Website redesign timeline template
Redesigning a site that already has traffic takes about 11 weeks in this template: two weeks of audit, nearly four of redesign, about three of build and migration, relaunch around day 65, then ten days of monitoring. The two jobs that separate a redesign from a new build, content migration and the redirect map, each get a bar of their own.
- Audit
- Analytics & SEO audit
- Content inventory
- User research
- Audit findings agreed
- Redesign
- Information architecture
- Wireframes & prototypes
- Visual design
- Stakeholder reviewclient
- Design sign-off
- Build & migrate
- Development
- Content migration
- Redirect map
- Relaunch
- QA & performance testing
- Relaunch
- Monitor rankings & fix
This is the actual template. Durations count working days; weekends are skipped. Drag any bar to reshape it once it’s open.
When to use it
- Your current site ranks and converts, and the redesign mustn’t undo that.
- You’re moving to a new CMS and migrating hundreds of existing pages at the same time.
- You’re an agency quoting a redesign, and the client wants to see where their stakeholders review the design.
- The brief says ‘refresh’, and you need an audit to find out what that means before anyone opens a design tool.
What’s in it
- 01
Audit
An analytics and SEO audit, a content inventory and user research across the first two weeks. Export every URL with its traffic and backlinks now; this list becomes the redirect map later. The inventory also decides what to keep, merge or cut, and cutting pages is easier to agree before there’s a new design to fill. Audit findings agreed closes the phase.
- 02
Redesign
Information architecture, wireframes and prototypes, then visual design, followed by a stakeholder review flagged as a client task and Design sign-off around week six. Information architecture comes first because audits usually show the navigation needs work, and that’s cheaper to fix in a sitemap than in finished designs.
- 03
Build & migrate
Development runs about three weeks. Content migration starts in its second week, once templates exist, and the redirect map is built alongside. The map pairs every old URL that has traffic or links with its new home as a 301. Build it from the audit’s crawl, since the old URLs are the ones you’re protecting, and the new sitemap won’t list them.
- 04
Relaunch
QA and performance testing, including a crawl of staging to check every redirect resolves in one hop, then Relaunch. Ten days of monitoring follow: 404s, crawl errors in Search Console, and pages that dropped. Some ranking movement in the first weeks is normal; a steady fall on pages that used to bring in traffic isn’t.
Adapting it to your project
Size the migration from the inventory
Check the noindex on launch day
One bar per review round
Keep the baseline figures on the chart
Questions
How long does a website redesign take?
About 11 weeks in this template, including the audit and post-launch monitoring, with the new site live at around nine weeks. Small sites with little content can be redesigned in six to eight weeks. Large sites with complex migrations, integrations or many stakeholders commonly take four to nine months.
How do you keep SEO rankings during a website redesign?
Record which pages bring in organic traffic before you start, keep or improve their content, map every old URL to a new one with a 301 redirect, test the redirects on staging, make sure the live site isn’t set to noindex, and watch rankings and crawl errors for a few weeks afterwards.
How is a redesign different from a new website project?
A redesign starts from an existing site, so it adds an audit, content migration and a redirect map to keep search traffic. A new site has none of that history, and the website project template is the better fit.
Related
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