An eCommerce redesign is a double-edged sword, capable of either boosting your sales or adversely affecting them.
Positive Impact on Sales:
A well-executed eCommerce redesign can breathe new life into your online store. Improved user experience, modern aesthetics, and seamless navigation can captivate visitors, encourage longer browsing sessions, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates. Strategic placement of call-to-action buttons, simplified checkout processes, and personalized recommendations can create a shopping journey that’s both engaging and efficient. As your site gains a fresh look and enhanced functionality, customer trust and confidence can increase, fostering repeat purchases and brand loyalty.
Negative Impact on Sales:
However, the flip side is equally true. A poorly executed redesign can lead to disaster. If the redesign results in a complex and confusing interface, slow loading times, or broken functionality, potential customers may flee in frustration. A sudden change in the user interface can also alienate existing customers who were comfortable with the previous design. SEO rankings can plummet if URL structures are not managed properly during the redesign, leading to decreased organic traffic and consequently, reduced sales.
Role of an eCommerce developer
When it comes to breathing new life into an online store, eCommerce redesign becomes a pivotal endeavor.
For eCommerce developers, navigating this intricate process requires attention to detail and a deep understanding of both technical and user experience aspects.
In this blog, I’ve shared 14 crucial considerations that every eCommerce developer should take care of during an eCommerce redesign.
1. User-friendly Design:
Optimized user experience is very important for any website to succeed and perhaps that’s one of the most common reasons to revamp an eCommerce store. Your eCommerce developer should ensure that your new eCommerce website design is intuitive, visually appealing, and easy to navigate.
2. Mobile Responsiveness:
With the majority of users accessing eCommerce sites via mobile devices and other smart devices, responsive design is no more a fancy thing to have. If your redesigned eCommerce store is not responsive, you may see a drop in your overall sales.
Recommended post: Why responsive website design & 5 best tools to check responsiveness
3. Page Load Speed:
Slow load times can lead to high bounce rates. Therefore, when you redesign your online store, it’s important to take care of the loading speed of your new website. Your developer can optimize images, use caching, and streamline code to enhance page load speed.
Recommended post: Tips to optimize the loading speed of a website
4. SEO Optimization:
Now this is something very important especially if your existing eCommerce website has a good SEO score. Most newbie eCommerce developers, while redesigning a website, don’t take care of carrying forward the SEO values of the existing website to the new one. A professional web developer would always maintain or improve the website’s search engine rankings during the redesign by implementing proper redirects and preserving relevant keywords.
Recommended post: 8 Best ways to do on-page SEO for your eCommerce website
5. Clear CTAs:
Well-defined Call-to-Action buttons guide users and encourage desired actions, such as making a purchase or signing up. Having said that, your new website should have prominent CTAs to make sure that you get more sales.
6. Streamlined Checkout Process:
A complicated checkout process can lead to cart abandonment. Therefore, while redesigning the eCommerce website, your developer must simplify the process and offer guest checkout options.
7. Content Management System (CMS):
If you are choosing a different CMS to redesign your eCommerce website, request your developer to choose a flexible and scalable CMS that allows for easy content updates, product additions, and category management.
8. Data Migration:
Migrating the data from the existing eCommerce store to the new site is a crucial task to take care of while redesigning your store. Make sure that your eCommerce developer safely transfers existing customer data, order history, and product information to the new store.
9. 301 Redirects:
Implementing 301 redirects to maintain SEO juice and guide users from old pages to their new counterparts is another vital task that your eCommerce developer should do.
10. Analytics Integration:
Most eCommerce designers don’t make sure to add the analytics code to the resigned website. As a result, you can’t track your users and their behaviors and actions on your website. An experienced eCommerce builder will always set up analytics tools to track user behavior, gather insights, and refine the website’s performance continually.
11. Image and Video Optimization:
High-quality visuals are essential, but they shouldn’t compromise the website’s speed. It’s important for your eCommerce developer to optimize images and videos for both quality and performance while redesigning your eCommerce store.
12. Search Functionality:
Before launching your new eCommerce website after the redesign, make sure that you test the search feature properly. Robust search functionality is the backbone of any eCommerce store and it should be on the top priority during your eCommerce redesign process.
13. Accessibility:
While revamping your eCommerce store, the developer must create an inclusive experience by adhering to web accessibility standards, making the website usable for everyone, including people with disabilities.
14. Testing and QA:
Before you launch your redesigned store, you must rigorously test the redesigned website across browsers, devices, and user scenarios to identify and rectify any glitches or issues.