Let’s analyze the common mistakes to help you understand what you should pay attention to when redesigning your e-commerce store. The info will be useful both for the owners of online stores and for web designers.
Sometimes, the main mistake in redesign made by the business owner is the decision to start the redesign. True, such a decision should be made only after an in-depth analysis and a consultation with experienced analysts, designers, and developers. To be more precise, you should trust the redesign process exclusively to the best development company that has a deep expertise in your business niche and e-commerce CMS that your website is built on. For example, Magento development company is eligible to build from scratch or make a profound redesign of your online store following the best practices of Magento development and taking into account every functional requirement.
What is Redesign & Do You Really Need It?
If your e-commerce store runs smoothly, has high conversion rate and ROI, you probably don’t need to redesign a store.
By the way, let’s check the terminology. When we say ‘redesign’, we don’t mean changing themed images for the Black Friday or Holiday sales. We mean profound changes in the website usability and the customer journey, the purpose of which is to improve e-commerce KPIs and, consequently, increase sales. This is confirmed by the fact that merchants often address the designers’ and developers’ services, asking for help, because:
- Website users do not add products to the cart
- Those who added products to the cart almost never proceed to the checkout, instead, just leave the store
- Users don’t spend much time browsing the catalog
And other numerous problems that lead to one and only complaint - lack of sales. To grow sales and revenue, all these problems need to be solved. In order to save your budget, it is better to learn from someone’s else’s experience. Therefore, we have compiled for you a list of five most common mistakes in the redesign process you definitely want to avoid. Here they are:
- Loss of the user's personal data.
- Lack of analytics.
- Not keeping up with the SEO best practices.
- Implement only merchant’s design ideas
- Implementing changes in the design without educating your users and customers on how to use your redesigned platform.
Now, let’s review every mistake in more detail.
#1 Loss of the User’s Personal Data
Users perceive the loss of any of their data painfully, because they have to fill it in again. For them it means a complete waste of time and making unnecessary efforts. At this stage, some of the clients leave forever. When redesigning a store, it is imperative to consider the safety of all user information at the front end and back end levels.
Personal data, such as the user’s personal information, their past orders, bookmarks, favorites, and comments are stored in the database. Normally, it should be backed up and you shouldn’t lose any of it, unless you don’t want to store and transfer all the data to your new store.
Another case is issues on the backend.
For example, a user entered the order data into the form, clicked the ‘Checkout’ button, but it led to an unknown error. The user will be redirected to a page with an error notification, and all information may be lost. To avoid such a situation, developers should implement a logic that temporarily saves the entered data so that it can be returned to the form again. This logic is very useful, so you shouldn’t forget about it.
In Magento, for example, all this logic is predetermined and is already implemented on the checkout page out-of-the-box. Also, additional validation of the entered data (e.g. is the email correct?) can help, so that there are fewer mistakes on the backend.
#2 Lack of Analytics
In e-commerce, websites are created and optimized with the aim of increasing sales and attracting new customers. To evaluate the result, you need to analyze and compare the statistics collected before the redesign and after it. At the beginning of the project, you should go through the most important pages of the website and analyze the specific problems, like, at what stage the customers leave, then build hypotheses and suggest improvements.
For this purpose, use web analytics tools and end-to-end analytics. It is also important to analyze the target audience, to identify any features and peculiarities of your product assortment.
#3 Not Keeping Up With SEO Best Practices
It’s a fact that some redesign proposals can be rejected by the SEO specialists. So here are the most important things you need to consider:
- Pages and folders during the revision should be closed from indexing.
- Do not replace good ranking images with new ones.
- When deleting pages or changing the URL address, redirect (301) to the new address is required.
- Before the release, you need to check all internal links and validate all forms.
If you violate SEO requirements, your site’s reach will drop. Ich means less traffic, the number of conversions tending to zero.
#4 Implement Only Client’s Design Ideas
Merchants address the professionals with an issue (e.g. the site does not sell). They need a redesign to solve their issue. Specific suggestions on how to fix it, any methods and solution mechanics should come from professionals. This is not a merchant who is responsible for the result, but web designers and developers, who are working on the changes. Therefore, good designers are working closely with web analysts and developers, and know well what’s going on the front-end as well as on the back-end of the website.
For example, merchants often don’t have any idea of the most processes running on the back-end and can suggest some changes that might lead to failures and lost data. That's why it is always important for merchants to listen and hear the professionals.
#5 Changed the Design? Guide Your Users!
Users feel confused when the website (they’ve been using for a long time) changes dramatically. They may not recognize it, get lost in the new layout - and you’ll lose a loyal client.
You have two options: either do the redesign gradually, or show your clients how to use the redesigned store. The first option is hardly possible. The second one is a good way to prepare your clients for future updates. Once the updates are released, prepare a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the store’s new features to get the maximum profit.
Final Thoughts
Now you know how to avoid the five main mistakes that can ruin any e-commerce project. Still, it’s worth remembering that design is an important, but not the only, success factor. How cool is your product, how powerful is marketing, what are the growth prospects? Before investing in a redesign, think about that too.
About the author:
Olha Fedchenko | Content Manager & SEO Analyst
Olha is a Content Manager and SEO Analyst at Whidegroup. Starting as a Content Writer for software and web development topics in 2011, Olha has always been guided by a desire to thoroughly inspect every field of study before writing a single word. She found her passion in e-commerce and delighted in expanding her expertise in web development, analytics and SEO for small to medium e-commerce businesses.
