HyperArts

San Francisco Bay Area Web Design & Development Company - WordPress

The 2026 Website Redesign Checklist

Everything You Need Before You Start

A website redesign is one of the biggest digital projects an organization can undertake. Whether you’re a small/medium sized business, university department, nonprofit, research lab, or mission-driven team, the success of your redesign depends heavily on preparation.

Starting without clarity leads to:

  • Scope creep
  • Budget overruns
  • Delays
  • Inconsistent content
  • Frustrated stakeholders

This comprehensive 2026 redesign checklist ensures your project starts on solid ground — saving you time, money, and stress.

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A sticky note reading 2026 GOALS sits on a desk next to a laptop, pen, spiral notebook, and eyeglasses, suggesting planning and goal setting.

Clarify Your Organizational Goals

Before design, before content, before anything — define your goals.

Common goals include:

  • Improve usability and accessibility
  • Modernize your brand
  • Make content easier to find
  • Increase program participation
  • Reduce staff workload
  • Improve mobile performance
  • Centralize content from multiple sources

Understand Your Audiences

Most organizations serve multiple audiences:

  • Students
  • Researchers
  • Program participants
  • Grant agencies
  • Donors
  • Partners
  • Press
  • Prospective collaborators
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Inventory Your Current Content

Most sites accumulate content over 5–10 years without cleanup. Before redesigning:

Conduct a content audit:
  • Pages
  • PDFs
  • Forms
  • News
  • Events
  • People profiles
  • Resources
  • Publications
  • Galleries
  • Redirects
  • Legacy content

 

Determine:
  • What stays
  • What goes
  • What must be edited
  • What needs rewriting
  • What needs a new information architecture

The biggest delays in redesigns come from unclean content.

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Map Out Your Information Architecture

This includes:

  • Sitemap
  • Taxonomies (categories, tags, custom taxonomies)
  • Content types (events, news, people, publications, etc.)
  • Navigation structure
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Filtering needs

For larger organizations, this is often the most important step — and where professional guidance makes the biggest difference.

Identify Functional Requirements

Clarify your technical needs early so the build can be scoped correctly.

Examples:

  • Events/calendar
  • People directory
  • Project database
  • Blog or news
  • Publication repository
  • Search with filters
  • Multi-language support
  • Internal-only content
  • Donation integration
  • CRM or API integrations
  • SSO or authentication systems
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Define Your Brand and Visual Direction

Gather:

  • Logos
  • Color palettes
  • Typography
  • Brand guidelines
  • Example materials (flyers, brochures)
  • Photography and illustration assets

If you don’t have a full brand system, create a minimum visual foundation before design begins.

Plan Your Content Rewrite

Most organizations underestimate the time required to rewrite content.

Consider:

  • Who will write the content?
  • Who approves it?
  • What’s the tone and style?
  • How will content be organized?
  • What content needs to be merged?

A redesign without a content plan is like building a house without a floor plan.

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Budget Realistically

Plan for:

  • Website design & build
  • Content migration
  • Integration work
  • QA and accessibility testing
  • Hosting
  • Ongoing maintenance

Most organizations underestimate the time and people needed.  We have a guide for how much a WordPress website generally costs.

 

 

Plan for SEO & Redirects

SEO gets overlooked in many redesigns.

Make sure your plan includes:

  • Redirect strategy to maintain current SEO
  • Metadata on new pages
  • Schema markup where appropraite
  • Image optimization
  • Performance optimization
  • URL mapping for moved/merged pages

 

 

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Conclusion: Preparation Makes or Breaks Your Redesign

A successful redesign isn’t about rushing into design — it’s about getting the foundation right.

By following this checklist, your organization will:

  • Avoid expensive surprises
  • Create a smoother process for all stakeholders
  • Reduce project delays
  • Launch a more intuitive, accessible, and maintainable website

Ready to Start Your Redesign?

HyperArts specializes in website redesigns for businesses, universities, nonprofits, and research organizations.
If you want expert guidance through discovery, information architecture, design, and development, schedule a consultation and we’ll help you plan your project with clarity and confidence.

Schedule a Call Today