Edip Kilinc is the founder of Webwavers. Together with his team, he develops websites, brands, and digital presences for ambitious companies – with over 250 completed projects and accolades including the German Design Award 2026.
A website relaunch follows almost the same process in nearly every project, regardless of size and industry. The phases are named slightly differently by each agency, but in terms of content, there are these six: analysis and goals, structure and concept, content, design, implementation, and launch.
The order is not arbitrary. Anyone who starts with the design before the structure is established will design pages that will later be discarded. Anyone who writes content only after the design is done will squeeze texts into layouts instead of building layouts for texts. Both happen frequently and, in both cases, cost time.
Realistically, a relaunch for a company with ten to fifty pages takes three to five months. Not because the work itself takes so long, but because there are coordination processes between the phases. The net working time is significantly shorter than the overall project duration.
A website relaunch follows almost the same process in nearly every project, regardless of size and industry. The phases are named slightly differently by each agency, but in terms of content, there are these six: analysis and goals, structure and concept, content, design, implementation, and launch.
The order is not arbitrary. Anyone who starts with the design before the structure is established will design pages that will later be discarded. Anyone who writes content only after the design is done will squeeze texts into layouts instead of building layouts for texts. Both happen frequently and, in both cases, cost time.
Realistically, a relaunch for a company with ten to fifty pages takes three to five months. Not because the work itself takes so long, but because there are coordination processes between the phases. The net working time is significantly shorter than the overall project duration.
At the very beginning is the question of what the new website should achieve. Not just "look more modern", but specifically: more qualified inquiries, better discoverability for specific search terms, fewer inquiries over the phone, and a reduced workload for sales.
In addition, there is the inventory assessment: Which pages are bringing in visitors today? Which search terms are already working? Which pages are dead weight? This data can be found in the Search Console and in the statistics, and it prevents the most common mistake made during a relaunch – namely deleting pages that have been working quietly in the background.
Your effort: a workshop of two to three hours, access to the analysis tools, and a list of your most important customer questions.
This is where the site tree is created: which pages exist, how they are connected, what links to what. This is the phase that later determines whether the website will be found - because structure is the part of search engine optimization that cannot be fixed after the fact.
At the same time, it is clarified which old URLs exist and where they will point to in the future. This redirection list is the most important single building block of the entire project. If it is missing, you lose rankings upon going live that were built up over years.
Your effort: Feedback on the site tree, decisions on pages to be omitted. This takes two to three hours, but these are decisions that someone has to make.
This is the phase that is underestimated in every project planning. Writing texts, sourcing images, getting references approved, updating personal data – all of this happens alongside day-to-day business.
The typical course of events: The first two pages are created quickly, then a customer appointment gets in the way, then a vacation, and after six weeks, the service pages are still missing. This is not negligence, but the norm.
What helps: Do not plan content as a single block, but page by page with fixed deadlines. And decide early on whether texts will be created internally or written externally. Both are fine – but making that decision only in week five is not.
Your effort: by far the greatest. Expect twenty to forty hours spread over several weeks.
Now the visible result is being created. Usually, one or two pages are initially designed as a draft, which is used to decide on the design direction. Only after that are the remaining pages built.
During this phase, your effort is relatively low, but it is time-critical: feedback that is left for a week postpones the project by a week. Therefore, it is worth scheduling feedback rounds in advance instead of just announcing them.
It has proven useful to bundle feedback and deliver it from a single source. Feedback from five people with different opinions takes more time than any design question.
Your effort: two to three feedback rounds of one to two hours each.
The launch itself takes minutes. What takes time is the securing process around it: setting up and checking redirects, informing search engines about the new structure, testing forms, checking legal pages, and cleanly transferring statistics.
In the two weeks that follow, the numbers need to be looked at daily. A drop in views is normal in the first few days. If it persists after two weeks, there is something wrong with the redirects – and then you have to act fast.
Your effort: Approval, access credentials, and someone who is reachable in the week after.
