Redesigning your ecommerce website every now and then is a necessary part of maintaining relevance and presenting a shopping experience that your customers love. However, there is a time and a place for everything. A new ecommerce website design can boost sales, but it can kill them as well if it is the wrong change at the wrong time. Here are a few ways of telling if here and now is the right time and place. 

When to redesign:

  • To boost sales. With the economy tanked, more than sixty percent of ecommerce websites are redesigning in any given year simply to maintain sales. Design services can be expensive, but sometimes they are the only way to hold onto a drifting customer base.
  • To improve the shopping experience. If there are flaws in your system that can only be resolved with a complete overhaul, there is no better time than the present to fix them. You don’t know how many customers you might be losing do to even small ecommerce website design issues.
  • Your current design is outdated. Visitors tend to see your ecommerce website design as an indication of your overall quality. An out-of-date or unattractive design will say nothing good about your business, and possibly drive potential customers away.
  • Your customers are demanding it. If surveys and emails are showing that a certain part of your design is a real problem for many customers, then you need to remedy the problem as soon as possible. 

When not to redesign:

  • Only minor problems are present. If your website has a great design that is working well for your customer base, but there are a few small issues, then do not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Simply fix the problems and keep your current design until a new one is truly needed.
  • Right before your busy season. A new ecommerce website design will take time to perfect. There are always kinks—always. In addition, it may take a while for your existing customer base to acclimate to the new design and embrace it. Your busy season is not the time to experiment; there is simply too much at stake.

Making the Switch

If you have determined that a new ecommerce website design is necessary and that now is the time, then you need to make a plan. First, survey customers to see what improvements are necessary. Second, contact a design professional. This is not something that you want to undertake on your own unless you have an academic and professional background in design. Last, make small changes over time rather than hitting customers with an entirely new system. If you must make a large change, then introduce it with a site tour or tutorial that will keep existing customers from feeling lost. Some websites find that they are most successful when they roll changes first to new visitors (those without cookies) and work out the kinks before introducing the changes to returning visitors. Ultimately you will have to make a decision that is best for your ecommerce website and your customer base.