The most expensive redesigns are the ones that start with a phone call to an agency. The cheapest, most successful ones start weeks earlier, inside your own business. Six preparations, none requiring a designer, that will shrink your quotes and sharpen your outcome.
1. Write down today's numbers
Monthly visitors, enquiries, orders, conversion rate, top five landing pages. Thirty minutes in your analytics, one page of baseline. Without it, nobody — including your future agency — can ever prove the redesign worked. With it, every decision gets easier to argue.
2. Pick one goal, singular
"More modern, more enquiries, better SEO, easier to update" is four projects wearing one budget. Rank them. A site designed to maximise enquiries makes different trade-offs than one designed for content publishing. Agencies quote tighter and design braver when the goal is singular.
3. Talk to five recent customers
Ask three questions: What almost stopped you choosing us? What did you need to know that the website didn't tell you? Where else did you look? Fifteen minutes each. The answers will contradict at least one strongly-held internal belief — better to learn it now than after launch.
4. Audit what you already have
List every page. Mark each: keep, rewrite, merge, or kill. Most sites we audit carry 40–60% dead weight — old promotions, empty "news" sections, pages nobody has visited since 2023. Content migration is a major cost driver; arriving with this list can cut quotes meaningfully.
5. Gather your raw materials
Logo files, brand guidelines, photography, testimonials, awards, certifications, staff photos you are willing to use. Half of redesign delays are content delays. A shared folder assembled up front can shorten a project by a month.
6. Decide who says yes
One named decision-maker, agreed before kickoff. Committees review; one person approves. Projects with clear approval authority ship on time at a rate that still surprises us; projects where "the directors will discuss it" do not.
Then brief the agency
Arrive with your baseline, one goal, customer quotes, a content list and materials, and any competent agency will give you a sharper quote and a better site. If you would like our thinking on your specific situation, the first conversation is free — and our UX strategy engagements exist precisely for steps you would rather not run alone.