A website can never be considered a finished product. With ever-changing technologies and customers’ behavior, it is critical to spot your website’s weaknesses and get them fixed on time.
It’s even more important to fix or overhaul your website if you run an eCommerce business.
Why?
Simply because your eCommerce website helps you to make sales, fulfill orders & receive payments.
But how & when should you consider revamping your existing eCommerce website? Are there any triggers or signs that help you identify the obsoleteness of your e-commerce store?
Well, the answer to these questions is ‘Yes’.
In this blog post, I will share five triggers that send critical signals to you for redesigning your eCommerce store.
Let’s go through them one by one.
#1 Mobile Compatibility Issues
Given that more than 70% of users browse the web/internet through their mobile devices, it would be foolish to ignore the importance of a website’s responsiveness (mobile compatibility).
If you have been running your eCommerce store for a while already, I bet you know that social media is vital in sending relevant traffic to your website. But at the same time, do you know that more than 75% of the audience use their mobile devices while on their favorite social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter?
If your eCommerce website doesn’t have a responsive web design, it makes sense to overhaul the design and, this time, make it responsive.
You don’t necessarily need to redevelop the whole website. If you are satisfied with the functionalities and features of your website, you can simply hire an eCommerce web designer to change your website’s theme/skin/design.
Recommended post: 5 Website design tips to ensure responsiveness of your website
#2 No or Low Traffic From Search Engines
Getting a nice-looking website is not the ultimate goal of any business. We all know that getting business out of a website is more important than just setting up a website in the first place.
Search engines can’t be ignored when it comes to getting sales from an eCommerce website. You will get more business if your website receives a good amount of relevant traffic from search engines.
But what if you don’t get enough or any traffic from search engines? Hmm, this is serious and concerns your website.
Perhaps search engines don’t like your website? It can be possible.
Low or no traffic from search engines is another trigger that helps you realize the urgency of redesigning your website. Search for the best web developers who are proficient in search engine optimization techniques, too. Hire them and get your eCommerce website overhauled.
#3 Obsolete Web Design
When the design of your eCommerce website looks obsolete or dull, you must consider redesigning it. Of course, the design of your website is one of the important factors that determines your business’s success. The better the design, the lower the bounce rate.
In other words, visitors would love to spend time on your website if your design looks good. The more time they spend, the higher the chances they will buy from you.
How should you know whether your eCommerce website looks obsolete or not?
Well, there are three ways to determine this.
a) Use your instinct. If you trust your intuition and feel that your website doesn’t look good compared to your competitors’ websites, change it.
b) Use web analytics tools. Reliable web analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you determine your website’s bounce rate. Although there is no hard rule to determine a website’s good or bad bounce rate, if your analytics tool shows a bounce rate of more than 50%, it’s a terrible sign that you must hire a web designer and get your eCommerce website redeveloped.
c) Ask experts. There are many webmaster forums where you can sign up and ask for feedback on your website.
For me, using a web analytics tool works well in figuring out whether you need a redesign or not.
Recommended post: 8 Great tips to enhance your website design
#4 Loading Speed
In this jet-speed age, who likes to wait? No?
Many studies and articles have proved that a website’s speed has a direct impact on its sales. A slow-loading website is a major deterrent, as the average online user will only tolerate a loading time of up to 3 seconds or a maximum of 6 seconds.
Your potential customers can really get frustrated with your website if they have to wait for pages to load for ages. Therefore, it makes sense to improve your page load speed as much as possible.
How do you check the website loading speed?
Several reliable yet free online tools are available to test your website for its loading speed. Pingdom (http://tools.pingdom.com) is the best example of such a tool.
Recommended post: Here are the tips to optimize the loading speed of your website
#5 Less or No Conversions
Ok, your website looks good, has a responsive web design, and loads faster. Even then, you may not make enough sales from it. What could go wrong?
Maybe your checkout process is not user-friendly, so your potential customers don’t complete their orders. In other words, if your website has a high order abandonment rate, it’s a critical sign that you must revamp your eCommerce website, especially your checkout process.
Conclusion
Running an e-commerce website successfully is an ongoing journey rather than a destination. No matter how old your business is, you must ensure that your website always stands out from the crowd of both old and new competitors.
