Top 5 Tips for a Successful E-Commerce Website Redesign

Drawing from our experience building many significant e-commerce websites, here are our top 5 things to consider:

Tip #1: Invest in Research to Avoid Missteps

One of the most frequent missteps we see is clients not allocating enough resources to evaluate their current site and understand what is working and what is not. The likelihood is that the website is doing something right since there is enough interest in investing in its redesign and rebuilding. Allocate more of that budget to researching what currently works to avoid mistakes and headaches later.

Use analytics and user behaviour data to identify areas of improvement on the existing website. A/B testing and heatmaps can provide insights into what changes may positively or negatively affect conversions. Speaking to users will reveal why certain things work and others don’t work as well.

Tip #2: Don’t Underestimate Data and Content Migration

A content migration strategy, including a content management governance strategy, should be done early in a project. A strong content strategy informs both design and development decisions.

If you have a lot of content, and especially if there has been a weak content governance model or unstructured content model, do not underestimate the effort involved in sorting through, organizing, and preparing content for reuse. If this is your situation, the good news is that moving your content to an API-first CMS (such as Drupal) with well-architected content and content governance models will allow for the long-term preservation and evolution of your content.

Tip #3: It takes a village – choose your villagers wisely.

Redesigning an established e-commerce website is a complex project. The success of the project requires the collective efforts and diverse contributions from people across various teams, organizations, and service providers to come together and work collaboratively. Individual team members' skills are, of course, important, but equally important are the cultural fit, project management methodology, and leadership alignment within the team.

Tip #4: Architect for composability to avoid costly rebuilds

Established e-commerce websites are highly integrated, contain vast amounts of data and content, and are central to many business interactions, transactions, and communications with users. For these sites, it is unacceptable to simply discard the old site and redesign and rebuild the new website.

Modern websites utilize composable architectures, where specific components of a web architecture provide best-of-class services. For instance, for a B2B/B2C e-commerce website, a high-level service architecture may look like this:

• Drupal Headless CMS / Content API - houses all content in a well managed content model and exposes content via a powerful API
• E-Commerce API / Service - utilize services such as Shopify or CommerceLayer. Integrate with  backend ERP, taxation, logistics or other services.
• Websites and Apps - utilize modern front-end technologies such as ReactJS or mobile apps that integrate with Drupal CMS API for content and e-commerce API to manage transactions

With a composable architecture, each component of your web solution will have its own lifespan. For example, a well-structured and governed Headless CMS can be utilized with minimal structural changes through many front-end website refreshes or additional websites and web apps. In contrast, the API services that your web solution utilizes may change often based on evolving business needs with little to no changes required to other parts of your composable web architecture.

Tip #5: Strategize and plan for SEO

Maintaining SEO rankings is a critical factor for many successful e-commerce websites. Although it’s not possible to fully guarantee that rankings will remain unaffected, there are some guidelines that go a long way toward ensuring that the new design does not negatively impact rankings:

💡 Map out the current and new site URL structures. Ensure that a complete 301 Redirect strategy is developed to effectively redirect existing URL paths from the old site to the new website. Ensure that the new site structure is search engine-friendly.

💡 Identify important URLs that rank high with Google and generate traffic to the current website. By analyzing the top-performing pages on your current e-commerce website that rank high in Google search results and drive significant traffic, you gain valuable insights into which content contributes to your site’s overall visibility and should be included in your content migration plan.

💡 Your meta-tag content also needs to be migrated! The most important tags to take into consideration are:

• Title tag - A concise, descriptive HTML element that specifies the title of a webpage, which appears in search engine results and browser tabs.
• Meta description - A brief summary of a webpage's content, displayed in search engine results to give users an overview of what the page is about.
• Canonical tag - Google doesn’t like multiple copies of the same content. Use the canonical tag to tell Google which page is the original.
• Alternative text (Alt) tag - Image descriptions that a screen reader uses (a WCAG requirement).
• Robots meta tag - A directive used to control how search engines index and crawl a webpage, indicating whether it should be indexed or followed.
• Open Graph and Twitter Cards - These are your social media meta tags, used to control how your webpage's content appears when shared on social platforms.
• Responsive design meta tag - An HTML tag that helps ensure a webpage adjusts its layout and design to be user-friendly across different devices and screen sizes.

By following these 5 tips, you can help ensure that your e-commerce website redesign project is a great success for your users, the business, and your customers. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.