Website relaunch – What you need to decide before the launch

Most website relaunches do not fail because of the design. They fail because of decisions that were made too late – or not at all. A relaunch is not merely a design exercise. It is a structured project in which technical, content-related and strategic decisions are made that will have an impact for years to come. Anyone who underestimates this will end up with a new website that has the same problems as the old one, just with a fresher look. This article outlines the six decisions that must be finalised before launch for a relaunch to be successful. It is aimed at anyone who is currently planning, evaluating or overseeing a relaunch.

Why relaunch projects so often fail

Failure rarely takes the form of a major disaster. It results from a series of minor oversights that build up over the course of the project.

The CMS is chosen without any discussion of the editorial process. The target audience is not redefined, even though it has shifted over the last three years. Tracking is set up as an afterthought because everyone is exhausted after the site went live and just wants to ‘get that sorted quickly’. And the old URLs are redirected to new ones, but the strategy for this was never developed because nobody had included it in the briefing.

What happens next is all too familiar: rankings plummet because redirects are missing or have been set up incorrectly. The editorial team cannot maintain the new pages themselves because the CMS does not fit in with their processes. Three months after launch, the management asks why enquiries haven’t increased. And the team has no answer, because no tracking has been set up.

In most cases, these problems are not down to poor execution. The real reason is that important decisions were not taken at the right time. A relaunch is a project with interdependencies. If you make decision B before decision A is clear, you are building on an unstable foundation.

The six decisions to be made before the launch

Firstly: Objectives and performance measurement

A new website is not an end in itself. It is designed to achieve something: to generate leads, build trust, attract applications, sell products or position the brand in a new market.

If you do not define these objectives before the project begins, you will not be able to measure afterwards whether the relaunch has been successful. And if you cannot measure whether something has been successful, you cannot justify whether a follow-up investment is worthwhile.

Measuring success is part of the objective. Which KPIs are tracked, using which tool, and who analyses them? That may sound trivial. In practice, however, an alarmingly high proportion of projects fail to do this.

Secondly: Choosing a CMS

Choosing a CMS is not just a technical decision. It determines how the team will be able to maintain the website in the long term. A system that requires developers to make content changes is a long-term problem for most marketing teams. A system that is too flexible will become a mess without clear editorial processes.

The choice between a traditional CMS such as WordPress, a headless system such as Storyblok or a visual editor tool such as Webflow depends on three factors: what is the team structure like, what are the website’s technical requirements, and how will the solution scale as the business grows? Anyone who fails to answer these questions before deciding on a CMS will end up buying a solution that will become the next problem in two years’ time.

Thirdly: URL structure and redirect strategy

When URLs change, every old URL must be redirected to a new one. This isn’t a luxury, but a fundamental requirement for SEO. Anyone who only sorts this out after launch will lose ranking potential that has been built up over years and break external links that carry backlink value.

The redirect strategy belongs in the briefing, not in the follow-up work. It is not a technical task to be carried out at the end, but a content-related decision to be made at the outset: Which old URLs exist, what will happen to them, and where will they redirect to?

Fourthly: Content strategy

Which pages will be created from scratch? Which ones will be merged or deleted? Which content will be carried over from the old site and which will be rewritten? When will the texts be written, by whom, and who will approve them?

These decisions determine how long the project will take and how much capacity the team needs to allocate. They also determine whether the new website will be stronger in terms of content than the old one, or whether it will simply look different. Content production is the most common cause of delays in relaunch projects. Anyone who takes it for granted and fails to plan for it will ultimately hold everyone else up.

Fifth: Tracking architecture

Google Analytics, Tag Manager, conversion tracking for forms, Ads pixels, CRM integrations. This infrastructure must be set up and tested before launch. Not afterwards.

Every day without functioning tracking after the launch is a day on which data is irretrievably lost. This is not a theoretical problem. It is one of the most common issues that arise in relaunch projects, because tracking is often treated as a ‘technical detail to be dealt with at the end’ during project planning.

Sixth: Launch strategy

When will the new site go live? Will there be a transition phase with a staging environment? Who will approve the site, and what criteria will they use? What happens if something doesn’t work on the first day?

A clear launch plan with defined responsibilities and a rollback scenario prevents chaos. The launch is not the end of the project. It marks the start of the phase in which the website is actually up and running. Anyone who fails to organise the launch properly is handing over an unfinished project to day-to-day operations.

Technical areas that are often overlooked during a relaunch

In addition to the six strategic decisions, there are technical areas that are regularly overlooked until it is too late in relaunch projects.

Performance isn’t just a nice-to-have. Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor and have a direct impact on bounce rates. Uncompressed images, a CMS that loads heavy scripts, or a hosting package that isn’t suited to the expected load all cost you rankings and conversions. If you only optimise performance after launch, you’re always optimising against what’s already happening.

On-page SEO must be part of the overall strategy, not an afterthought. H1 structure, meta titles, alt text for images, internal linking architecture. In many projects, these elements are only addressed at the very last minute, even though they should be part of the page concept from the outset. An SEO briefing checklist for each page template is the simplest way to ensure this.

Since the European Accessibility Act 2025 came into force, accessibility has become a legal requirement for many organisations. Contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, ARIA labels, correct document structure. Anyone planning a website relaunch should incorporate accessibility into the concept from the outset. This does not involve any extra work if it is taken into account during the design and development stages. It does, however, involve a considerable amount of extra work if it has to be retrofitted afterwards.

What pechschwarz® is doing differently for the relaunch

We do not treat the relaunch as a design project. We start with objectives and don’t stop at the launch, but continue through to operations. This means that CMS decisions are made before the design phase, not after prototyping. Redirect strategies are developed during the concept phase, not during the development phase. And tracking is tested before the launch, not set up afterwards.

Over 120 brands have worked with us on websites and platforms. From corporate rebranding for medium-sized industrial companies to e-commerce platforms for growing consumer brands. What becomes clear every time is that the six decisions outlined in this article are always the points at which projects succeed or fail.

If you’re planning a website relaunch or want to take the next step, our web design team will show you what a structured process looks like: pechschwarz.com/en/web-design-agency

Checklist before the relaunch

Objectives and KPIs defined and set out in a tracking strategy. CMS selected based on team structure, scaling objectives and technical requirements. URL mapping created and the redirect strategy finalised. Content audit carried out; decisions on retention, consolidation and deletion documented. Tracking infrastructure set up and tested prior to launch. Launch plan documented, including responsibilities, acceptance criteria and rollback scenario.