Website redesign / Discovery
How to Audit a Website Before a Redesign
Find what already works, what blocks customers, and what the new site must preserve before designing screens.
Write the decision the audit must support
An audit should lead to a scope, not a folder of screenshots. Define the business goal, the audiences that matter, and the decisions you need to make: retain, improve, consolidate, migrate, or remove. Record known constraints such as legal review, integrations, launch dates, and who can approve changes.
Pair stakeholder observations with evidence. Customer questions, sales objections, support requests, analytics, and search data can reveal different problems. The redesign business case guide helps turn findings into a reason to invest.
Inventory content and paths
List every live page, its purpose, owner, traffic or inquiries where available, and the next step it offers. Trace the main journeys from entry page to contact or purchase; note where people need information that is missing or hard to find. Review mobile and keyboard use, not just desktop appearance.
Mark pages that earn relevant search visits or receive external links before proposing deletion. This inventory feeds the content migration plan and the redirect map.
Inspect the implementation and ownership
Identify the CMS, hosting, forms, analytics, search tools, payment systems, CRM connections, scripts, and domain access. Check who owns the accounts and can export data. Document performance or accessibility problems with reproducible examples, not vague labels.
Separate a design problem from a process or technical problem. A slow approval cycle will not be fixed by a new visual design, and a broken lead notification may need an integration change rather than a new page.
Prioritize findings into a project brief
Rate issues by buyer impact, business importance, confidence in the evidence, and effort to change. Identify the few journeys that must work at launch, the pages that can be improved later, and the risks that need investigation before a fixed quote.
The output should name retained assets, new content, changed functionality, acceptance checks, and responsible owners. Use the redesign checklist to test whether the proposed scope covers launch and handover as well as design.
Plan a site around real decisions
Need help with your project?
Northform can audit your current site and turn the findings into a redesign scope tied to buyer journeys and practical delivery decisions.
Discuss your project Explore website redesign →