Your website is your first impression on consumers. A professional and well-designed website will help you stand out in an ever growing eCommerce industry. Website redesigning is a time-consuming and costly affair, but is necessary for an online retailer to keep his site in line with current standards and trends.
An old and outdated website will actually have a negative impact on your leads. On the flip side, a fresh custom designed website will help you increase your sales and gain exposure to thousands of new clients by ranking your business higher on search engines.
So, how can an eCommerce store owner know it’s time to redesign his website?
Let’s look at few reasons that point in this direction:
1. Your Website Is Not Mobile-Friendly
There is growing evidence that consumers today prefer using tablets and smartphones to shop online. According to ShopVisible, 30% of eCommerce site traffic came from mobile devices in 2013. This scenario denotes that if you own an eCommerce business that has a non-mobile friendly website, it is time to change tactics and join the mobile revolution.
The development of your mobile site should be determined by the products or services your business provides. Ensure that your site loads quickly and is easy to navigate on a mobile phone or a tablet. By incorporating a mobile-friendly website you’ll be assured of reaching a wider audience, thus improving your chances of higher sales.
2. Your Website Lacks up-to-date Technology
Is your eCommerce website using obsolete technology? If yes, then redesigning your website using the latest technology is the only way to please today’s Internet-savvy users.
Also, you need to recreate your online shop with cutting-edge technology if:
- • It takes too long to load
- • Is unable to handle the traffic it gets
- • Is integrated with poor plugins and features
- • It doesn’t include social sharing tools
3. You Started off with a Basic Template and Now Want a Custom Website
Store owners are always looking to save money and make their business profitable. They generally buy a pre-designed website template when developing a website and then prefer to switch to a fully customized platform as and when the need arises.
A website template is a pre-designed webpage, or a set of webpages, that anybody can modify with their own content and images to set up a website. A custom design, on the other hand, is more adaptable and brand-focused.
If your website needs are now complex and can’t be met due to the restrictive nature of your chosen template, you should consider getting a custom website design by a professional web developer.
4. Your Current Website Doesn’t Fit Your Business Objective or Target Audience
Your website should support your business and marketing objectives. If the existing website does not meet your business objectives including your targeted revenue, number of visitors, or conversion rate, it’s time for you to redesign it.
If your current website lacks competence to serve your target audience, you definitely need a site that caters to the needs of your target audience.
5. Your Website Is Not SEO-Friendly
Almost everybody uses search engines like Google and Bing when looking for products and services. Search engines are one of the most important mediums for websites to receive highly targeted traffic and make your store findable on the Internet.
If your eCommerce website is not search engine-friendly, it is not earning you enough money. To ensure success of your e–store, optimize your website for search engines.
There are many ways you can make your eCommerce website SEO friendly such as by using sitemap.xml, reducing the loading time, optimizing the content of your website, and using canonical tags, to name a few.
6. High Cart Abandonment
According to a computation on Baymard.com the average abandonment rate for online shopping carts is roughly 68%. If that’s the case with your online store, you definitely need a website that is visitor-focused and offers them a user-friendly experience.
There could be many reasons for basket abandonment ranging from unclear calls-to-action, compulsory registration, hidden shipping costs, to long checkout process. Understanding what causes customers to drop out before completing a purchase and making adjustments to the site design, businesses can reduce the impact of basket abandonment.
7. You Are Losing against Your Competitors
Thinking about redesigning your website simply because your competitors are doing it too is not a good reason. But if you find your website is not helping you knock your competitors out or generate leads for your sales team, you undoubtedly do need to consider redesigning it.
Before redesigning your website, analyze your competitors’ websites and identify their strengths and weaknesses. This will help you gain an edge over them.
8. Redesign Increases Conversions
Can a redesign really increase conversions?
Yes. This case study on Crazy Egg tells readers how conversions were improved with a redesign.
Redesigning a website is a prime opportunity to fix the issues holding back your old website and improve customer engagement and conversions. When redesigning, consider factors such as website flow, content, call-to-action buttons, etc. that are proven to help with boosting conversion rates. Tracking conversions through Google Analytics and making changes accordingly will definitely help boost conversion rates.
9. Your Website Is Stale
Twitter and Facebook come up with innovative UI and UX from time to time. These giant social networks claim that these changes aim to refine the user experience. Even Google’s home page was redesigned in 2013, possibly for the same reason.
People are always looking for something new from a site even if they are its loyal visitors. Those who regularly visit a website may get bored with the same visual and functional experience. If you don’t want this to happen to your visitors, you need to redesign your website periodically.
10. You Are Unable to Update the Website Content Yourself
If yes, then you need to redesign your website. Business users should be able to maintain the daily routine of their eCommerce website — maintaining catalog, running promotions, sending newsletters, running/creating reports, changing content, adding products, blocking sold products, or informing visitors about deals and offers, etc., without the help of their IT executives. If your business managers are unable to do all these things on their own, it’s time you redesigned your website. Opt for an eCommerce platform that your business managers can easily use.
The above-mentioned points indicate it’s time for you to redesign your website. E-commerce website redesigning is a complex undertaking but the benefits of a new website can help improve your bottom line.
June 6, 2014
