An online store redesign – is it a good idea?

Planning a redesign of your online store, or already in the middle of one?

You probably want to grow sales and believe radically reworking the interface is a good solution.

I have bad news. There’s a strong probability your store’s new design won’t significantly grow sales. 

Worse – a revolutionary redesign can even cause a sharp conversion drop.

Resist the temptation of a radical redesign and don’t make Marks & Spencer’s mistake

Redesigning a store can easily cost tens of thousands.

The new Marks & Spencer store cost them £150 million (quite a lot). And building it took 2 years. 

The result? An 8% conversion drop.

Think twice before you decide on a redesign and start eagerly reworking your store’s interface.

Unfortunately Marks & Spencer isn’t an exception. 

The decision to build a new store often comes from the wrong reasons.

Do you see yourself in one of the scenarios below? If so, you’re planning a redesign for the wrong reasons.

Scenario #1. You’re sick of your current online store.

I’m aware that you look at your store every day (or almost every day) and may well be sick of it. 

But remember that being tired of how your store looks doesn’t have to mean your customer is tired of it too. 

Your customer doesn’t visit it every day. 

What’s more, returning customers probably value the fact that the store’s interface doesn’t change radically and that they can move around it efficiently because they’re used to it. 

Scenario #2. “The competitor’s site is nicer.”

Yes, that’s possible. 

But first – looking nicer is subjective. And for that reason it isn’t the best basis for a business decision.

Second – a competitor’s store may look nicer, but that doesn’t mean it converts better at the same time. 

You can’t assume your competitor has optimized their store for conversion. 

Good advice: never copy solutions from a competitor’s store just like that. There’s a strong chance they don’t actually know what they’re doing. Or that an element that works for them won’t work for you.

Scenario #3. You want to follow the latest trends and have a “modern” design in your online store. 

Browsing the web you see unusual, interesting fonts, glassmorphism, AR and other “modern” things. 

Compared with those fresh, polished sites, yours looks dated to you. 

So you want to rework it quickly in line with the latest trends. Don’t rush! 

Don’t confuse fashionable design with design that converts well. 

Just because something is fashionable doesn’t mean it will lift your sales.

None of the scenarios above is a good reason for a revolutionary rework of your e-commerce interface. 

It’s very likely that going for a radical redesign will waste a pile of money you could have invested better.

Why can a revolutionary online store redesign go very badly?

Any SEO specialist will tell you a radical rebuild of an online store has to be done carefully so the store doesn’t fall in search results.

But SEO isn’t the only reason a store redesign can fail. 

Why a revolutionary redesign may not be optimal from a conversion growth perspective:

#1. You introduce too many changes at once. 

If you ship a lot of different changes simultaneously, you can’t measure the effect any single change has on sales.

Some of them will affect your store’s conversion positively and others negatively. 

If your sales fall after the redesign, you don’t actually know where the problem lies. 

Maybe changing the button styling lowered conversion while the new product page layout generates more of it. 

Rebuilding the form on the order page may have caused a conversion drop while the new cart page caused a rise. 

#2. You don’t take the most important voice into account.

When you do a redesign, you usually listen to the opinions of your boss, designers, developers and marketers. 

But those opinions don’t actually matter. 

The fact that you or your boss prefer blue buttons to orange ones shouldn’t be taken into account when designing a store.

The only opinion that really counts is that of the visitors who will either buy or not. 

Unfortunately, the customer’s voice often isn’t heard or taken into account when changes are being designed.

#3. Most designers aren’t conversion experts.

UI designers are excellent at their craft – creating something new, attractive and innovative. And they’re good at it. 

They studied design, they’re fluent in a mass of different design tools and they put their hearts and souls into it. 

But they aren’t conversion experts. 

It isn’t true that if a site is attractive and nice-looking, it must therefore convert better. 

Don’t get me wrong – the visual and aesthetic side matters. I certainly don’t want to promote ugly stores here. 

What I want to promote is having a store that does its basic job – selling well. 

That’s more important than whether it looks “modern”. 

And for your store to convert well, you need a conversion optimization specialist.

#4. Too many opinions. Too little data analysis.

Rebuilding a store is a long process. 

It usually involves a lot of people, who often have opposing ideas. 

The result is endless discussions that don’t move your project forward. 

Marketers versus UI designers. UI designers versus the board. Everyone has an opinion. 

But that’s exactly it… It’s only that: an opinion. Not objective information. 

A decision as serious as designing a new store interface is often based on instinct, opinions or aesthetics. 

Rather than on data about user behavior, analysis and real customer insight.

Online store redesign – evolutionary vs. revolutionary

I don’t want to suggest here that you should never change a store’s appearance. 

I simply want to say that in most cases the better way to redesign is changing the store’s appearance step by step. 

And each step should (as far as possible) be backed by data from an A/B test.

Put differently – first test the change you want to make and check whether it has a positive effect on your sales. 

Only if the test results show the change lifts your conversion should you make it.

And so on – test the next change and ship the winning variant. That way you have 100% certainty that every change you make grows your sales.

That process is an evolutionary redesign.  

Its opposite is a revolutionary redesign, where you dig up and rework the entire site at once.

The best-known example of an evolutionary approach to redesign is undoubtedly Amazon. Amazon has never built a completely new site.

Every change is carefully tested. That’s how Amazon turned its store into a conversion machine.

At first glance you might even think their site has never changed. 

But if you compare Amazon’s current interface with the one from a few years ago, you’ll notice it looked completely different. 

The changes happened step by step. That certainly didn’t hurt Amazon.

When is an evolutionary redesign better?

Your default choice should be an evolutionary redesign. 

If your current store works “well enough” and you have many returning customers who are used to the current interface, there’s no question – redesigning evolutionarily is the better choice.

An evolutionary redesign is the only way to give your store a new look and be certain the changes won’t bring a conversion drop.

What if the store sells well but you want to change the platform your e-commerce business runs on for technical reasons? 
Even then it’s wise not to change the current interface. 

Reproduce the current store’s appearance on the new platform, then develop it evolutionarily. Or (if possible) test the interface changes while still on the current platform.

When is a revolutionary online store redesign advisable?

Usually developing a store evolutionarily is the better solution.

But in some cases a revolutionary redesign may be the smarter choice.
A radical store rework will work better if:

• the current interface looks very amateurish. In that case you won’t get far making gradual changes.
• the technology you’re using is outdated. If your store is built on a solution that isn’t keeping up with a changing e-commerce world (ShopGold, for instance), a revolution is probably the more sensible call.
• you’ve found plenty of problems and conversion killers, but traffic to your online store is so low that testing every change with A/B tests would take years.

Planning a rebuild of your online store and want to grow your sales?

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