For one thing, it shouldn’t look like your old one. It should be more modern, more professional, delighting, perform better and most importantly, something that the rest of the company will love. If you’re building the car, it will be a Ferrari when your last one was a Toyota.

These are wonderful goals, and let us be the first to tell you that yes, it is possible -especially the with the right people and a plan. And it’s exciting.

But are you ready for your redesign?

There will be many of unforeseen items that will come up during the redesign process like, “Should this go in the website” or “Should we use these colors or those images?” Stuff you may not be prepared to answer at this point, and that’s ok!

There’s no need to try to answer every question early on - especially when it comes to design but there are a few things that can help you make your redesign go smoothly - and save you some money in the process.

1. Do you have quality content assets? Using photos and high quality images are very important on the web. If you’re looking to build your site with these elements, do take a minute to consider if they already exist in your content assets, or if you’ll have a way to create them during the design process.
2. Will this site use your current branding? Sometimes a web project is used as motivation to develop other aspects of the brand, like an updated brand design. If this is the case, put a little thought into how you’d describe your brand to a designer. Not so much designing for them, but knowing what colors are in your pallet are a helpful step.
3. Who is going to write the content? It’s a question that rarely gets asked, but is one of the most important elements of the entire project. If building a website is like engineering a car, the content is the blueprint and the engine. It will guide designers when they’re putting together the user experience, and in the end, the written content will drive the performance of the site. That’s pretty big.

If you’re about to start a web project, consider who will be in charge of writing the content, or better yet, make a little more room in the budget to have an outside source do it. Many agencies have a copywriter on board for that very thing (we certainly do). They’ll help you craft the pages for the web and even write a lot of the time-consuming stuff that bogs down a project.

Starting a web project is exciting - having the outcome is even better. Being prepared with these three things will help the process go that much smoother and save you from most of the surprises that can spring up along the way.

Sound alright? Good. Let's start building.