The Discovery Process for a Tampa Website Redesign

1. Stakeholder interviews

The first interviews are with whoever signs the check and whoever owns the website internally — usually the owner or the marketing lead. We are not looking for marketing-speak. We are looking for the unvarnished version.

Questions we ask:

• What is the site supposed to produce in the next 12 months? Phone calls? Form fills? Booked appointments? Direct revenue?
• What would success look like at the 90-day mark and at the 12-month mark?
• What does the existing site do that you’d like to keep?
• What does the existing site do that embarrasses you?
• When was the last time someone said something nice about the site? When was the last time someone said something bad?
• Who are your top three competitors and what do their sites do better than yours?
• What conversations have you had with prospects where you wished the site had done a better job warming them up?
• What are the three or four things you wish every prospect knew before they called you?

Then we interview at least one person from sales or whoever talks to leads. The owner has a view of what the site should do. The salesperson knows what the leads who actually come through the site look like, what objections they raise, and what they were already convinced of before the call.

If the business has a customer success or operations role, we interview them too. They know what the customer experience is after the sale — and the gap between what the site promises and what the team delivers is often where the most useful redesign decisions hide.

Format: 45-60 minute calls, recorded with permission, transcribed. The transcripts get coded for themes and direct quotes. The customer-language quotes go directly into the wireframing phase as copy starting points.

2. Analytics and current-site data review

Stakeholder interviews tell us what people think the site is doing. Analytics tell us what the site is actually doing.

What we pull:

Google Analytics (or GA4). The last 12 months of traffic data. Top pages by sessions, by entrance rate, and by conversion rate. Top traffic sources. Bounce rate and engagement rate by page. Conversion events — form submissions, phone clicks, key page views. Mobile versus desktop split. Geographic distribution.

For a Tampa SMB, we look for: which pages are working as entrance points, which pages are converting, which pages are getting traffic but not converting, where the mobile experience is leaking, and what the geographic split looks like (are we actually attracting the right zip codes?).

Google Search Console. The last 16 months of search data (Google’s limit). Top queries, top landing pages, click-through rate by query, average position. We are especially interested in queries where the site ranks 4-15 — the “almost ranking” pages where a redesign can move the needle.

Heatmaps and session recordings. If the client has Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, or similar set up, we review the last 30-90 days of data. Where do people click? Where do they scroll to? Where do they bail? Microsoft Clarity is free and easy to retrofit if nothing exists — we’ll add it during discovery if needed and let it run for two weeks before making decisions.

Form analytics. If the existing forms support field-level analytics, we look at which fields cause drop-off. The “phone number” field is usually a drop-off point. The “tell us about your project” textarea is almost always a drop-off point.

Call tracking, if available. Many Tampa service businesses use CallRail or similar. We pull the last 90 days of call data. What pages were callers on when they called? What time of day? What’s the call quality (qualified vs. unqualified)?

The output of this workstream is a one-page summary: what’s working, what’s not, where the leaks are, and what data is missing that we need to add before launch.

3. Competitor audit

Most Tampa SMBs we work with have 3-7 real competitors in their service area — companies competing for the same Google rankings, the same local visibility, and the same customer attention. The competitor audit is not about copying them. It is about finding the gap.

What we audit:

Search visibility. What do they rank for that you don’t? Where are they at position 1-3 and you’re at 8-15? Where are you both fighting at positions 4-8 and the redesign could push you ahead?

Content depth. How many pages does each competitor have? What service pages do they have that you don’t? What blog content are they ranking with?

Design and UX. Where does each competitor’s site outperform yours visually or functionally? Where does it underperform? What conventions are common across the local competitive set that we should match or deliberately break?

Conversion patterns. What CTAs do they use? Are they aggressive (book now) or soft (learn more)? Do they have pricing on the site or hide it behind a quote request? Do they have proof — testimonials, case studies, certifications, photos of completed work?

Trust signals. Reviews on Google, Angi, Houzz, BBB. Photos of the team and the work. Certifications, awards, association memberships. The Tampa market is competitive on trust signals — businesses that don’t have visible proof get filtered out by careful customers.

We pick 3-5 direct competitors and 1-2 aspirational competitors (often from a different metro — a Phoenix or Charlotte version of the same business that’s doing things well). The aspirational set is for “what could this look like if we built it right” thinking, not as a copy template.

4. Goals and success criteria

The final discovery workstream is the one most teams skip: agreeing on what success means before the project starts.

The right form of a goal is specific, measurable, and time-bound:

• “Increase qualified form submissions from 12/month to 25/month within 6 months of launch.”
• “Recover or maintain organic traffic levels within 60 days of launch (currently 4,200 sessions/month).”
• “Reduce mobile bounce rate on the homepage from 68% to under 45%.”
• “Add and rank 5 new neighborhood service pages within 4 months of launch.”

The wrong form of a goal is vague:

• “Make the site look more modern.”
• “Improve the user experience.”
• “Be more competitive.”

Vague goals make every design decision a matter of opinion. Specific goals make design decisions accountable to outcomes.

We set goals collaboratively in a 60-90 minute session at the end of discovery. We bring the analytics, the competitor data, and the stakeholder interview themes. The client brings the business context and the budget reality. We negotiate to a set of 3-5 goals that the project will be measured against. Those goals go into the Discovery Brief and they get re-checked at the launch and 90-day-post-launch review.

A pattern we see repeatedly: the client comes in convinced they need a new homepage. Discovery surfaces that the homepage isn’t actually the problem — it’s that the service pages don’t rank, the forms don’t fire to the CRM, and the call tracking isn’t capturing 40% of calls because the number on the site is the old number. The redesign is then scoped against the real problems instead of the assumed ones.

Discovery is the cheapest hour of the project to spend correcting course. Wireframing is the second-cheapest. Visual design is more expensive to revise. Built pages are the most expensive. Find the real problems early.