Building an ecommerce website requires thorough planning, extensive research, and a lot of strategies.
However, no matter how well you build your ecommerce website, there may come a time when you need to redesign it. Now the reasons to do this could be endless and the extent of redesign could also vary. The important thing is that you understand if it’s time to redesign your ecommerce website and get to it.
Your ecommerce website is not just a place of business. It is, in fact, the face of your brand, the place that showcases your digital identity and personality. From the moment a new or existing customer lands on your website, every element must enable them to do business with you, while also highlighting your brand’s personality, values and messaging.
Whether you build your ecommerce website yourself or hire professionals to build a tailor-made website for you, you need to evaluate if your website needs a complete redesign.
How do you know that? Well, let’s get to that!
7 Signs That Indicate It’s Time to Redesign Your Ecommerce Website
Your ecommerce website must be able to capture your audience’s interest and attention right from the moment they land on your website, all the way to the checkout process. So, to be able to really know whether your website needs a redesign, it’s important to understand how your audience is interacting with your website. Here are 7 signs that indicate it may be time to redesign your ecommerce website:
1. Evaluate traffic to sales conversion
While one of the primary goals for every ecommerce website owner is to ensure maximum traffic comes their way, what’s important is to measure how much of this traffic is getting converted into sales. What is stopping potential leads from making a purchase? At what point of their journey through your website are you losing them? Missing information, unclear CTAs, poor website navigation, complicated checkout process – you need to know at what point are you losing conversions and then fix that. Using tools like Google Analytics can help you get a detailed understanding of this. You can further deploy A/B tests, that is, two different design versions for the same page, to see what works better with your audience.
2. Measure bounce rate
A high bounce rate indicates people exiting your website, soon after landing upon it. Why are people leaving? Is your website taking too long to load? Is the messaging unclear? Are the channels that people are using to come to your website irrelevant? Is your website design unable to capture your audience’s attention? A high bounce rate is never a good sign and getting to the root of the cause will help you ascertain the right measures to take to combat it. A good website design can not only keep people from exiting but also encourage them to go ahead and take the desired action.
3. Check the website loading time
No matter how attractive your website is, if the images, videos or other animations don’t load quickly, people will have a bad experience, and worse leave the website. Reducing image size, optimizing your website content and adding browser caching are some key steps to ensuring a fast website load time.
4. Get a mobile-friendly website
Today most people rely on their mobile devices for almost everything, including browsing ecommerce brands and shopping. You need to make sure that your website is mobile-responsive, or you may lose potential customers. Everything from the website design, themes, fonts, images, and content needs to be mobile-responsive. If not, it’s time to redesign your ecommerce website.
5. Improve navigation to boost user experience
When a website visitor lands on your ecommerce website, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to navigate through your website to be able to shop with you. Whether it’s finding the product they’re looking for, adding products to your cart or looking for more product-specific information – navigating through your website shouldn’t be complicated or else it’s likely potential shoppers will lose interest.
6. Optimize product descriptions
Your product descriptions must drive sales rather than confusing potential buyers, or worse be irrelevant. Writing effective product descriptions allows potential customers to make buying decisions and boost sales. Clear, crisp and relevant information must be added for all your products to answer all and any questions that a customer may have. However, don’t write long paragraphs describing each product, no one has time to read that – find the balance between being informative yet relevant. Also, make sure you optimize for product visibility and user experience.
7. Optimize the checkout process
Just because a potential customer has added products to a shopping cart does not mean you’re going to bag a sale! The checkout process is the make-or-break point of conversion. A long, complicated or tedious checkout process could lead to shoppers abandoning carts and leaving, never to return. The checkout process must be optimized to make it easier for customers to shop and leave.
Ecommerce Website – Redesign and Win!
If you have noticed one or more of the seven signs indicated above, it’s time to redesign your ecommerce website. You don’t want to lose business because of a design flaw or an ecommerce website that is not up to date.
Mobile responsiveness, easy navigation, optimized product descriptions and website content, easy checkout process, a fast website, and evaluating gaps like bounce rate and conversion are key to a successful business online. Get set and get selling!
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