8 factors for redesigning your e-commerce website

Over the past two years, people have changed how they interact with websites. With more and more businesses available online, pretty much every one of your customers expects that everything should be just a click away.

People now demand a seamless shopping experience, faster checkout processes, and intuitive navigation on top of appealing designs. These days, around 93% of visitors say they leave a poorly designed website, so getting this right is paramount.

Does your website look outdated? Is your web traffic stagnating? Then, it’s probably the right time to consider redesigning your e-commerce site. 

Here are eight things to think about before redesigning your website: 

Set your goals

Reaching the maximum audience and converting them to high-paying customers should be your ultimate goal when redesigning your online shop. That one’s easy. What next?

Your goals should be SMART! 

• S: Specific. Make sure you are specific in what you want to do. Do you only want to target certain functionalities, or are you completely redesigning the whole website, including UX, content, and navigation?
• M: Measurable. You’re going to want to keep track of your success so far, so set goals that have a numerical basis.
• A: Achievable. Setting a million visitors per day sounds nice. Still, it is hardly achievable within a reasonable time if you’re starting at zero.
• R: Realistic. See above. Make sure it’s something you can actually do.
• T: Anchored with a time frame.

Define your target audience

Using demographic data from your old website is a great place to start when it comes to defining your audience, but it’s not the end of it. 

An essential part of building your site is creating buyer personas – these are fictional representations of real people based on customer data. They should tell you what your customer’s goals are and any motivations or preferences. Seasoned marketers build these profiles from various sources, including customer interviews, e-commerce data, market research and website demographics.

While buyer personas are not profiles of real people, they should represent your target audience so well that you feel like you know them. Knowing your target audience’s browsing habits and keyword usage will help you determine site structure, look and feel.

Later down the line, these personas will influence your marketing and content strategies so having all those details is helpful. Remember, personalised content often leads to higher conversion rates, which equals more sales.

Know what’s working 

It’s not enough to feel like your current website is garbage. You need to know it first. But let’s not be negative straight away. First, figure out what’s working on your current website. Which pages are the most valuable? Do you know where your sales are coming from? Are there pages that are performing well in search engines? Why is that?

Pages that drive the most traffic and conversions should be redesigned with utmost care. These should be treated like precious gems. 

Any seasoned web development agency will be able to redesign and migrate your website while maintaining, if not improving, your rankings, web traffic and conversions. So, if you choose the right partner, you’ll be in good hands.

Know what’s stopping your customers

Now it’s time to get negative. So, what’s stopping your customers from converting? Using heatmaps to visualise customers behaviour when they land on your website is an excellent way of determining any obstacles. 

You can also ask current website visitors questions and get feedback from your visitors using an on-site survey to collect data from a large sample of customers. This way, you’ll get the idea of where your customers get stuck on your website, as well as:

• What people like and dislike about your user experience 
• What creates frustration
• Whether your content makes sense to the end-user

Knowing what’s hot and what’s not will give you the precise direction you should have in mind when optimising the overall experience on your e-commerce site.

Improve navigation

Your website navigation and search bar should help users find the products or services you sell quickly. 

Visitors should be able to see navigation labels clearly and instantly understand what those labels represent. On mobile, this is particularly important. Around 32% of shoppers change their minds about purchasing products after a bad mobile experience. 

Improve search rankings

Does a website exist if nobody sees it? You can have the best-looking and functioning e-commerce website in the world, but if you don’t make it more visible in the search engines, you’ve wasted time and money on a website that will never be seen.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) allows you to reach your target audience through search engines like Google when searching for products and services you offer. 

Another often overlooked aspect of SEO is that it reduces environmental impact! For example, did you know that the average web page produces 1.76 g CO2 per page view? A good SEO strategy can improve your website energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact.

SEO for e-commerce can often seem like a huge undertaking. From historical content optimisation to keyword research and planning, from link building strategies to search engine results pages (SERPs). It takes a real expert to do SEO well. 

Book a call with our e-commerce SEO experts now and get a tailored strategy that works for your business.

Measure success

Has your redesign paid off? To find out, you’ll need to use relevant measurements, often known as key performance indicators (KPIs), that are based on your goals. The shrewd readers among you may remember we set measurable goals when we started out. Here’s where that pays off.

There’s a temptation to track every metric under the sun (from IG followers to clicks on email calls-to-action). Often it’s better to narrow them down to a few genuinely impactful data points that will most accurately show if your e-commerce business is progressing.

Some metrics (so-called vanity metrics) only look good on paper; they actually offer you little to no information on how your business is growing. 

Use an expert

How can you do all of the above, make sure your redesign has paid off, and continue to grow your business simultaneously? It’s time to call in the experts.

The right website development agency can seamlessly lead you through an e-commerce website redesign. They’ll focus on your business goals, leaving you free to focus on your business.

At AirVu Media, we love helping businesses of all sizes achieve their goals. So book a call with our experienced digital team today for comprehensive e-commerce solutions that will grow your online business.