Redesigning a website offers several challenges that you won’t face when building a site from scratch. With a new site, you can take full control from the planning stages. The end result should come out as you want it to.

Redesigns differ as they typically focus on solving specific problems. Maybe the site has gone out of date and competitors have moved ahead. Or, something in the site isn’t working as it should and that is costing revenue.

Magento is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms because it is open source. This makes redesigning easier than it is with a proprietary platform. Even so, there are some practices that developers must stick to in order to make the redesign a success. Here are five of them.

1. Update Content First

Many webstores become outdated because the content they host goes stagnant. This is a big problem with large webstores. As the amount of products on the site increases, the amount of time you can spend keeping each product up to date decreases. Over time, you’ll find you have a lot of products that struggle to sell because the content isn’t good enough.

Magento helps you remedy this issue immediately, without the need for additional design work. You can use the platform to make instant changes to content that will improve the user experience.

Do a full content audit before moving onto anything more complex. Use analytics to find content that isn’t performing as it should be. The Magento platform gives you the tools you need to fix that content or remove it if it is beyond repair.

2. Complete a Site Audit

As you chop and change content on products you’ll generate inefficiencies. An unoptimised website leads to slowdown in the sales funnel. It can also cause issues with your online marketing efforts. Most redesigns focus on fixing these inefficiencies. However, you need to know where they are before you can do anything about them.

This requires a full site audit. Got through the webstore page by page. You’re looking for broken links and 404 pages. You also need to see where you could do more to move people towards a sale.

Check for calls to action on all of the relevant pages. Throughout the process, make a note of every issue you discover. This is essentially the planning stage. With your list of problems, you can start redesigning the Magento site with the aim of solving the issues.

3. Always Keep Search Engines in Mind

Everything you do during the redesign should have Google and other search engines in mind. With a Magento redesign, you may end up changing product categories and URLs. This will generate a lot of 404 pages. Further, changing the URL of a popular page will cause that page to disappear from the rankings.

A custom 404 page works well for the first issue. If you no longer need the page, create a custom message and help users navigate back to a usable page. This shows you’ve paid attention to the customer experience, which is always a positive for search engines.

Renamed URLs offer a different challenge. In these cases, you need to sort out redirects. Use a 301 redirect to shift the old URL to the new one. This automatically redirects people who use the old URL to the new page. Further, it lets search engines know what you’ve done with the page. This means you don’t lose ranking.

It’s a good idea to create a list of every URL on the old site and what you intend to do with it. You can then use Magento to handle the relevant action.

4. Always Check for New Plug-ins and Updates

Magento is an open source platform. That means there are thousands of developers creating new plug-ins for the platform on the constant basis. Failure to keep up with these developments could prevent you from taking advantage of new features.

Create a wish list when you start redesigning your Magento website. Figure out what you want the new version of the site to do for users. With that list in hand, start searching for plug-ins. Odds are high that you will find plenty to suit your needs.

This process saves a lot of time and money in development. If you can go to your developers with a list of what you want and where you think they can find it, they can focus on getting the new features implemented.

5. Think Mobile

Almost 60% of all searches are made using mobile devices. That statistic alone should convince you of the importance of prioritizing mobile in a Magento redesign. You are missing out if your current website doesn’t cater to mobile users.

Your redesign efforts should focus on making your site easily accessible via mobile. Look at the sales funnel. Think about how easy you make it for people to order via mobile devices. Make sure the site looks good across every platform.

Practically any Magento redesign will end in failure if you fail to account for mobile platforms in 2017. Thankfully, the platform has a lot of responsive themes you can use. Dedicated developers will also help you make your Magento site usable for mobile users. This may cost a little extra money in the short term. However, you’ll see plenty of benefits over the long term.

The Final Word

Consider each of these five practices during a Magento website redesign. Have you implemented each one? If you have, you’ll find you save a lot of time and money on the cost of coming back to redesign again later on down the line.