What to gather, audit, and decide before your first call with an agency, so the project starts with clarity instead of guesswork.
Most redesigns lose time in the first two weeks, not because of the agency, but because the client is still gathering information that should have been ready before the project started. This checklist fixes that. Work through it before your first call and you'll get a sharper proposal, a faster kickoff, and fewer surprises mid-project.
Twelve months of traffic, top landing pages, bounce rate by device, and conversion rate if you're tracking it. This tells the agency what's actually working on the current site, which matters just as much as what isn't.
Anything getting meaningful organic traffic needs a deliberate plan during the redesign, either preserved as-is or properly redirected. Losing this is the single most common way a redesign accidentally damages search visibility. See our signs you need a redesign guide if you're still deciding whether now is the right time.
Not everything about the current site is broken. Identify specific pages, sections, or copy that perform well so they aren't discarded just because everything else is changing.
More leads, more sales, faster load time, easier content management. Pick one primary goal. A redesign trying to fix everything at once usually fixes nothing particularly well.
Who visits, what are they trying to accomplish, and what do they need to see to trust you enough to act. If you have customer personas or sales team insight into common objections, bring them to the first call.
Logo files, brand guidelines, color codes, fonts, and any existing photography or video you're licensed to use. Missing brand assets is one of the most common causes of early delays.
Decide honestly whether your copy is ready to reuse, needs editing, or needs to be written from scratch. This single decision has one of the biggest effects on both timeline and cost, as covered in our website cost guide.
Domain registrar, current hosting, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any third-party tools connected to the current site. Gathering these upfront prevents a week of back-and-forth mid-project.
You don't need a final decision before talking to an agency, but having a rough sense, or at least the constraints, budget, team technical comfort, content volume, helps them scope accurately from the first conversation. Our platform comparison is a useful starting point.
A rough list of the pages and features you expect the new site to include. This doesn't need to be final, but a completely open-ended brief tends to produce a completely open-ended quote.
Know your budget range before the first call and be upfront about it. Agencies scope differently at different price points, and hiding your budget usually just wastes a round of proposals that don't fit. If you're unsure what's realistic, our timeline guide pairs well with the cost guide above.
Identify who has final approval authority before the project starts. Redesigns commonly stall when a decision-maker who wasn't involved in early reviews surfaces late with a conflicting opinion. Agree internally, in advance, on who signs off at each stage.
No, a good agency will help you fill gaps during discovery. But arriving with even half of this list ready significantly speeds up scoping and produces a more accurate quote.
Not documenting which existing pages rank well before starting. Losing that organic traffic during a redesign is avoidable, but only if the agency knows what to protect from day one.
For most marketing sites, a single coordinated launch works best, since a half-updated brand experience can look more inconsistent than the outdated version it's replacing. Larger, more complex sites sometimes benefit from phased rollouts, and a good agency will recommend which fits your situation.
Ready to work through this together?
Start a ProjectConfirm the redesign is actually the right move first.
Budget accurately before your first agency call.
Avoid rebuilding the same problems into your new site.