A client asked you to redesign their website, so how do you begin? Where do you begin? The process of designing a new website with old content seems simple but can be an increasingly complicated experience if you don’t know where to start. Below is a quick guide on where to go before you start.

1.Get Access

It seems obvious, but it’s easy to overlook how long it can take to gain access to hosting. Whether it’s struggling to get the information from a previous agency or waiting on the client to provide you with a GoDaddy login, the process of getting access to the hosting needed can be a struggle. Something else to think about is getting access to dealer and manufacturer logins to gather content. The client often has them, but it is easy to overlook.

2. Take Stock of Your Content

It’s easy to say “just get the content from the old site,” but it only makes sense to gather all the content in advance when planning out a site redesign just as you would if you built the site from scratch. Create a Word document with all content that is being transferred over and gather all new content before starting. Odds are, unless a site was made recently, most images from the old site will be too small or processed to make use of in a new site.  Make sure you have everything you need, especially high-resolution images and all text content, before starting.

3. Plan Your Attack

Finally, make sure you have a plan. Create site maps and timelines. It’s easy to say that a site will take two weeks to create, but by the time the client sees it, gives input, and you adjust your site to fit their desires, your two-week project becomes a six-week behemoth. The more you get approved ahead of time in terms of site maps and page template designs, the smoother the process. Create a structure, a base, that will make your web design project as easy to execute as it is hard to break down.