B2B Website Redesign: A Six-Week Checklist You Can Run

Most B2B redesigns fail because teams skip the groundwork. They jump to mockups without knowing what is broken, who the buyers are, or what success looks like. This is a week-by-week checklist you can actually run.

Six weeks covers a focused rebuild: discovery, strategy, core templates, and a launch-ready staging site for homepage plus a handful of key pages. A 40-page migration with CRM work is longer — stretch the build, do not skip weeks 1–2.

Assign one decision-maker. Committee review will blow this calendar. Manufacturing website redesign is the industrial version of the same sequence. Redesign cost is how the bands map to scope.

Week 1: Baseline and access

Do not open Figma. Open analytics and Search Console.

• Export 90 days — Traffic, top landing pages, conversion paths, form completions.
• Note the split — Pages that convert and pages with traffic and no leads.
• Technical baseline — Mobile speed, index coverage, current URL list, known 404s.
• Tools and owners — CMS, DNS, analytics, CRM, tag manager, staging, legal review.
• Grant access — Waiting on logins is how week 1 becomes week 3.

Done when: a one-pager exists — what is working, what is broken, who can log in.

Furniture Packages USA’s rebuild started from this kind of inventory, not a mood board. Buyer-type IA plus a 1:1 redirect map later produced +210% organic traffic and +95% quote requests over six months. Continuity is a week-1 artifact.

Week 2: Buyers, metrics, scope

• Map buyer types — Technical evaluator, procurement, economic buyer. Different entry pages, different proof.
• Define 3–5 success metrics — “Looks modern” is not one. Lead quality, conversion rate, speed, organic landings on money pages are.
• Freeze v1 scope in writing — Page list, integrations, languages, CMS. Everything else is phase 2.
• Name a content owner — And a review SLA (2–3 days). No owner, no date.

Done when: scope and metrics are in the same document.

If this week feels skippable, you are about to design the same confusion with better type. Common failure modes: no named buyer, no RFQ owner, and a homepage animation funded before the URL map.

Week 3: Content inventory and IA

• Inventory every URL — Keep, merge, rewrite, kill.
• Redirects for anything that dies — Draft the map now, not at DNS.
• Sitemap and primary nav — Test it with sales: “where would you send a prospect?”
• Legal / engineering copy — Claims, specs, certifications. Start those threads now.
• Asset list — Product photos, diagrams, logos. Missing assets delay design more than missing fonts.

Done when: sitemap + keep/kill list. Not a mood board.

Forzabuilt’s WordPress-to-Astro move on a 200+ SKU catalog lived or died here: layered redirects so high-intent SKUs did not dump to the homepage, and IA rebuilt around procurement intent. Post-launch the site hit 99% technical SEO health. That is week 3 done well, not a theme swap.

Week 4: Technical spec and copy start

• Lock the stack — CMS, hosting, environments, performance targets, form destinations, analytics events.
• SEO non-negotiables — URL strategy, redirects, meta, schema, canonicals. “SEO-friendly” is not a spec.
• First-wave copy — Home, one service template, contact. Placeholders are fine for the rest if these three are real.
• Integrations with a test account — CRM, scheduling, chat. Not a slide.

Done when: technical requirements and first-wave copy are in the brief, not in Slack.

Pro-Axis launched as a six-page Growth site with print-backed RFQ on day one. That is the week-4 bar for a shop: the packet works before the brand film.

Week 5: Design components, then pages

• System first — Type, spacing, buttons, forms, cards.
• Then home and the service template — Highest traffic, highest conversion.
• One review round this week — On a prototype you can click. Not five opinions in a thread.
• Start staging as soon as the template is approved — Do not wait for every inner page.
• Content in as components exist — Empty templates hide problems.

Done when: you can click a staging homepage that uses production components.

Week 6: Build hardening and launch prep

• Weekly demo in the browser — Forms, nav, mobile, key CTAs.
• Redirect map from week-3 inventory — QA it before DNS.
• Tracking vs. week-1 baseline — Pageviews, events, thank-you pages, CRM handoff. So you can measure after go-live.
• Pre-launch — SSL, 404, sitemap, robots, backups, rollback owner.

Post-launch checklist starts the day you flip DNS, not a month later.

Done when: staging matches v1 scope, redirects and analytics are tested, one person can say go.

If week 6 still has “we need to decide the nav,” you skipped week 3. Go back. Do not launch a prettier version of the same confusion.

Need help running this? See web design or start a project.