Website Redesign Checklist: 12 Fixes Before You Pay Anyone

Before you pay anyone for a website redesign, check twelve things: six problems on your current site that are actively costing you customers (PDF menus, dead buttons, no mobile layout, expired SSL, wrong hours, slow loads), three things to demand in the new build (one clear money action, a design that isn't a template clone, a plan for who updates content), and three things that should never cost extra (analytics, ownership of your domain and code, and a warranty).

I build sites for small businesses, and most redesign projects I see go wrong the same way: the owner pays for a prettier version of the same broken site. This checklist exists so that doesn't happen to you. Print it, and don't sign anything until every box has an answer.

Part 1: What's costing you customers right now

These six problems are the reason you're losing business today. Walk through your own site — on your phone, not your office desktop — and check each one honestly.

1. Your key information is trapped in a PDF

The classic version is the restaurant PDF menu, but I see PDF price lists, PDF service brochures, and PDF "catalogs" everywhere. PDFs are slow to load on mobile, miserable to read on a small screen, and largely invisible to the search queries that matter ("lunch menu near me" doesn't surface page 3 of your PDF). Worse: because updating a PDF means reopening the design file, they're almost always out of date.

Checklist test: is anything a customer needs before buying — menu, prices, services — only available as a download? That content needs to become real, on-page text in the redesign.

2. Buttons and forms that go nowhere

Click every button and submit every form on your site. Today. I audit a lot of small business websites and dead interactions are shockingly common: "Order Online" buttons pointing to a delivery service the business left in 2024, contact forms that submit into the void because the email integration broke, "Book Now" links returning 404s.

Every dead button is a customer who tried to give you money and was told no. You will never see these failures in any report — the customer just leaves.

Checklist test: click everything. Fill out your own contact form and confirm the message actually arrives.

3. No mobile layout

Roughly six in ten visits to a local business website come from a phone. If your site was built more than five or six years ago, there's a real chance it has no mobile viewport at all — meaning phones render a shrunken desktop page that visitors must pinch-zoom to read. Most of them won't. They'll hit back and tap your competitor instead.

Checklist test: open your site on your phone. If text is unreadable without zooming, or buttons are too small to tap, this alone justifies the redesign.

4. Expired or missing SSL

If your site loads over http:// instead of https://, browsers brand it "Not Secure" right in the address bar — next to your business name. Some browsers throw a full-page warning. To a customer, that reads as "this business might steal my card number," even on a site that takes no payments at all.

SSL certificates are free and auto-renewing on every modern host. An expired certificate in 2026 means nobody is maintaining the site — which is its own red flag.

Checklist test: look for the padlock. Any warning, in any browser, is a fail.

5. Your site disagrees with your Google listing

Customers find your hours in two places: your Google Business Profile and your website. When the site says you close at 9 and Google says 8 — or worse, the site still lists pre-2024 hours, old pricing, or a location you moved out of — customers stop trusting both sources. Some will drive to a closed door once and never come back.

Checklist test: put your website and your Google listing side by side. Hours, phone number, address, services. Any mismatch is costing you trust and probably map-pack ranking too.

6. It loads slowly

Slow sites bleed visitors quietly. The pattern is well documented: every extra second of load time measurably increases the share of people who give up before the page appears. Old small business sites are typically slow for boring reasons — 4MB uncompressed photos, a decade of plugin bloat, $3/month shared hosting.

Checklist test: run your homepage through Google's free PageSpeed Insights on the mobile tab. Don't obsess over the score — but if the page takes more than about three seconds to become usable, you're losing people. (How fast the new site will be is also one of the best questions to ask anyone bidding on the redesign — more on that in my website cost breakdown.)

Part 2: What to demand in the redesign

Fixing the six problems above is the floor. These three demands are what separate a redesign that earns money from one that just looks newer.

7. One obvious money action on every page

Decide what the single most valuable thing a visitor can do is — call you, book an appointment, order online, request a quote — and demand that the new design makes that action impossible to miss on every page, especially on mobile. A tappable phone number or booking button that's always within thumb's reach will outperform any amount of visual polish.

If a designer presents a beautiful homepage and you can't answer "what is this page asking the visitor to do?" within three seconds, send it back. Pretty without purpose is the most expensive kind of website. This is the core of how I approach web design for small businesses: the money action gets designed first, then everything else supports it.

8. A design that isn't a template clone

A huge share of "redesigns" are a stock template with your logo dropped in — the same hero image, the same three-column features row, the same layout as four of your competitors. Customers may not consciously notice, but sameness reads as forgettable, and forgettable doesn't get the call. This problem has gotten worse, not better, now that AI tools can mass-produce the same generic site in minutes — I wrote about why most AI-built websites fail for exactly this reason.

What to demand: before signing, ask to see the builder's last three live sites. If you can tell they came from the same person because they share a quality, good. If you can tell because they share a layout, walk.

9. A plan for who updates the content

Here's a failure mode nobody budgets for: the site launches, everyone celebrates, and then nobody touches the content again. Two years later the homepage announces a "new" service from 2026, the team page lists someone who quit, and the seasonal banner is two seasons stale. A redesign that doesn't answer "who updates this, and how?" is just scheduling the next redesign.

What to demand: before launch, get a written answer to three questions. Who can edit the site? How long does a small change take? What does it cost? "Email me and it's done within a couple of days under your care plan" is a good answer. "We'll quote each change" is how sites fossilize.

Part 3: What to never pay extra for

These three things show up as paid add-ons on a lot of quotes. They shouldn't. They're either free, fast to set up, or simply your property by right.

10. Analytics

Basic analytics — how many people visit, where they come from, what they do — takes minutes to set up and costs nothing with modern privacy-friendly tools. Without it, you can never answer whether the redesign worked. Any line item charging meaningful money for "analytics setup" is billing you for a copy-paste.

What's worth paying for is interpretation — someone reviewing the numbers and telling you what to change. The install itself? Never an upsell.

11. Ownership of your domain and your code

You should own your domain name, registered in your registrar account under your email — never the builder's. You should own (or have full rights and access to) the site's code and content. Some shops register the domain themselves or build on proprietary platforms you can't export from, then charge a ransom — politely called a "transfer fee" — when you try to leave.

This isn't a feature. It's the difference between owning your storefront and renting it from someone who can change the locks. The only acceptable answer to "who owns the domain, the code, and the content?" is you, in writing, at no charge.

12. A warranty

If something the builder made breaks in the first months after launch — a form stops sending, a layout breaks on a new phone, a link dies — fixing it should cost you nothing. That's not generosity; it's the builder standing behind their work, the same way a contractor stands behind a roof. A quote with no post-launch coverage at all means every defect becomes a billable surprise.

Ongoing maintenance — updates, backups, content changes, security — is a fair thing to pay for, and it's what care plans are for. But there's a clean line: defects are the builder's problem; upkeep is a service. Demand the first free and price the second honestly. (Mine are listed openly on the pricing page.)

The checklist, in one place

#	Item	Pass condition
1	PDF-trapped content	Menus, prices, services are on-page text
2	Dead buttons & forms	Every click works; form messages arrive
3	Mobile layout	Readable and tappable on a phone, no zooming
4	SSL	Padlock shows, no browser warnings
5	Google listing match	Hours, phone, address identical everywhere
6	Speed	Usable in ~3 seconds on mobile
7	Money action	One obvious call/book/order action per page
8	Not a template clone	Builder's last 3 live sites don't share a layout
9	Content plan	Written answer: who updates, how fast, what cost
10	Analytics	Included, not an upsell
11	Ownership	Domain, code, content are yours in writing
12	Warranty	Post-launch defects fixed free

What to do with this list

Two uses. First, audit your current site against items 1–6 — if you fail three or more, the redesign isn't vanity, it's triage. Second, take items 7–12 into every sales conversation and watch how the builder reacts. The good ones will have answers ready, because this is just how they already work. The ones who get cagey about ownership, warranty, or showing live sites just saved you from an expensive mistake.

If you want a second opinion first, send me your current site. I'll tell you which of the twelve it fails and what fixing it should honestly cost — including "your site is fine, don't pay anyone" if that's the truth.