What to test after a website redesign

Make a small launch checklist before you start

A redesign can change navigation, content, page addresses, and the way forms work at the same time. Reviewing only the new homepage makes it easy to miss a broken path deeper in the site.

List your important landing pages and the actions they support. Include pages linked from email campaigns, advertisements, customer documents, and bookmarks. Assign someone to verify each journey, and agree on which problems would delay the launch.

• Main landing pages and their calls to action
• Contact, signup, checkout, and booking flows
• Old URLs that have been moved or removed
• Mobile navigation, consent controls, and dialogs

Visit old links, not just new ones

Open a sample of important old URLs directly. If content has moved, check that the visitor reaches the relevant replacement. Sending every old link to the homepage can leave people searching for the information they expected.

Check internal links too. Menus may be updated while links inside articles, buttons, or footer content still point to old locations. For content that has genuinely been removed, make the missing-page experience helpful and offer a clear route back into the site.

Retest integrations and real content

A new visual form can still depend on an existing email service, CRM, or booking system. Submit approved test data and verify both the response shown to the visitor and the record received by the destination system.

Try the new layout with realistic content: a long heading, an out-of-stock product, a validation message, and an article with several images. Check how the interface behaves when content is missing or a request fails, rather than only when everything succeeds.

Repeat checks after deployment

A successful staging test does not prove the live configuration is correct. Once the release is available, repeat the most important checks on the live domain using a safe test procedure. Look for unexpected access restrictions, broken assets, and links to the staging environment.

Record the version or release date with your findings. After a defect is fixed, reproduce the original test and confirm the outcome. Keep this short checklist for the next release so testing becomes a repeatable task instead of a one-time launch exercise.

• Verify key live URLs and navigation.
• Confirm approved test submissions reach the intended system.
• Review mobile layouts and keyboard access.
• Retest reported issues after the fix is deployed.