Getting Ready for Your Website Redesign: A B2B Marketer’s Survival Guide

Bjorn Thomson

So your website’s looking a bit...2010-ish? Hey, we’ve all been there. Maybe you’ve noticed your competitor’s shiny new site, or your team is frustrated every time they try to update content. Now, the key is to stop yourself from jumping blindly into trends or costly overhauls. Preparing for a website redesign is about knowing exactly why you need a change and planning accordingly.

This guide will walk you through assessing your readiness, securing stakeholder buy-in, and confidently deciding if you need professional website redesign services.

Know Your "Why": Clarify Your Goals

Before you call an agency to redesign your website, you need clarity on why you’re redesigning. It’s easy to chase trends, but is your decision strategic or reactionary?

Common reasons for a redesign website include:

Your website no longer reflects your current brand or future vision.
You aren’t hitting key website KPIs (leads, conversions, engagement).
Your users find it difficult to navigate or convert.
Your site isn’t mobile-friendly or optimized for SEO.
Your team resorts to external tools to create pages due to frustration with the current CMS.

Ask yourself honestly: Is this a redesign, or are we just chasing a shiny new look?

Audit Your Current Website (aka Facing the Ugly Truth)

Nobody likes facing ugly truths, but metrics don’t lie. A quick audit can tell you a lot about your current site's health.

Here’s a mini checklist to start with:

Engagement: Drop in user engagement can suggest issues with content, user experience, or site functionality.
Page performance: Slow pages frustrate users and negatively impact SEO.
Mobile responsiveness: Google penalizes sites that perform poorly on mobile.
Content effectiveness: Check user behaviour—are visitors finding key information or constantly contacting you via phone/email?
SEO visibility: Has organic traffic stagnated or declined?

Tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, Lighthouse audits, and Hotjar heat maps can quickly spotlight these issues. And remember: user feedback or heatmaps can visually (and dramatically!) demonstrate your site’s shortcomings to stakeholders.

Getting Stakeholders Onboard: Speak Their Language

Stakeholders might not speak "website," but they do speak ROI, revenue growth, and brand reputation. To gain executive buy-in:

Connect the redesign directly to business goals (lead generation, sales, brand perception).
Use competitor benchmarking: Highlight where your site falls behind.
Showcase tangible user feedback, because executives rarely argue with customers.
Address their concerns proactively—be ready for questions on costs, timelines, and "why fix what's not broken."

Tip for instant buy-in: Data talks louder than opinions. Pair analytics with direct user feedback to convincingly highlight site shortcomings.

Reality Check: Budgets and Timelines (aka Can We Actually Afford This?)

Let’s get real. "How much does a website redesign cost?" can trigger instant budget anxiety. But realistic budgeting saves a ton of headaches down the road. Here’s a quick overview:

DIY: Cheaper, sure, but extremely resource-intensive internally. Ask yourself: Do you really have the capacity (and patience) for this?
Freelancers: Cost-effective, but often lacking the reliability, breadth of expertise, or scalability that a full-scale project demands.
Agencies: A pricier investment, but a B2B web design agency typically brings comprehensive solutions, accountability, and a whole team of experts (saving you endless migraines later).

Don’t underestimate hidden costs like content migration, SEO setup, and ongoing maintenance. Clients frequently overlook the cost and complexity of content planning and migration—the detailed work required to audit, restructure, and map your existing content to fit seamlessly within your new site's information architecture.

As for timelines—transparency is everything. Be upfront about realistic durations. A thorough b2b website redesign typically takes months, not weeks, especially when factoring in complex integrations, content entry, and meticulous testing.

Content Inventory & Strategy: Marie Kondo Your Site Content

Does your content spark joy (aka conversions), or is it cluttering your site? Most organizations treat their websites as digital filing cabinets, piling in page after unnecessary page.

Content planning is notoriously challenging, and notoriously underestimated. It demands substantial time, resources, and coordination. A strategic approach will streamline your process:

Conduct a detailed content audit: Identify high-performing pages worth keeping and updating.
Refresh & reuse: You’d be surprised how much existing content can be lightly refreshed with new headlines or updated keywords.
Cull ruthlessly: Remove irrelevant, outdated, or redundant pages (analytics rarely lie—if no one's looked at a page in two years, it’s probably safe to say goodbye).
Plan for manual content entry: Even with automation tools, rarely is migration a simple "apples to apples" transfer. Your old content won’t perfectly fit the new design, so expect manual effort, meticulous mapping, and plenty of detailed spreadsheets.

To avoid chaos (and tears), create a content migration map—think detailed tracking spreadsheets that outline exactly how old content will fit into your shiny new design. The reality is, content migration isn’t just copy-and-paste; it’s part puzzle-solving, part creativity, and entirely necessary for a smooth transition.

A clear, well-managed content strategy won’t just tidy up your site—it’ll transform it into a conversion-focused machine. And who doesn’t want that?

Tech Stack & Integrations: Avoid Nasty Surprises Later

Integrations are often overlooked by marketers (but developers never forget!). Review your existing tech stack thoroughly:

CMS, CRM, Marketing Automation, analytics tracking, and form integrations.
Anticipate integration points that may become headaches, like data sync or analytics tagging.

Ignoring integrations now means costly surprises later. Don’t skip this step!

Choosing Your Web Redesign Dream Team

Sometimes a DIY approach works just fine. Other times? It’s a fast track to burnout, bugs, and budget creep. Here’s a quick gut-check to help you decide:

Does your team cover all the bases—UI design, UX design, and web development? UI design isn’t just about making things pretty—it’s about crafting an engaging, functional interface. UX design, on the other hand, is all about structure and flow. Both are critical, and they require different skill sets.
Can you conduct specialized user research and usability testing in-house?
Research isn't just surveys and assumptions. It takes training, tools, and time to surface the real insights that inform good design decisions.
Do you have enough internal capacity to take on a full redesign?
Be honest: will this project actually get the attention it deserves—or will it be squeezed in between a dozen other priorities?
Are you tackling complex technical integrations or custom development work? CRM connections, marketing automation, legacy systems… These require more than a few clever hacks.

If you're leaning toward outsourcing, arm yourself with good questions. Our top pick: “How will you specifically address our business goals?”

If an agency can’t answer that clearly, they’re not the right fit.

Measure Twice, Cut Once: Setting Up Your Post-Launch Metrics

How do you know your redesign worked? Start with clear, actionable KPIs tied directly to your business goals. Some meaningful metrics to track include:

Engagement with primary CTAs like “Request a Demo,” “Apply,” or “Contact Sales”—whether that’s clicks, form submissions, or deeper funnel activity.
Behaviour metrics such as decreased bounce rates, longer time on site, and more pages per session.
SEO performance including organic traffic growth, improved keyword rankings, and faster page load times.

Don’t forget to benchmark your baseline metrics before launch—so you’ll have a clear picture of what success actually looks like.

So, Are You Ready?

A quick self-check—ask yourself:

Have we clearly defined why a redesign is necessary?
Do we have stakeholder buy-in (and realistic budgets/timelines)?
Is our tech stack and integration plan clear?
Have we accurately assessed content reuse potential?

If you're ready to move from "let’s redesign" to "let’s do this right," check out our guide on redesigning your website by budgeting the smart way. You’ll find practical advice on choosing the right approach and why taking the long view might be your best move yet.

Still weighing your options? Reach out for a quick sanity check with our team. Your website shouldn’t be a headache—it should be a growth engine. Let’s make it happen.

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