HubSpot's own blog team found that 92% of its monthly blog leads came from posts published before that month, and 46% came from just 30 posts. Most sites look like that: a few pages do most of the earning. A redesign touches every page at once, so the process has to know which pages it cannot afford to break before anyone starts drawing.
This guide sets out a six-phase website redesign process built around one baseline, taken before design and used again after launch. The data limits come from Google's documentation; the phase structure is ours, and where we describe what we would do rather than what we have done, we say so.
Why the process starts with what already earns
Most redesign briefs start with what is wrong: the site looks dated, the message has moved, the CMS is painful. Databox's 2024 survey found about 49% of companies had fully redesigned within the past two years, and only 14% of those with an ageing site had noticed no change in leads or traffic.
Ahrefs, which sells SEO software, found 96.55% of the pages it studied receive no Google traffic and another 1.94% get one to ten visits a month. On a typical B2B site, search traffic depends on a handful of service pages, a few guides and the homepage. HubSpot's blog shows the same for leads: 76% of monthly views and 92% of monthly leads came from older posts.
So the first job is an inventory of value, not of pages. Nielsen Norman Group frames benchmarking around one question, "better compared to what?" Without a recorded starting point, nobody can say whether the new site is better, or notice which page quietly stopped earning.
Website Redesign Project Plan Template: Six Phases in a Sheet, With Owners and Gates covers who does what and when. This guide covers what each phase must protect.
The six phases at a glance
| Phase | Question | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Baseline | What does the current site earn, in numbers? | A dated baseline file |
| 2. Earning-page register | Which pages earn clicks, leads, links or routing? | Every URL tagged protect, improve, merge or remove |
| 3. Structure and URLs | Where does every earning URL live on the new site? | Page map and redirect sheet checked against the register |
| 4. Design and build | Can the look change without breaking what works? | Staging site built inside the guardrails |
| 5. Parity check | Does every protected page still do its job? | A pass or fail line per protected URL |
| 6. Launch and compare | Did the redesign help, against the same baseline? | 30-day and 90-day comparisons |
Source: Octo Agency process
Phase one: capture one baseline before anyone opens Figma
A baseline is a set of numbers, with dates, saved somewhere that will not change. Export the figures, date the file, and agree that every later comparison uses it.
| Measure | Source | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Search clicks and impressions by page and query | Search Console performance report | 16 months kept; data arrives about 48 hours after collection |
| Most linked pages, external and internal | Search Console links report | A sample; on-screen tables stop at 1,000 rows |
| Sessions and key events by landing page | GA4 standard reports | Not affected by the retention setting |
| Funnels and explorations | GA4 explorations | Retention of 2 or 14 months on a standard property |
| Leads and deals by first page | CRM | Only if the form passes the landing page |
| Field Core Web Vitals | Chrome UX Report | A 28-day rolling average, updated daily |
Source: Search Console Help; Google Analytics Help; Chrome for Developers, 2026
Three settings need checking on day one, because they cannot be fixed later.
GA4 retention. If the property is on two months, set it to 14. Google says the setting only affects explorations and funnel reports, but those are the reports a funnel comparison needs.
Search Console history. Sixteen months is all the interface holds. Google's advice is to use the Search Analytics API or bulk export to keep more. Export now, or the pre-redesign year starts falling off the end soon after launch.
Consent mode. Google's behavioural modelling switches on once a property collects at least 1,000 events a day with analytics storage denied for at least 7 days, and Google warns that modelled reports will differ from observed-only ones. Note the start date. A comparison that straddles it compares two kinds of number.
Phase two: build the earning-page register
The register is the content inventory with one extra column: what each page earns. A page earns if it passes any of four tests.
Search clicks. It sits near the top of the Search Console pages table for the past 12 months, or ranks for a query sales cares about.
Leads. It is a common first page for forms, demo requests or deals in the CRM.
Links. It appears in the links report's top linked pages. Google's site-move guidance names that report as a source for the old URL list and asks you to prioritise pages with the most traffic and links.
Routing. It is among the most internally linked pages, so changing it changes the paths to everything else.
| Tier | Typical criteria | Rule during the redesign |
|---|---|---|
| Protect | Passes two or more tests, or is a top lead source | Keep the URL, the answer to its main query, its form and its tracking |
| Improve | Passes one test | Design and copy can change; URL and topic stay |
| Merge | Overlaps a stronger page and earns little | Combine and redirect permanently to the stronger page |
| Remove | Passes no test | Return a 404 or 410, not a homepage redirect |
Source: Octo Agency process, using Google Search Central guidance on redirects and site moves
The thresholds are a judgement for each site. On a 40-page site the protect tier might be eight URLs. We would rather protect a page that turns out not to matter than redesign one that did.
Phases three and four: change the design, not what already works
Phase three turns the register into a page map and redirect sheet. The method, including the columns a redirect map needs, is in Website Migration Without Losing Rankings: The Redirect Map, the Rehearsal and the 30-Day Watch. This process adds one rule: every protected URL keeps its address or gets a single permanent redirect to its closest new page.
Permanent matters. Google treats a permanent redirect as a signal that the target should be canonical, and a temporary one as not. It also asks that redirects stay in place generally at least a year.
These are the guardrails we would apply to the protect tier during phase four.
The URL. It stays, unless the register says otherwise and the redirect is already in the sheet.
The answer. The content answering the page's main query stays visible. It can be rewritten. It cannot be hidden in a tab or split across three pages without a decision.
The title and main heading. Wording can improve; the topic cannot change.
Internal links. Pages that linked to it before still link to it.
The form. Same fields and destination at launch. Form changes are a later test, not a side effect.
The tracking. The same key events fire under the same names, so phase six compares like with like.
Google's site-move guidance makes the wider point: change only one thing at a time, with the example of moving domain first and changing layout later. A release that changes platform, domain and URLs together makes any drop impossible to diagnose. Where we can, we would separate the platform move from the content changes. We build marketing sites in Webflow, so that is the platform we know best.
Phase five: the parity check on staging
Before launch, every protected URL gets a line in a parity sheet. The general launch thresholds, such as Core Web Vitals and accessibility, are in the project plan template article; this check is page by page.
| Check | Pass |
|---|---|
| Old URL | Resolves, or redirects in one permanent hop to the mapped page |
| Main query | Still answered in visible text |
| Title and heading | Same topic as the baseline version |
| Internal links in | At least as many key pages link to it |
| Form | Submits, reaches the CRM, carries the landing page |
| Key events | Fire under the baseline names |
| Indexing | No leftover noindex or staging block |
Source: Octo Agency process
A protected page that fails does not launch until it passes or the marketing lead signs off the loss in writing.
Phase six: compare against the baseline without fooling yourself
Google warns that rankings fluctuate while it recrawls and reindexes, and that on a medium-sized site the new URLs can take a few weeks or more to replace the old ones.
| Signal | Readable from | Compare against |
|---|---|---|
| Forms and key events | Launch day | Real submissions in the CRM |
| Indexing of protected URLs | First week | Page indexing report and URL inspection |
| Search clicks on protected pages | About 30 days | Same weeks a year earlier, page by page |
| Field Core Web Vitals | 28 days | Baseline CrUX value; earlier figures mix old and new site |
| Leads by landing page | About 90 days | Same 90 days a year earlier |
Source: Google Search Central, 2026; Chrome for Developers, 2026; Octo Agency process for the 90-day window
Compare like periods. Google's guidance on traffic drops suggests viewing 16 months to spot seasonality, then comparing with the same period a year earlier.
Split protected from the rest. A site-wide total can rise while two protected pages fall, and those two may carry the leads.
Sort by the difference. Google suggests sorting the Search Console pages table by clicks difference and inspecting the pages that lost most.
Annotate the launch. GA4 annotations let anyone with Analyst access or above mark a date or range, up to 1,000 per property. Mark the launch, the redirect import and any consent change.
We would investigate any protected page whose clicks fall well below the same weeks last year while its impressions hold, because that points to the page rather than to demand.
How long the process takes
The baseline and register add days, not weeks. Our marketing-site process runs in four weeks, and our published account of it says the usual four-month project is a two-week build plus fourteen weeks of waiting on decisions nobody owns. Phases one and two fit into week one alongside the page map, three and four take weeks two and three, and phase five closes week three. We launch on a Tuesday to leave three working days to catch broken forms and tracking.
The USLege redesign shipped in under a month and replaced a four-page site that later grew past 500 pages. A four-page site has a short protect list. A site with hundreds of indexed pages and years of links needs a longer phase two, and we would lengthen it rather than skip the register. We quote each redesign per project once the page count and protect list are known.
What this means for a team planning a redesign
Start with the old site, not the new one. Export 16 months of Search Console data, set GA4 retention to 14 months, note any consent-mode date, and save the baseline as a dated file. Get the protect list signed before design, hold protected pages to the guardrails, check each on staging, and wait 30 days before judging search and 90 before judging leads. If something is still lost, you will know which page and why. Our website redesign service page explains how we run this process and scope each project.
