Take the measurements before anybody touches anything

This is the step that separates a rebuild that earns from one that quietly loses a year of progress, and it takes a few days rather than a few months.

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Before a redesign, record which pages receive visitors, which produce enquiries, which searches bring customers, your current speed on a phone, and a complete list of every page address. Ask recent customers what they looked at before contacting you. Without this record, nobody can tell afterwards whether the new site is better.

Why this gets skipped

By the time a redesign is agreed, everybody is impatient to see designs. Measuring first feels like an administrative delay before the interesting part.

It is also the only thing standing between you and the most common redesign outcome: enquiries fall, nobody can explain why, and the discussion becomes an argument about taste.

What to record

Six items, most of which can be exported in an afternoon.

  • Every page address currently on the site, exported as a complete list.
  • Which pages receive visitors, over at least the last year.
  • Which pages produce enquiries and calls.
  • Which searches bring people who become customers.
  • Current speed on a phone, on mobile data.
  • Monthly enquiries and work won for the last twelve months.

The address list matters most

Of everything here, the complete list of page addresses is the one that prevents the worst damage. Without it, redirects cannot be mapped properly, and whatever visibility those pages had is lost when they disappear.

Export it from your sitemap, your analytics, and Search Console, and combine them, because each source misses something the others catch.

Ask customers what they read

Analytics tells you what was visited; customers tell you what mattered. Ask five or six recent ones what they looked at before getting in touch and what convinced them.

They will name things you would never have guessed, and those things must survive the rebuild. This conversation regularly saves a page that everybody had assumed was unimportant.

Write down what success will look like

Before any design work, agree the number that will judge the project, which is usually enquiries per month, and the period over which it will be judged.

Written down in advance, it prevents the assessment from becoming a discussion about whether people like the new look, which is not the question anybody was trying to answer.

Keep the old site somewhere

Take a full copy before launch: the pages, the text, the images. Not to restore, but because within months somebody will ask what the old page said, and reconstructing it from memory is impossible.

It also protects you when a page turns out to have been carrying more than anybody realised.

Photograph the site as it is

Alongside the numbers, take a visual record. Screenshots of your main pages as they currently appear, on a phone and on a larger screen, dated and stored with everything else.

This sounds trivial until somebody asks, four months after launch, whether the old service page had the price on it or where the review used to sit. Memory is unreliable about layout, and disagreements about what changed are surprisingly common and entirely avoidable.

  • Screenshots of the homepage, main service pages and contact page.
  • Both phone and desktop views, since they often differ more than people realise.
  • The full text of your best pages, saved as plain text.
  • The date, recorded with the files.

How Licheo starts a rebuild

With the measurement, not the design. What the current site is doing, which pages earn, which addresses exist, and what customers say they read.

That record then decides what is preserved, what is rewritten, and how success will be judged, which turns a redesign from a bet into a decision.

Part of a larger guide

This page is one part of Redesign and revenue. The other parts:

Questions people ask

What should I measure before redesigning my website?
Every existing page address, which pages get visitors, which produce enquiries, which searches bring customers, current mobile speed, and twelve months of enquiries and work won.
Why is the list of page addresses so important?
Because redirects cannot be mapped without it, and any page that disappears without a redirect takes its accumulated visibility with it. Combine your sitemap, analytics and Search Console, since each misses something.
Why ask customers what they read?
Analytics shows what was visited; customers tell you what mattered. They routinely name a page nobody considered important, and that page then has to survive the rebuild.
How do I judge whether the redesign worked?
Agree the measure before any design work begins, usually enquiries per month, and the period for judging it. Otherwise the review becomes a discussion about whether people like the new look.
Should I keep a copy of the old site?
Yes, a full copy including text and images. Within months somebody will ask what an old page said, and it also protects you when a page turns out to have been carrying more than anybody realised.

Start with the measurements

We record what your current site is doing before proposing to change any of it, so the rebuild keeps what already earns.

Talk to us about your rebuild Read the full guide