strategy changes, then you need a website redesign strategy to adapt your website to the changes.

You will need to update the product or services, their positioning, and messaging on the website.

So, everything that deals with the change in business strategy, you must update and reflect it on the website.

Brand Misalignment

In many cases, a brand doesn’t have a strong brand identity. Therefore, it needs one to create new relationships with customers and strengthen existing ones.

A website with a good design not only creates the right brand identity but also better positions it.

More so, it connects with the customer by delivering the right message that fosters relationships with them.

Flaws in Design 

Most of the time, companies need a web redesign due to the current state of design. The existing design might be outdated, dull, unsophisticated, or simply just not good enough.

When a bad web design starts standing out, that’s when you know it’s high time to redesign it and give it a fresh and modern look.

Bad User Experience (UX) 

A website with a bad User Experience is as good as dead. If there’s one thing that no product can compromise on, it’s UX.

The product is meant to be used by the user, and that experience and interaction need to be good and meaningful.

So, when a website design stops doing what it’s meant to do, a website redesign is nothing but imperative.

How Often Should You Redesign a Website?

Web design trends change year in, year out, with no exceptions. Thus, a company must keep up with these changes or fall back in line.

On average, businesses redesign their website every 1.5 to 3 years. And so should you, because redesigning your website frequently will keep things looking up-to-date.

More so, you’ll give your site a breath of fresh air each time you redesign, which is beneficial for you and your users.

And thanks to companies redesigning their website so often, the web development market is blooming these days. That is because, as per Mordor Intelligence’s Report, “The web development service market value is more than US$80.6 billion in 2025.”

How Much Does a Website Redesign Cost?

I have covered the Ecommerce Website Cost in a separate blog that you can check out. And as for the website redesign cost, it depends on a few factors.

These include the size of the website, the project scope, and whether you redesign it yourself or hire an agency to do it for you.

And in the latter’s case, the firm’s experience and expertise also play a role in shaping the costs.

But on average, redesigning for a small website can cost around $500. On the other hand, the large and more complex ones can cost around $3000 or more.

You can estimate the cost of your website redesign project with our Website Design Cost Calculator.

The calculator will give you estimates based on your selections for options like website type, number of pages, design type, design concepts, logo design, content creation, website features, and maintenance and support.

Key Elements of a Web Design

A good website design contains a handful of key elements. And without these, a website can feel lackluster.

Therefore, your website redesign project plan must put these key elements at the heart of the project:

Messaging

A brand’s messaging is everything. It is the main way to communicate and connect with the customer. So be careful, specific, and clear on your message.

Your messaging must answer things right away, like what you do, what your business is all about, what you offer, and how your offerings can benefit the customer.

Structure

The structure of your site must be spot on, as it will make it easy for users to navigate. The moment a customer lands on your site, your site should instruct and direct customers through the different pages.

This will keep them clicking and staying on your site with the hopes that they might buy your product or service in the end.

Visual (Brand) Identity

Your website is a part of your brand and is its online representation. A customer’s first impression of your site will determine how they see your brand.

Your design is your visual messaging, and it’s what shapes your brand personality. After all, brand personality means the world to every business.

Funnels

Just like a structure, a website needs to have a funnel that turns a prospect into a customer. IT is the main engine behind an online business. Funnels use messaging and customer touchpoints.

The funnel starts from the user visiting your site, to them viewing your product, adding it to their cart, then you upselling them, and then finally making the purchase.

Website Speed

A website’s speed is what makes it tick. And that speed needs to be fast, at all times. According to Forbes’ Report.”Businesses lose more than US$2.6 billion in sales every year due to slow websites.” 

So, if anything, your website needs to load fast. You must compress, optimize, and lazy load the images. On the other hand, you must host the videos on a third-party site.

Trustworthiness

Do you know what a successful website is? The one that users trust. Therefore, your website must gain the customer’s trust, not drive them away. And your design needs to earn that trust via legitimate messaging, client testimonials, and reviews. Also, avoid anything that looks dodgy or perhaps like a scam.

Conversions

At the end of the day, it’s all about business and revenue. And that is why conversions are a key element of a good web design.

Whatever action a website owner wants the user to take, whether to buy a product or sign up for an email, is a conversion. And this is done through call to action (CTAs) and Landing Pages built for conversions.

Set Your Website Redesign Goals

When creating a website development project plan template, you must determine your website redesign goal right from the get-go. So, let’s look at what goals you should set for your plan:

• Business Goals: First things first, you must know your business goals and set them accordingly. This way, you can expect realistic results from a website redesign.
• Marketing Goals: Your website redesign should be centered around your Website Marketing Strategies, as they are what help achieve business goals and the bottom line. If not, then website redesign will do you no good, at least in terms of marketing.
• Technology Goals: You redesign your website for more than a makeover and visual purposes. So, it’s also about improving website performance, and for that, you must look at areas where your website fell short previously and address them with an improved and latest tech stack.
• Align All Your Goals: A business has more goals than just the three I mentioned. So, combine and align these three objectives and the ones your business has to make sure everything is on the same page and things don’t get messy.
• Use SMART Goals: Apart from aligning your goals, you must use S.M.A.R.T. goals, which literally stand for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. This will help you and the design firm set realistic expectations and avoid costly revisions down the line.

Website Redesign Project Plan Mistakes You Must Avoid

Website Design Mistakes are the silent and hidden enemy of your website that you do not know about. These mistakes will not only affect your design but also increase the likelihood of costly revisions.

So, if anything, it is a must that you avoid these website design project plan template mistakes, which are as follows:

Vague Project Goals

A goal that is not set clearly will lead you nowhere. So, you must make sure that your goals are S.M.A.R.T. at all times, which means they should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

Your goals are the measurable outcomes that define the success of your website. Don’t just say “I want my website to look good” or “I want to increase conversions.”

Be specific: “I want to improve User Experience,” or “I want to be more sales-focused with landing pages and CTAs.”

Not Designing for Mobiles

The biggest mistake a website owner can make is not designing it for mobile view. According to Hostinger’s Report, “More than 90% of websites on the internet today use mobile responsive design.”

So, if you want your website to succeed, don’t be a part of the other 10% by not optimizing it for mobile devices.

Neglecting SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is your website’s biggest friend if you take care of it. But if you don’t pay attention to it, then it can be your website’s downfall.

You must center your entire web redesign project around SEO. That is because, as much as design pleases the eyes, SEO is what improves your site’s visibility and ranks your site on search results.

More so, it brings in web traffic that converts into customers. So, don’t overlook SEO if you want your website to rank on top.

Not Giving Importance to Content

I have said this time and time again, and I’ll say it again: Content is King and Copy is Queen. No questions, no debate, that’s the bottom line!

Your content is what will persuade the users into becoming customers. It will not only help sell your product but also bring in traffic through informative blogs and stuff.

So, never underestimate the importance of content. And when you do write and publish it, make sure it is a quality one.

While you are at it, use a Content Management System to manage and optimize the content on your site.

Overlooking User Experience (UX)

Whether it comes to websites or just about any other thing, neglecting user experience is the biggest mistake you can ever make.

A good UX defines how well and easily your website is used by the user. More so, it tells about the experience they had using your product.

Like I said above, a website with a bad UX is as good as dead. So, make sure you stay clear of that and don’t let your site become another one of the victims of bad UX design.

Insufficient Budget

Everything in this day and age costs money. While some might cost more than others, they still do.

So, when it comes to redesigning your site, you need to consult with professionals and get quotes on how much your project costs.

Only then must you set your budget. But if you set the wrong budget and set out to redesign your website, it will never get done.

That is because you will most likely fall short on budget during the process. And the worst thing that can happen to any project is to halt halfway through.

Most of those projects never get to see the day of completion again. So, set realistic and sufficient budgets to ensure your project gets completed on time.

Best Practices for Developing a Website Redesign Project Plan

Now let’s discuss the other half of the dos and don’ts, and look at the best practices that you must follow when developing a project plan template for website development.

These best practices are as follows:

Start with a Strategy

The best way to jump right into web redesign is by starting with a strategy and defining a clear overall plan with all your objectives first.

Also, you must define your target audience, set key performance indicators (KPIs), and set realistic expectations for the web redesign project.

Develop a Plan With Scalability in Mind

Always think ahead of the curve and be two steps ahead of everyone else. Don’t just design your website plan for now, design it for the future.

And do so by keeping scalability in mind, because if your business grows, so will the customers and users on your site. So, you must make sure that your website is scalable and can handle the increase in traffic easily.

Focus on User-Centric Design

Choose designing elements that are oriented more towards the user’s ease of use. Make your design user-centric and user-friendly by using White Spaces to improve readability.

Also, use the right font size, and intuitive navigation along with a fast loading speed to make the site easy for users to use.

Put SEO at the Heart of Your Website Redesign Project Plan

Focus on SEO aspects and conduct on-page, off-page, and technical SEO to make it easier for search engines to rank your site on top.

Carry out a few practices to implement an SEO transition plan to avoid losing keyword rankings. These include using 301 redirects, maintaining keyword optimization, auditing for broken links, updating the sitemap, and monitoring performance.

Design for Mobile Friendliness

Optimize your website for mobile so that it is easy to use on mobile devices. A Mobile Friendly Website Design is a must in this day and age because more than 64% of website traffic today comes from mobile phones.

So, it’s better to cater to that many users on the phone than let them go simply because your website design is not optimized for mobile view.

Conduct Voice Search and Google Lens Optimization  

Moving forward, half of all online searches will be done through voice search. Voice search is just as convenient as it removes the hassle of typing things.

Likewise, with AI integrated in phones, and their features like circle to search as well as Google Lens search have become a hot thing these days.

So, optimize your products or both voice search and Google Lens so that your product shows up in the user’s search page, no matter how they search for it.

Have a Content Plan

Create a content calendar so that your team has a content plan for blogs, landing pages, and newsletters on your website.

This way, you can create a schedule to publish content that will give your users fresh new content on a regular basis, complemented with a new web design.

Link Your Web Design with Copy

Copy helps you sell stuff. But it is your job to make sure your copy is brief and has an authentic voice with consistent messaging.

And your design on the home page should reflect that and display the copy, right out of the gate, to let users know what your company does.

The best way to pull that off is by asking your web and Graphic Designers to link your copy with your design by adding the copy in the images on your home page.

Publish Quality Content and Copy

When you are publishing content and copy, make sure it is of high quality. You can do so by checking content on content quality checkers like readability score checker, and AI detection.

But you must also make sure that your content is relevant and resonates with the customer. Keep your content concise, simple, consistent, full of quality, relevant, informative, and easy to read.

How to Develop a Website Redesign Plan

Your website redesign project plan template should cover just about everything I discussed so far. However, the website redesign timeline template that I suggest using is the one below, which entails 7 stages.

Therefore, the steps of a website redesign project plan template are as follows:

1. Research

Before you begin developing the website project management template, you must first thoroughly research and look into the market trends for analysis.

This way, you can gather all the information from the key players in the market and have a clear picture of what’s in trend and what’s not. More so, you can identify gaps in things others are missing out on that you can capitalize on with your site.

2. Plan

Once you have the market research information you need, you can then create a plan based on your business goals, marketing goals, technology goals, and web design goals.

The strategy will cover just about everything from brand guidelines to content, budgets, and timelines.

Once you have created the plan, create a website redesign project plan Excel file to share it with all your teams.

3. Design  

After the website redesign project plan template is distributed to all teams, the design team will get to work and start creating wireframes, interfaces, and page layouts of the website.

They will design the UI and UX of the website, which will create the foundation of your website redesign.

4. Develop 

The design work from the design team is handed over to the development team. The web developers turn the wireframes into working prototypes by coding them.

This is where they create the functionality and add features to your website. More so, they complete the build by installing a content management system like WordPress.

5. Test 

The prototype is handed over to the QA and test team, who test it for bugs, glitches, errors, broken links, and points of friction on the site.

More so, the testers test the website on multiple devices and browsers. They look at the website for any flaws in design or coding.

Upon finding any issues, they report them back to the design and development teams for fixing.

6. Launch 

Once the website is tested and fixed, the refined and final version is launched on the internet. The website goes live, and companies carry out marketing campaigns to promote it to their audiences.

7. Iterate

After launching, the website is monitored for behavior and performance. Developers gather feedback from users and update the site from time to time to improve it and add features.

Get Started With Your Website Redesign With Webnhubs 

Redesigning a website every two to three years is a must. But the hassle of doing it from the ground up, time and time again, is all too much for companies that are busy with their business matters.

That is where Webnhubs comes in, to redesign companies’ websites for them without breaking a sweat.

And we do so by developing a website redesign project plan template and following it from start to finish. Webnhubs is the ideal web redesign partner.

Our Web Redesign Agency has the experience and expertise, as well as keeps up with the cutting-edge technologies and follows proven processes to design websites.

More so, Webnhubs doesn’t part ways after the website is launched. We are a long-term partner that looks after the client’s website and provides ongoing support and maintenance for it.

This means your website never goes offline or looks outdated. So, partner with Webnhubs and connect with our team to get a personalized website redesign proposal for your project.

To Sum It Up

That is for this blog on the website redesign project plan template. I hope that the points I covered and the pointers I gave in this blog can give you an idea of what goes into website redesign and how you should go about doing it yourself. Giving your website an overhaul with a redesign is a must if you want your site to compete with the millions of websites on the internet.

However, if you don’t have enough time on your hands or need a helping hand, then you can consider Webnhubs’ web design services for your project. Webnhubs has a team of experienced and skilled web designers and developers who will take on your project and complete it successfully.