To plan a website redesign for better UX, you need to start with how people use the current site, not with how the new one should look. User experience improves when a redesign removes the specific obstacles that stop visitors finding information, trusting the business and taking the next step. Those obstacles are discovered through research, confirmed through testing and removed through structure and content as much as through visual design.
This guide walks through the planning stages we follow when user experience is the main goal of a web design project. It is written for marketing leads and business owners who want to brief a redesign well and judge whether it is on track.
Plan a website redesign around user tasks
“Better user experience” is too vague to design toward. Translate it into outcomes and tasks. Start by listing the three to five things your most valuable visitors come to do, for example:
- A prospective client comparing your services and requesting a consultation.
- A patient checking which doctor treats their condition and booking an appointment.
- A buyer finding a product, confirming delivery to their emirate and paying.
- An existing customer finding support, documents or their account.
For each task, set a measure you can compare before and after launch: completion rate, time to complete, conversion rate, the number of support calls about the same issue, or the share of visitors who reach a key page. These become the success criteria for the whole project.
Research how the current site is really used
Good research is proportionate. A mid-sized business does not need months of study, but it does need more than opinions from the meeting room.
Quantitative sources
- Analytics: entry pages, paths to conversion, exit points, device and language split.
- Site search logs: what people type when they cannot find something.
- Search Console: the queries that bring people in, which reveal the language they use.
- Form analytics: fields that cause abandonment.
Qualitative sources
- Customer-facing staff: sales, reception and support teams know the questions people ask repeatedly.
- WhatsApp and email inquiries: a sample of real messages shows what the site failed to answer.
- Short interviews: five to eight conversations with recent customers, in English and Arabic where relevant, uncover how they chose you.
- Usability sessions: watching a handful of people attempt the key tasks on the current site, especially on phones, exposes problems quickly.
Audit and plan the content
Most UX problems on established sites are content problems: duplicate pages, outdated information, missing answers and inconsistent terminology. Build a content inventory listing every page with its traffic, conversions, purpose and owner. Then decide for each page whether to keep, improve, merge or retire it. Keep a note of pages with search value so the SEO plan can protect them.
This is also the stage to plan bilingual content properly. Decide which pages need full Arabic versions, which need summaries and who will write and approve them. Arabic content planned from the start fits the design; Arabic added at the end rarely does.
Rebuild the information architecture
Information architecture is the structure of the site: its sections, navigation labels and the paths between pages. Two simple research methods help get it right:
| Method | What it tells you | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Card sorting | How users group your services and content, and what they call them | Before drafting the new navigation |
| Tree testing | Whether users can find items in a proposed structure without visual design | After drafting the navigation, before design begins |
Use the words customers use, not internal department names or product codes. Plan the mobile navigation alongside the desktop version rather than compressing it afterward, and decide early how the language switcher and main contact actions will appear on every page.
Design in stages and test before building
Wireframes for structure
Start with low-fidelity wireframes of the key templates: home, service or product, category, location, contact and any booking or checkout steps. Wireframes keep discussion on hierarchy and content rather than colors and photography.
Prototypes for flows
Link the wireframes, or early visual designs, into clickable prototypes of the main tasks. Test them with five or six representative users per round, on phones as well as desktops, and in both languages if the site is bilingual. Each round usually reveals the few issues that matter most.
Real content in the prototypes
Test prototypes with real or near-final copy wherever possible, in both languages. Placeholder text hides the problems users actually meet: headings that are too long for a phone screen, service names nobody understands, Arabic labels that wrap onto two lines and calls to action that promise something the next page does not deliver. Writing key page copy in parallel with wireframes also forces decisions about what each page must say, which keeps the design honest about the content it has to carry.
A design system for consistency
Define reusable components such as buttons, forms, cards, tables and alerts, with rules for spacing, typography and states. Consistent components make the site easier to learn, easier to edit and easier to keep accessible as it grows.
Agree how decisions will be made
Many redesigns lose their UX focus in the approval stage, when feedback from several stakeholders pulls pages in different directions. Agree at the outset who makes the final call on structure, content and design, and how research findings will be weighed against personal preference. A short list of design principles drawn from the research, such as “every service page answers price, process and timing” or “contact is one tap away on mobile”, gives everyone a shared test for feedback.
Build accessibility and performance into the plan
UX is not only about the typical visitor. Plan to meet WCAG accessibility guidelines from the start: color contrast, keyboard access, form labels, alt text and clear focus states. Set performance targets for the new templates, such as Core Web Vitals thresholds on mobile, and give them to designers as well as developers so heavy visual choices are weighed against speed early.
Launch, measure and keep improving
Compare the success measures you defined at the start against the same period before launch, allowing for seasonality such as Ramadan or summer. Review session recordings and feedback in the first weeks to catch problems early. Treat launch as the start of an improvement cycle, with a short list of refinements planned for the following months, rather than the end of the project.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to plan a website redesign for UX?
For a typical business site, research, content planning and information architecture often take several weeks before visual design begins. Larger sites with many services, locations or languages take longer. The time is well spent: decisions made at this stage are far easier and less costly to change than templates that have already been designed and built.
Do we need user testing if we know our customers well?
Yes. Knowing your customers is different from seeing them use your site. Teams are too familiar with their own terminology and structure to spot where outsiders get stuck. Even a few sessions with representative users usually reveal problems that nobody inside the business noticed.
Should the Arabic site have the same structure as the English one?
Usually the core structure should match so users and search engines can move between languages easily. Content depth and emphasis can differ where audiences have different needs. Test the Arabic navigation labels with Arabic-speaking users, because direct translations of English labels are not always the terms people expect.
A redesign people find easier to use
When you plan a website redesign around real tasks, evidence and testing, the result is a site that is easier to use and easier to measure. Visitors find answers sooner, your team fields fewer repetitive questions and inquiries arrive better informed. If you are preparing a redesign and want to shape the plan around your users, Bdazzil would be glad to talk it through.
