Let’s face it: most sites are made ad hoc (that is, slap-dash) with the goal of establishing a semblance of online presence and earning money along the way. This is why, if your website is an online store, or, as they say, e-commerce site, in times of unprecedented increase in online retailing you need to be sure that the site operations are fully optimized for making profits in line with the current technologies. You need to be concerned even more if your site was designed ‘on the go’ more than five years ago, and nothing was changed significantly during this time.
Google has changed its ranking algorithm, and mobile commerce took over. Fashion for clean minimalist design and demand for minimal loading time and easy site search now guide the market. Security and data protection are now the part of the package, not the premium options. Basically, we have already listed points where redesign may be required.
But let us explore the global ecommerce redesign tends and see where they fit into your particular business plan and site concept.
1. Going Mobile
The world is going mobile, and you should go along. Moving the site to the mobile-friendly platform or adapting it to the mobile browsing and buying can mean a lot of changes. You can order the full refurbishing, which means creating the responsive site version, and then implement all other redesigning solutions in this new version. Or else, you can do the site auditing, see where the bottlenecks are, and have them recreated in mobile-friendly formal, like compressing images, providing better scrolling experience and replacing Flash elements with HTML5 or CSS.
2. Additional Security and Data Protection
This is what concerns many people today, and as online shopping grows, people want to be sure that their money and data are safe. You can improve the safety features by asking laravel developers to redo them (or the site basis) in PHP, by adding signs of verification and protection to the site start page (seal of verification or approval), and by providing more popular payment options that are considered safe.
3. Easy API Access
If your shop cannot be easily integrated with other services, it hinders your business. Flexible access to API and smooth integration experience can also be implemented with help of Laravel or other PHP frameworks.
4. Interactive Communication Channels and Chatbots
That’s the hottest trend now, and it is believed that chatbots help retain customers and personalize their shopping experience. Add to your site a chatbot that will help customers pick the right products and create the feeling of having a personal assistant doing the pitching.
5. Targeting for the Right Audience
It works if you have a very specific segment of audience in mind. If you want to sell to the top worth segment, you will have to hire a designer who will create the very ‘elite’ looking landing page. If you plan to attract younger customers, your designer has to be versed in the latest memes, TikTok features and ‘cool’ talk and stuff. The site should reflect this ‘coolness’ as well. If you plan to sell to everyone, then the design needs to be more utilitarian – but fun and user-friendly.
6. Reducing Load Time
We thought it is not an issue anymore, but, judging by complaints, many sites still make their customers wait while heavy content and popups slowdown the loading of the main page. The rule of ‘3 seconds waiting’ is not going anywhere, so again, do the site auditing and see what can be removed or compressed to make loading faster.
7. Including Various Types of Promo Content
Today, customers are used to ‘living’ promo and buying experience, so putting together some pics and a chunk of text is not enough anymore. Promo videos, live video reviews, customers’ reviews and ratings, ‘tips from experts’, and high quality pics should accompany your product. Do not try to place all mentioned stuff on every page of your site; yet a video here, a couple of testimonies there, and a video review someplace else work magic for your sales.
8. Adding SEO Capacity to the Site Structure
Today, marketing does itself. Think close integration with social media (think mostly Instagram and Facebook), SEO optimization, better UI and UE, and a sitemap that guides a customer from one product or category to another. These tricks can work as efficiently as the high price ads broadcast in prime time during the Super Bowl, yet cost you much less. So take care to include them all into your site while doing this major online store redesign.
