Hi Reader,
When we were teaching at the h+h americas conference, someone asked me how long a website should last. I get asked this a lot, and the answer's not too popular. A well-built ecommerce site tends to be competitive for about a year and a half to maaaybe three years before it's worth considering a redesign or major refresh. That’s not because your site is broken, but because customer expectations, available functionality, and your own business evolve.
Some signs it's time to redesign:
- Your conversion rate is flat or falling despite good traffic.
- When updating the site, you feel constrained by its design or features.
- Your product pages don't reflect how you sell anymore.
- Customers are asking questions that your site should answer.
- Your competitors’ sites feel more polished, modern, or persuasive.
By the time most people think to redesign, the site’s already been holding them back. The person who asked me this question had a site that had been designed about ten years ago! This is an extreme case, but it pained me to think about how much work they were doing marketing and advertising such a clunky site. If they had redesigned years ago, all that effort would have made them much more money.
Redesigning every couple of years feels expensive and time-consuming, though, right? Is there any way to avoid this? Absolutely! Our favorite thing to do is redesign a site and bring it up to date, then work together on a monthly basis to continually improve and update it.
Why work with strategists on retainer:
If you’re working with my team on ongoing optimization, the game changes completely -- in the best way. With continuous improvement, you may be able to put off a time-intensive redesign until a significant business or technology change comes along.
Instead of letting your site slowly drift toward obsolescence, you’re:
- Making regular UX, CRO, and content updates.
- Responding to business changes and customer behavior in real time.
- Adopting new features and tech as they become available.
- Staying competitive with stats-informed improvements of all kinds.
This extends your site’s useful life far beyond the usual 2-year mark because you're never letting it become stale.
How to know what to focus on:
If you've seen my "Traffic or Tactics" talk, you know there are times when you should work on your site, and times you should grow your traffic.
- Low traffic: Fussing with the site won't be a big help.
- Medium traffic: Get your website up to date and working well.
- High traffic: Continually optimize your site based on your stats.
I have the full breakdown here, with traffic and revenue benchmarks to help you decide where to focus: what to do at each level of traffic.
What to do this summer:
This summer is the time to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM)! Especially if you want my team at Aeolidia's help, we need to be planning for your site soon to have it ready to go for what is most people's most important sales season.
We have been adjusting our services over the years so that we're able to help both high-traffic businesses and those that are gathering momentum. In most cases, if your site is out of date, it's better to get something smart up quickly than keep limping along. Our Simple Shopify Design can be a great fit if you're gaining momentum with customers and want to keep it going.
If you're an established business doing well with ecommerce, our work can really catapult you to the next level, and we can make each campaign and product launch pay off more.
Grab our rate sheet below, and you'll also get a link to schedule a call to make a plan for meeting your ambitious sales goals in 2025. Website projects can't be put off forever.
