Redesigning a website is a very common requirement, ranging from changes in the user interface, dynamic functionalities, backend database, branding, hosting environment, user navigation, content restructuring, etc.

Need for redesigning could be triggered by a number of internal and external factors like:

• Shift in market trends
• Changes in user’s needs
• Addition of new content, leading to the need to restructure the content.
• Need for re-branding in case of change in branding strategy or poorly designed websites
• Addition of a new content management system (CMS)
• Restructuring of website to make it search engine friendly (SEO)

There may be many more reasons why even a currently indexed and well-ranked site needs to be re-launched.

Drop in search engine rankings is a very common and critical issue, which must be preempted before re-launching a website. Otherwise this problem results in a heavy loss of valuable traffic.

Following are some of the important things to consider and plan for while redesigning a website.

Use 302 Redirects
302 redirect is the most efficient and search engine friendly way for web page redirection, in case you have to change the file names, move pages around within the same domain or make changes in folder structure.

By using a 302 redirect ("temporarily moved"), the original URL will remain in search engine’s indexes, and maintain its position as if the page were still there. However, visitors who click on the link will be brought to the new URL, hence retaining web traffic and giving enough time to new pages to pass the search engine aging filter.

Once the new web pages have aged, change the 302 redirects with 301 redirects. This will finally divert the link popularity from old pages to new ones.
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Use Well Categorized Sitemap
Create a comprehensive sitemap containing text links to all the important pages, which are expected to be indexed by the search engines. This will take care of changes made to internal site navigation. In addition, you can also use text links in footer of the web pages. This is in fact a well known tactic to enable easy crawling for search engine crawlers.

Perform Regression Testing
Once the site has been re-launched, perform a complete end to end testing as even a small change (like adding new folder, changing permissions etc) can trigger errors causing key functionalities to fail.

Check Server Logs
You must check the server’s access logs for at least a few days after re-launch and look for any 404 or 500 errors. You can also use Google analytics tool to track such errors.

Use Paid Search
As a campaign to get the traffic to your site in a quick time you can consider adding your site as a sponsored link in the search results. It's quick, fairly easy and can drive traffic to your site during this transitional period of redesign. Regular search engine indexing takes time but PSC is almost instantaneous.

Check Bounce Rate
Bounce rate measures the percentage of people who come to your website and leave “instantly”. This information is accessible in most web analytics tool and is easy to understand. If the bounce rate for your site increased after the re-launch, you probably have not done the right things.