企業官網改版前要準備什麼？從真實改版案例看規劃重點What to prepare before a website redesign: lessons from real cases

Your website is five or six years old, it looks dated, it is awkward on a phone, and every small text change means calling someone. So you decide to redesign. That is a common story, but many redesigns go wrong not because of the design but because of what was skipped before work began. If you don't know how the old site performs, you can't tell whether the new one is better. If nobody maps the old URLs, search traffic and the links customers saved can break on launch day. This article looks at a few real cases with published results, draws out the planning lessons, and ends with a pre-redesign checklist for small businesses.

Start with the problem you are solving

"The site is old" is not a goal. Better are specific problems: few people finish the enquiry form on mobile, product pages load slowly, customers keep phoning about information they can't find online, or staff wait for a developer to change a sentence. Writing the problems down tells you what the redesign should cover and which numbers to watch after launch.

A redesign also doesn't have to mean rebuilding everything. Some of the cases below are performance work on specific pages, one is a large site consolidation, but all of them measured carefully before and after the change.

The cases below are public, documented examples, not Rejoicing Fountain clients; details are summarised from the references at the end. Their results depend on each company's industry, traffic and starting point, and doing the same things will not guarantee the same outcome elsewhere.

Case 1: Vodafone, baseline first

According to a case study Google published on web.dev in March 2021, Vodafone optimised a landing page for Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). The work included rendering part of the page on the server, cutting render-blocking JavaScript, and resizing the hero image and optimising other images.

The lesson is in how they checked it. Paid traffic was split evenly between the optimised page and the original, which looked and worked the same apart from performance. The optimised version had about 31% better LCP and 8% more total sales, with higher lead and cart rates as well. The write-up also notes that another technical metric got worse, a reminder that a single number never tells the whole story.

Planning lesson: record a baseline before you redesign. Most small businesses can't run an A/B test, but you should at least know your traffic, enquiries and key page speeds beforehand, so there is something to compare against after launch.

Case 2: Rakuten 24, speed as a requirement

Also on web.dev, Japanese retailer Rakuten 24 describes collecting Core Web Vitals from real users with an open-source library, then working through a series of fixes: splitting and deferring JavaScript, lazy-loading images below the fold, serving properly sized images in modern formats, and reserving space for images so the layout doesn't jump.

A month-long A/B test on a high-traffic landing page showed revenue per visitor up about 53% and conversion rate up about 33% for the optimised version. They also built an internal dashboard to track the metrics and catch regressions from later changes.

Planning lesson: put speed into the brief rather than fixing it after launch. Image sizes, third-party scripts and fonts all affect it, so set targets during planning and make sure someone checks them regularly afterwards.

Case 3: Yahoo! JAPAN News, let the tools point

The Yahoo! JAPAN News case (web.dev, updated March 2021) explains that Google Search Console first flagged a group of URLs with poor performance. Lighthouse and browser developer tools then showed why: the main image on article pages loaded late and pushed the text down. They fixed it by reserving space based on each image's aspect ratio.

Afterwards, page views per session rose 15.1%, session duration rose 13.3%, bounce rate fell by 1.72 percentage points, and URLs flagged as poor in Search Console dropped by 98%.

Planning lesson: free tools reveal a lot. Before you redesign, open Search Console and PageSpeed Insights to see which pages have problems so the new site doesn't repeat them, and make sure the new site is connected to the same tools.

Case 4: GOV.UK, a home for every old URL

In 2012 the UK's Government Digital Service replaced Directgov and Business Link with GOV.UK. Their blog explains that instead of sending old URLs to the home page, they redirected each page to its closest equivalent on the new site; pages with no equivalent showed an explanation and a link to the copy kept by The National Archives. They tested the redirects against a large set of real old URLs from server logs, and departments reviewed the mappings together.

Later posts add that pointing old URLs at the most relevant new page helps keep search rankings, and that monitoring must continue after a move, because printed materials, links from other sites and seasonal content can expose missing mappings months or even years later.

Planning lesson: audit your content before you redesign, deciding for each page whether to keep, merge, rewrite or retire it, and map every old URL to a new one with a 301 permanent redirect. Google's site-move guidance also recommends keeping redirects for at least a year and not pointing large numbers of old URLs at an unrelated page.

A pre-redesign checklist for small businesses

Scaled down to a typical small business, here is what to prepare before the redesign starts:

• Goals and KPIs: write down two or three problems to solve and a number for each, such as monthly enquiries, form completion rate or key page load time.
• Analytics baseline: check that Google Analytics or your analytics tool is working, and export at least several months of traffic, top pages and conversions.
• Content inventory: list every page and mark it keep, merge, rewrite or retire; note information customers often ask for that the site doesn't cover.
• URL map and 301 redirects: build a list of old URLs from your sitemap and analytics and map each to a new one, including PDFs, images and any short links printed on marketing materials.
• Search Console: confirm you have verified ownership, note current search performance and problem pages, and submit the new sitemap at launch.
• Brand assets: gather logo source files, brand colours, font licences, product photos and videos, and confirm you have the rights to use them.
• Who edits content: decide who will update news, products and job listings after launch, and choose the CMS and permissions around that.
• Forms and integrations: list contact forms, bookings, payments, your LINE Official Account, CRM or spreadsheet connections, and confirm where data goes and who receives it.
• Legal pages and privacy: update your privacy policy, cookie notice and terms, and make sure you explain why you collect personal data, in line with Taiwan's Personal Data Protection Act.
• Timeline and launch plan: leave time for writing content, testing and fixes, avoid launching in your busy season, and plan a monitoring period after launch.

What to watch in the first few months

Launch is not the finish line. Google notes that rankings can fluctuate during a site move and that for a medium-sized site it can take a few weeks or more before Google gradually starts showing the new URLs. During that time, check Search Console's indexing and error reports, 404 pages in your analytics, and whether enquiries and form completion are close to your baseline, roughly once a week. Add redirects or adjust content as issues appear; steady fixing beats trying to be perfect on day one.

If you can, consider a staged launch, for example the main service pages or one product line first, then the rest once the numbers look normal. Problems are easier to trace that way.

FAQ

Will a redesign always hurt my search rankings?

Not always, but there is a risk. Changed URLs, deleted content or broken redirects can all reduce rankings and traffic. Mapping URLs with 301 redirects, keeping valuable content and monitoring after launch lower that risk, but nobody can guarantee rankings will stay the same.

Does a small company need A/B testing?

A/B tests need enough traffic to produce reliable results, which many small business sites don't have. A more practical approach is to record a baseline before the redesign, compare like-for-like periods after launch, and note whether ads or promotions in the same period may have moved the numbers.

What is most often overlooked before a redesign?

Content and ownership. The designs are finished before anyone has written the copy or taken the photos, or nobody is responsible for updates after launch and the site goes stale again. Deciding early who supplies content and who maintains the site often matters more than the visual style.

Wrapping up

A smooth redesign comes from preparation: knowing the problem, recording where you are today, sorting out content and URLs, and planning how you will watch things after launch. To see how we plan and build company websites, read about our website design and development service. If you are also working out a budget, what drives the cost of a website is a useful next read. Book a free 30-minute consultation and we can look at your current site together and talk through where a redesign should start.

References

• Vodafone: A 31% improvement in LCP increased sales by 8%, web.dev (Google), 2021-03
• How Rakuten 24's investment in Core Web Vitals increased revenue per visitor by 53.37% and conversion rate by 33.13%, web.dev (Google), 2022-08
• How CLS optimizations increased Yahoo! JAPAN News's page views per session by 15%, web.dev (Google), 2021-03
• No link left behind, Government Digital Service (UK), 2012-10-11
• Search engines: what happens when your content moves, Inside GOV.UK, 2014-03-24
• The Transition Tool: how to use it after a site moves, Inside GOV.UK, 2014-05-30
• Site moves and migrations, Google Search Central, 2026-08 (checked 2026-10-14)