Website redesign checklist for Hawaii businesses

You can’t protect what you haven’t listed. Before anyone opens a design tool, collect four lists.

• ✓Every URL the site has todayGoogle’s site-move guidance suggests gathering old URLs from your sitemap, server logs and your content management system. Add the landing pages from Search Console’s Performance report, which shows the pages people actually arrive on from search.
• ✓Every page’s jobFor each URL, note what it does (explains a service, answers a question, takes bookings) and decide: keep, merge, rewrite or retire. Pages that earn search clicks or inquiries are keep or rewrite, never retire by accident.
• ✓Every contact pointPhone numbers, forms, booking links, email addresses, map embeds, and where each one delivers. Redesigns often break the one form that went to a shared inbox nobody remembers setting up.
• ✓Every account and who owns itDomain registrar, DNS, hosting, Google Analytics, Search Console and your Google Business Profile. Make sure the business, not a former vendor, holds the owner-level login for each.

If a URL changes, the old one should send visitors and search engines to its closest new equivalent. Google’s guidance for site moves with URL changes is specific about how.

• Use server-side permanent redirects (301 or 308) from each old URL to its mapped new URL.
• Point each redirect straight at the final page. Avoid chains where one redirect leads to another.
• Keep redirects in place for at least a year, and longer if you can.
• Update internal links and menus to the new URLs rather than relying on redirects.
• Remove any noindex tags or robots.txt blocks used on the preview site before launch.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console. The Change of Address tool is only for moving to a different domain or subdomain, not for a redesign on the same domain.

Google states that it uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking. For most Hawaii service businesses the phone is also where the decision happens: a customer comparing three companies between errands, or a visitor booking a tour from a hotel room.

• ✓Tap-to-call everywhere it helpsThe phone number should be a real tel: link in the header and next to every main call to action, not an image or plain text.
• ✓Hours, area and next step in the first screenSay what you do, where (the neighborhoods or islands you actually serve) and the one action you want, before any slideshow.
• ✓Times in Hawaii timeVisitors and mainland customers book from other time zones. Label hours and booking slots clearly so nobody arrives an hour off.
• ✓Same substance on mobile and desktopLayouts can differ, but don’t drop content from the phone version. Use accordions or tabs instead of deleting it.

Many calls come from your Business Profile, not your website. At launch, check that the profile’s website link points at the right new page, using the full URL including https://, and that phone number and hours match the new site exactly.

Google reviews Business Profile edits before they appear, so update the profile on launch day rather than the night before a busy weekend, and check back that the change went live.

Accessibility is cheapest to get right during a redesign. WCAG 2.2 is the current W3C standard; level AA is the usual target. These checks catch most problems on small business sites:

Keep the same Google Analytics 4 property on the new site, so before-and-after comparisons live in one place. Install the same Google tag (the measurement ID starts with “G-”) on every page of the new site, or paste it into your platform’s analytics field.

• Recreate the events that matter, such as form submissions and tap-to-call clicks, and mark them as key events in GA4 (Admin, then Events).
• Note the launch date, so later changes in traffic can be read against it.
• After launch, open the Realtime report and confirm your own visit appears.

• ✓RedirectsTest your most visited old URLs, including the top landing pages from Search Console. Each should reach its new page in one hop.
• ✓Forms, end to endSubmit every form and confirm the message arrives in the right inbox, not just that a “thank you” appears. Check the spam folder too.
• ✓Phone and booking on a real phoneTap the call button, open the booking link and use the map link, on iPhone and Android if you can.
• ✓Indexing switchesConfirm no page carries a leftover noindex tag and robots.txt doesn’t block the site. Submit the sitemap in Search Console.
• ✓Tracking and profileGA4 Realtime shows visits, key events fire, and the Business Profile link points at the live site.

Google notes that rankings can fluctuate for a while after a site move, and that traffic to old URLs should fall as traffic to the new ones rises. What you are watching for is anything that doesn’t settle.

• Page indexing report: “Not found (404)” lists URLs that returned errors in the past month. If a page moved, add a 301 redirect to its new location.
• “Redirect error” flags loops and chains that are too long. Fix these first.
• Performance report: compare clicks for your main service pages against the weeks before launch.
• We suggest checking weekly for the first month, then monthly.