A useful ecommerce website redesign starts with the things your customers need to understand. The design brief should explain what you sell, who buys it and where the current store makes their decision difficult.

For Skin Boutique Online, my role spans website design and optimisation, SEO, social content and ad creatives. That gives me a reason to look beyond the homepage: a product page, a search result and an ad all belong to the same buying journey.

Here is what I would ask you to prepare before we redesign a store.

Describe the problem in terms of a customer task

“The site feels dated” is a starting point. “Customers struggle to choose between these products” is a more useful brief. Other concrete problems might be a confusing mobile navigation, missing delivery information or an ad that sends people to a page about a different offer.

Choose one main goal for the first scope. It might be easier product discovery, a clearer product page or a better home for a new range. If you have analytics, support questions or customer feedback, bring them. They help distinguish a known problem from a design assumption.

Gather the product information

A designer needs more than product names and packshots. Prepare the facts a customer uses to make a choice:

  • Product descriptions, sizes, variants and current prices.
  • Images you have permission to use, including available detail shots.
  • Usage instructions and verified product claims.
  • Delivery, returns and availability information.
  • Common questions and the differences between similar products.

For skincare, suitability and usage need particular care. Provide approved wording and sources for claims. Design should make that information understandable without inventing advice or benefits.

List the pages that already matter

Before changing URLs, make an inventory of product, category and editorial pages. Identify pages receiving search visits, campaign traffic or links from elsewhere. Search Console and your analytics can help with that inventory.

Some pages will stay, some will be rewritten and some may need redirects. Decide that deliberately. A redesign is a good moment to improve page titles, internal links and descriptions, but it should also preserve useful existing paths into the store.

Put your brand material in one place

Gather the logo files, typefaces, colours, photography and examples of current ads or social posts. Include examples you want to keep and ones that no longer feel right.

I want to see what happens before someone reaches the website. If an ad shows a particular product, offer and visual style, the destination page should continue that story. Looking at both together often reveals a problem that a homepage-only review would miss.

Agree the practical boundaries

Include your current platform, integrations, who can grant access and who approves the work. Separate launch requirements from later improvements. If a deadline depends on a campaign, say so at the start.

Also decide what happens after delivery: who changes products, maintains content and checks new pages? Those responsibilities affect both the build and any ongoing scope.

The same preparation helps a company website

For Growth Frontier, I designed and built the company website from scratch and handled indexing and SEO. A B2B site needs its own version of the same inputs: a clear service, an audience, evidence and a useful next action. Product specifications become service details; the purchase path becomes the path to an inquiry.

You do not need a perfect brief. Send your current site, the main problem, any available evidence and your deadline. We can define the rest through the web design and SEO scope.