Decide what to keep before redesigning your website

What this means for your practice

Create a content and route list before designing replacements. Record the purpose, owner and planned treatment of each important page so useful material is not lost by accident.

A practical example

For example, an old preparation page may receive little attention in meetings but still be linked from appointment confirmations. Ask your supplier to include those less visible routes in the review. Reception and service leads can identify material people regularly use. The useful result is an agreed plan for existing information, so the new website feels clearer without quietly breaking a task that worked before.

Give uncertain pages an explicit decision owner. Otherwise a content list can become a spreadsheet full of unanswered questions while design proceeds around it. Ask the relevant service lead whether a page is still useful and record the intended treatment before the new structure is finalised.

Make this improvement work

Start the redesign with a list of important existing destinations and the tasks they support. Include downloads, older articles and pages reached through saved or printed links, not only the current menu. Give each item an owner and a proposed treatment: retain, improve, replace or retire through an agreed decision. Ask the supplier to show how useful detail reaches the new structure before designing empty page layouts. Review a few less obvious bookmarks as well as popular pages. This helps uncover material that matters to a small audience even if it does not dominate the site's visit figures.

How to check the result

Count routes without an agreed redesign treatment.