A website design checklist works best when most of it is finished before anything is built. Ten decisions made up front, covering goals, audience, pages, content, who builds, platform, domain, budget, approvals and measurement, turn launch day into a short list of checks instead of a scramble.
This web design checklist is for a business owner or marketing manager who is about to commission, build or rebuild a website. It works whether you hire an agency, brief a freelancer, use an in-house team or build the site yourself with a website builder.
Notice that the definition starts with planning. Most of what decides whether a site wins enquiries is settled before a single page is drawn, and the Brand Library entry on website design makes the same point.
The wider picture sits in the full guide to B2B website design. This article stays on the decisions, the design checks and the launch checks that follow from them.
A website design checklist is mostly decisions made before the build
Problems that surface on launch day rarely start there. A form that sends enquiries to a dead inbox, a page nobody wrote, an old address that now shows an error: each of these traces back to a decision nobody made when it was cheap to make.
So this design checklist has three parts. The first is ten decisions to settle before the design project begins. The second is a set of design checks on the look and feel. The third is the set of launch checks that confirm those decisions held when the new website goes live.
Ten decisions to settle at the start of your website design project
Work through these in order. Write each answer in a sentence or two. If you cannot answer one, that is useful: it shows exactly where the project would have stalled later.
1. Decide the one thing the website must do
Start with a single sentence: what must this site do for the business, and which business goals does it serve? For most B2B companies the answer is an action by a qualified visitor, such as an enquiry, a booked call, a quote request or a download that leads to a conversation.
A site converts visitors only when one primary action is clear, so pick it and let everything else support it. A clear, prominent call to action guides visitors toward that conversion goal.
Write down how you will know it worked, in one measurable line, for example “enquiries from the contact page and the WhatsApp button each month”.
2. Decide who the site is for, and do the market research
Name the target audience: one or two groups of potential customers that matter most. A buyer researching suppliers, a referral checking you out before a call and a journalist looking for a name all arrive with different questions.
Then do the user research that should come before any design. Talk to five or six customers, run short user interviews, and read the questions your sales team hears.
Write each question in the visitor’s own words. “Can you do this for a business like mine, and what happens next?” is a better brief than “target market: SMEs”, because it states what user expectations look like in practice.
3. Decide the pages and how they connect
List every page the site needs, then group the web pages by what the visitor is trying to do, not by how your company is organised. A buyer looks for what you do for businesses like theirs, not for your internal teams.
For most B2B sites the core list is short: home, services, proof of past work, an about page, a contact page and a few articles. Add new pages only when you can say which question each one answers.
Keyword research shows how buyers phrase those questions. A landing page is worth adding only if it serves one clear campaign.
Sketch wireframes of the key pages to outline the structure, and keep the navigation streamlined.
Draw the sitemap on one page. It shows which pages exist, which sit under which, and how a visitor moves from first arrival to the contact route. Approve the structure before design begins. It is the most expensive thing to change later, because every page, menu and link depends on it.
4. Decide what each page says, and who writes it
Website content is the decision most projects leave too late, and it often delays a launch more than design or code does. Pages designed around placeholder text rarely survive the arrival of the real words. Analyse your existing website first and keep what is still true.
For each page on the sitemap, agree three things: the one point it makes, who writes or supplies the text, and the date it will be ready. A page without an owner is a page that will not be finished.
Collect proof early: case studies, photographs, testimonials and credentials take time to clear. Quality content backs every claim with evidence, and relevant content answers the visitor’s question first: what you do, who it is for, why you are credible, and what to do next.
Agree a content strategy in a paragraph, and a style guide for tone, spelling and names, so every writer sounds like the same business. The guide to what makes a good B2B website covers the writing in more depth.
5. Decide who builds it: web designer, developer or you
There are four realistic routes: build it yourself, hire a freelance web designer, hire an agency, or use an in-house team. None is right for everyone, and the choice decides who covers design, code and writing.
| Route | Suits you when | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | The site is small and simple, and you have patience to learn the tool | The site is only as good as your time and design judgment, and updates and security become your job |
| Freelance web designer or web developer | The scope is clear and you can brief and manage the work yourself | One person is a single point of failure, and strategy or writing may be thin |
| Agency | The site must carry real commercial weight and you want strategy, a graphic designer, a web developer and content handled together | Higher cost, and you still supply content and timely approvals |
| In-house team | You already employ the skills and will keep changing the site | Capacity: day-to-day work often crowds out the site |
Whichever route you take, decide who owns what. Ask who registers the domain, who holds the website hosting account and who has the logins. These should be in your business’s name, so the site stays yours if the relationship ends.
6. Decide the website builder or content management system
A content management system is the software you use to edit pages after launch. A website builder is a hosted version that bundles the editor, the hosting and the templates. Either one shapes how easily you can update the site for years, so choose for that, not only for how it looks on day one.
Judge any platform against the same short list:
- Ease of use for the people who will actually edit the site
- Security, and who is responsible for updates
- Support, whether from the vendor or a community that answers questions
- Room to grow, such as more pages, languages or an ecommerce website, without a rebuild
- Mobile behaviour, since many visitors arrive on a mobile device
- Export: can you take your content with you if you leave?
Then test it with a free trial: add a page, upload an image, edit a menu and connect a form. If a platform makes those awkward, believe the awkwardness.
7. Decide the domain, the email address and the hosting
The domain is the address people type to reach you. Keep it short, easy to say aloud, and close to your business name. Avoid numbers and hyphens, which are easy to mishear and mistype.
Decide the extension for your market, and consider registering close variations so nobody else can use them. Register the domain in the business’s name, with a business email on record. Choose website hosting that is fast in the places your visitors are.
8. Decide the budget, including what happens after launch
Set a budget range before you ask for quotes, and include the costs people forget: the domain and hosting each year, any paid plugins or software, photography, copywriting, and the cost of keeping the site up to date after it is live.
A site is never finished at launch. Content ages, search behaviour shifts and you learn what visitors actually do. Decide now how much you will set aside to improve it, and who is responsible.
For how Brandesis approaches the work, see the website design service, and for prices see the plans. Compare any quote on what it delivers, not only on the total.
9. Decide who approves what, and how you collect feedback
Projects often slow down at approval. Name one person who gives final sign-off, and name anyone who must be consulted. Too many opinions late in the process is a frequent cause of delay.
Agree the stages at which approval is needed: structure, content, design and the finished build. At each stage, say how many rounds of feedback are included, how you will collect feedback in one place, and how long the team has to respond.
Set time frames for each stage, since they help manage the web design process, and put the dates in writing. A launch date means little unless every approval has a date before it.
10. Decide how you will know it is working
Choose what you will measure before launch, because tracking cannot be added to the weeks you missed. Pick a small number of measures tied to the goal from decision 1.
For an enquiry site these are usually the number of enquiries, where website traffic came from, the share of website visitors who make an enquiry, and how fast pages load on a phone. That share is your conversion rate.
Set up Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager if you run several marketing tags.
Decide how enquiries are recorded: forms, calls and WhatsApp messages each need a way to be counted. Agree who looks at the numbers, how often, and what they will do if user behaviour shows a problem.
Set a date for the first review. Without one, the numbers exist and nobody reads them.
Design checks that shape the first impression
With the decisions made, review the design itself. A visitor forms a view of the business within moments, so these checks cover what they see before they read a word.
Set the first impression and the style guide
Agree a colour scheme, two typefaces at most, a logo that works at small sizes, and a consistent style for buttons and headings.
Record them in the style guide from decision 4. Consistency across every page tells a visitor the business is careful, and it saves a web designer from reinventing the look for each new page.
Put the home page through a simple test: can a stranger say what you do, who it is for and what to do next within a few seconds?
Compare your plan with other websites in your market
Look at five other websites your buyers might visit, including competitors and one or two businesses outside your sector. Note what they explain well and what they leave out.
The aim is not to copy a layout. It is to confirm that your site answers at least one question they miss.
Use visual hierarchy, whitespace and images with care
A clear visual hierarchy makes the key elements stand out immediately, and generous whitespace improves readability and focus. Clear, compelling headlines and a short value proposition tell a visitor what the business offers.
High-quality images lift engagement, and they should be compressed so they do not slow load times. Consistent visual branding across every page builds recognition. A good design balances visual appeal, technical performance and user experience.
Keep interactive elements, videos and pop ups useful
Interactive elements such as calculators, filters and forms earn their place only if they help a visitor towards the main action.
Embedded videos should have a still image, a caption and a transcript, and should not start with sound. Use pop ups sparingly: one that covers the page on arrival often costs more goodwill than it wins.
Build in website accessibility from the start
Website accessibility means people with different abilities can use the site.
Accessibility improvements help all users, not only those with disabilities, and legal requirements may apply in your market.
Check that text is legible and has strong contrast, images have descriptive alt text, every form field has a label, and the whole site works from a keyboard. Free tools such as WAVE can flag problems. Fixing these in design is cheap. Fixing them after launch is not.
Launch checks that prove each decision was carried out
The launch checklist becomes a way of proving each decision was carried out. Check everything on the finished site, ideally on a private staging copy first, then again on the live site.
Check load speed and Core Web Vitals
Load speed shapes whether a visitor stays. Pages should load quickly on a mobile connection, with images sized for the web.
Google’s Core Web Vitals give three measures with published targets: Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, assessed at the 75th percentile of page loads (web.dev).
Google PageSpeed Insights reports these measures for any page. Test a few key pages, not just the home page.
Test browser compatibility and screen sizes
Browser compatibility, also called cross browser compatibility, means the site works in the main browsers and not just the one the team used to build it.
Open key pages in each, and on different devices and screen sizes. Mobile-first responsive design adjusts a page to any screen, so a mobile friendly site reflows cleanly on a phone, with tap targets large enough to use and no text that needs pinching to read.
Check that search engines can find the site
Search engines can only list pages they are allowed to read. Check that nothing blocks them from indexing the site, and that each page has a clear title and unique meta descriptions.
The pages should also follow the basics of search engine optimisation: keywords in titles and headings, sensible headings and descriptive image names. Structured data, where it fits, helps search engines understand a page. Plan quality backlinks later, once the site has something worth linking to.
Test the site with real users and secure it
Testing functionality before launch is crucial. Ask a few people outside the team to complete the main action while you watch, because usability testing with real users shows navigation problems early. Serve the site over HTTPS, since a secure connection builds trust and protects the data people enter.
Work through the full launch table
| Area | Check | Decision it proves |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | The main action is visible on the home page and every key page | 1 |
| Forms and contact routes | Each web form, phone link and chat button works and reaches a monitored inbox | 1 and 7 |
| Pages | Every page on the sitemap exists, with no placeholder text and no grammatical errors | 3 and 4 |
| Links | No broken links, external links open the right page, and every menu item leads where it should | 3 |
| Devices | Pages work on different devices and screen sizes | 2 |
| Speed | A speed test shows pages load quickly on mobile | 10 |
| Search basics | Titles and meta descriptions are in place, and nothing blocks indexing | 4 and 10 |
| Old addresses | If pages moved, old addresses redirect to the right new pages | 3 |
| Tracking | Google Analytics records traffic, and each enquiry route is counted as a conversion | 10 |
| Legal and trust | Privacy policy, terms, cookie notice where needed, and contact details are in place | 4 |
| Ownership | The business holds the domain, hosting and admin logins, and an SSL certificate secures the address | 5 and 7 |
| Backups | The site is backed up and restoring has been tested | 8 |
Two items deserve emphasis. Many sites are built with search engines blocked so a half-finished site does not appear, and then launched with the block still on. And a rebuild that changes addresses without redirects can lose the traffic the old site earned.
Keep the website secure and up to date after launch
Regular maintenance is necessary after launch. Plan time for updates, backups and security checks, for fixing broken links and for updating content on pages. Maintenance also covers adding new pages or functionality as the business changes.
One agreed page of decisions is the brief for everyone who builds
A good web design checklist earns its keep when it is one page, written down and agreed. Fill in the ten decisions, share them with everyone who will approve or supply anything, and ask for a yes or a correction before work starts.
If you are planning a website redesign, the same decisions apply, with two additions: what to keep and what to retire. The article on whether to redesign your website helps you work out what is worth fixing first.
To see what happens next, read how the web design process works, step by step. For the mistakes that quietly cost enquiries, website design mistakes lists the common ones.
A site that is decided before it is built launches without surprises
A site with all ten decisions made can be launched calmly. The checklist does not make the site good. It stops avoidable things from making it bad.
If you want to check where an existing site loses visitors, the free book and workbook The Website That Sells covers why a good-looking site may not sell, the path to an enquiry, speed and mobile, trust and proof, and what to measure each month.
For a weekly letter on brand and website decisions, join Ground Truth, which arrives on Wednesdays.
FAQ
What should be on a website design checklist?
A website design checklist covers the goal of the site, the audience, the pages, the content, who builds it, the platform, the domain, the budget, approvals and measurement. It then adds design checks for the first impression and accessibility, and launch checks for speed, browsers, search and tracking.
What are the main steps in designing a website?
Set the goal and audience, plan the pages, write the content, choose who builds it and on what platform, design the look, test it on different devices, and launch with tracking in place. The web design process runs more smoothly when the first decisions are made on paper, before anyone opens a design tool.
How long does a website design project take?
It depends on the size of the site and how quickly content and approvals arrive. Content and sign-off often cause more delay than design or code, so the most reliable way to protect a launch date is to name owners and dates for each page and each approval.
Do I need a different checklist for a redesign?
The same decisions apply, with two additions: decide what to keep and what to retire, and plan redirects so old addresses lead to the right new pages. Skipping redirects is a common way for a redesign to lose the search traffic the old site had earned.
Who should own the domain and hosting account?
The business should. Register the domain and the hosting account in the business’s name, with a business email on record, and keep the logins somewhere safe. If a freelancer or agency sets them up, the accounts can still be in your name and shared with them.