A well-designed, user-friendly eCommerce website is essential to drive sales and maintain a strong online presence. Conversely, an outdated eCommerce website design with poor functionality can be a significant barrier to customer engagement and conversion. This ultimately costs your business valuable sales opportunities.
Through a website redesign, you can improve both user experience and online visibility. You’ll also boost sales.
In this article, we explore five clear signs it’s time for a website redesign. By recognizing these red flags, you can proactively address any issues and ensure your online storefront is optimized to deliver a seamless, enjoyable shopping experience that keeps customers coming back.
Website Redesign vs Website Refresh
A website refresh is often done to give a website a more modern, polished look without a complete overhaul. It’s like giving your house a makeover without making any structural changes or knocking down walls. In this case, you’ll simply paint the walls and hang new curtains to freshen up the look.
A website refresh typically involves updating the visual design elements of an existing website, such as the color scheme, typography, imagery, and layout. The overall structure and functionality of the site remain the same.
In contrast, a website redesign involves a more comprehensive overhaul of the website. If it was your home, you’d knock down some walls, expand the rooms, and improve the layout.
For your website, a redesign can include changes to the visual design, information architecture, navigation, content, and underlying technology. It aims to improve the user experience and better align your eCommerce website design with your company branding and business goals.
Essentially, the key differences between a redesign and refresh are the scope and depth of the changes. A refresh is more surface level, while a redesign involves rethinking parts or the entire website from the ground up, requiring more investment of time and cost.
Which Approach Do You Need?
To determine whether your website needs a refresh or a full redesign, consider the following:
User Feedback and Analytics
Review user comments, support tickets, and website analytics to identify any major pain points or areas of poor user experience. If minor website updates will resolve the issues, a refresh is sufficient. But if the feedback and data point to deeper structural problems, a redesign is likely needed.
Business Goals and Constraints
Consider your company’s plans for growth, expansion, or rebranding. If the website needs to support significant strategic shifts, a redesign is the better approach. This may involve noteworthy changes to the layout, functionality, and technology to align with new business goals, enhance performance, and improve user engagement.
A website redesign can also be necessary for sites that need to accommodate new features and adapt to rebranding.
Current Website Performance
Evaluate the website’s technical performance, mobile responsiveness, and adherence to modern design and accessibility standards. If the core functionality and structure are still sound, a refresh could work.
However, if the underlying technology or user experience is outdated, a redesign is necessary to meet modern accessibility standards. This will ensure the site is competitive and can support current and future needs.
UpTop Perspective
Adding on top of legacy designs or systems that weren’t intended to scale or support them digs organizations into a deeper hole. That’s when user experience problems pop up the most.
Let’s look at five clear signs that it’s time for a new eCommerce website design.
Sign #1: High Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate—the percentage of visitors who leave a website after only viewing one page—is often a red flag for poor user experience. When users quickly navigate away from a site, it suggests they aren’t finding what they need. They may also be encountering friction that causes them to abandon their visit.
For eCommerce sites, a high bounce rate can directly translate to lost sales opportunities. If potential customers are clicking away before even adding items to their cart, it means the site is failing to engage, inform, and convert them.
Some common user experience (UX) issues that can contribute to a high bounce rate include:
- Unclear or Confusing Navigation: If users can’t easily find the products or information they’re looking for, they’ll quickly leave.
- Slow Page Load Times: Slow-loading pages frustrate users and drive them away, especially on mobile.
- Unappealing or Outdated Visual Design: A site that looks unprofessional or dated can undermine trust and credibility.
- Lack of Relevant, Compelling Content: If the site doesn’t immediately communicate value and answer user questions, they won’t stick around.
- Complicated Checkout Process: Convoluted or lengthy checkout flows can cause users to abandon their purchase.
To address these UX problems and reduce bounce rates, a redesign can make a significant impact. Specifically, a thoughtful eCommerce website redesign process should:
- Streamline navigation and information architecture
- Update the visual design to be modern, consistent ,and on brand
- Create compelling, scannable content that speaks to user needs
- Simplify the checkout flow to minimize friction
- Incorporate user testing and feedback throughout the process
By improving the overall user experience, you can keep visitors engaged, encourage them to explore more pages, and increase the likelihood of conversions.
Sign #2: Outdated Design
A modern, well-designed website is crucial to maintain credibility and user engagement in today’s competitive online landscape. The “3-second rule” in web design refers to the fact that users form an initial impression of a website within the first three seconds of visiting. This impression often determines whether they choose to stay and explore the site further or leave immediately.
An outdated website design can give the impression that your eCommerce business isn’t keeping pace with the times. Prospective customers may view an antiquated or poorly designed site as a sign that your company is behind the curve technologically. They may also assume that you simply don’t prioritize providing a high-quality digital experience. This can undermine trust and credibility, causing users to question the legitimacy and capabilities of your business.
By contrast, a sleek, up-to-date website design conveys professionalism, innovation, and a commitment to delivering a positive user experience. This helps establish your company as a credible, forward-thinking industry player that’s attentive to the needs and expectations of customers.
A website redesign gives you an opportunity to address outdated design elements and align your online presence with your brand identity and values. By incorporating modern aesthetics, intuitive navigation, and a seamless shopping experience, a redesign can breathe new life into your online store. In the process, it will demonstrate to users that your business is dynamic, tech-savvy, and focused on customer satisfaction.
Sign #3: Not Mobile-Friendly or Responsive
In a world where convenience is king, the majority of online activity occurs on smartphones and tablets. Failing to optimize the user experience for mobile devices can have a significant impact on your sales. Yes, lots of sites are already on the bandwagon, but you’ll be surprised how many are not.
Mobile optimization ensures your website functions seamlessly and intuitively regardless of the device being used to access it. A responsive design automatically adjusts the layout, content, and functionality to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience on any screen size.
In addition, responsive design uses fluid images and media queries to ensure images and videos scale proportionally to the screen. This prevents distortion or cropping of the content.
When a website isn’t optimized for mobile, it can lead to a poor user experience characterized by elements that are too small to read or click, content that’s difficult to navigate, and an overall sense of frustration. This, in turn, can result in high bounce rates as users quickly abandon the site in favor of a more mobile-friendly competitor.
What’s more, a non-responsive website can negatively impact search engine rankings. Google and other search engines prioritize mobile-friendly sites in their algorithms. This reduced visibility further limits your business’s ability to attract and convert potential customers.
Of course, the conversation has matured past being responsive. It is now about deciding whether your website should take an opposite approach, a mobile-first approach, where you start your UX with mobile and work backwards from there.
Sign #4: Slow Loading Times
Optimizing your eCommerce website loading time through a new design can significantly impact user experience and drive conversions. Studies have shown that even small delays in load times can lead to high bounce rates and abandoned shopping carts.
When a website takes too long to load, users are less likely to engage with the content, browse products, and complete purchases. In fact, research indicates that 40% of users will leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. That’s a lot of potential customers heading straight to a competitor site if you keep them waiting.
On the other hand, a website that loads quickly and seamlessly demonstrates to users that your business values their time and is committed to providing a smooth, efficient shopping experience. This fosters trust, encourages deeper engagement, and increases the likelihood of conversions.
What’s more, page load speed is a key ranking factor for search engines such as Google and Bing. Better search visibility means a greater likelihood of potential customers heading to your online store.
A website redesign provides an excellent opportunity to optimize loading times and address any performance issues. Use the following techniques:
- Compress and optimize images and other media.
- Minimize the use of large, complex scripts.
- Implement content delivery networks (CDNs).
- Streamline the code and reduce HTTP requests.
- Make mobile-specific optimizations.
Sign #5: Not Ranking Well on Search Engines
An outdated website can negatively impact search engine rankings in several key ways. For one, older websites often have outdated code, broken links, and poor mobile optimization. These are all important ranking factors as search engines like Google crawl and index your website.
As mentioned earlier, an outdated design and poor user experience can increase bounce rates and decrease time on site. These are also metrics search engines use to assess the quality and relevance of a website.
Also, if your website hasn’t been updated in a while, the content may become outdated and less relevant to user searches. Search engines prioritize fresh, high-quality content.
A well-executed website redesign can address these issues and drastically improve a site’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance. It should modernize the technical infrastructure, create a responsive design, and produce new, engaging content. This will boost your eCommerce website’s visibility and rankings in search results. It also allows for comprehensive updates like better schema markup and cleaner code.
However, while a redesign can fix major issues and improve user engagement, it carries a higher risk of losing existing SEO value. For this reason, even with a redesign, it may be important to keep the same blog URL path structure to build on previous content value.
If your goal is to maintain current rankings while making only small improvements, a website refresh may be a better option. A website refresh is an effective approach if the core elements of the website still perform well. It allows you to build on existing SEO value and improve rankings by refreshing old, viable content while minimizing risks.
Unlock Your Sales Potential with a New eCommerce Website Design
Your online storefront is the gateway to meaningful engagement with both new and returning visitors. Keeping your eCommerce website design fresh and modern is essential to maintain a strong, trustworthy brand image. If your site isn’t matching up to competitors, a strategic website redesign can be a game-changer to keep you relevant and competitive in a crowded market.
By identifying pain points and implementing effective design and functionality changes, a website redesign can address usability issues, enhance visual appeal, and optimize conversion funnels. It also ensures alignment with current industry standards, user expectations, and emerging trends. Finally, if there are significant technical or structural issues that are hampering SEO performance, a redesign should be a priority for your business.
At UpTop, our UX strategy, product design, and software development teams work with you to craft exceptional digital experiences for your brand that seize opportunities and improve conversions. Our experts utilize in-depth research to provide strategic direction and recommendations for design upgrades. This ensures a data-driven approach and a smart eCommerce website design strategy.
Not sure whether a website redesign or refresh is the right option for you? Let’s connect to discuss how to best drive long-term success for your online business.
