There are many different reasons to update the design of your online store. With a new year having just started, you may want to consider a sleek-looking update to simply show that you are keeping up with the times. For many online users, an updated site connotes that a company is progressing and moving forward. Giving your audience the chance to assume your business is stale and stagnant – especially in the wake of COVID-19 – is no way to boost online sales.
So is it time to update the design of your online store? What are the top reasons to do so?
Speed up loading times.
Patience, as they say, is a virtue – but not many people have it. Especially in today’s fast-paced world, the importance of immediacy is at an all-time high. If your e-commerce site takes too long to load on mobile devices, for example, online users aren’t likely to wait around. By updating your site so that it loads quickly, you make it more enticing for shoppers to peruse through your product pages and stick around to complete their purchases.
“If your website is taking more than 2-3 seconds to load, consider this as the time to bring about change,” says Dinarys.com, “The goal is to make the web page load faster because you can’t expect customers to keep waiting patiently for your webpage to open. Although, planning for the website redesign cost can be challenging, continuing with such slow load speeds is not good for business, either.”
Improve navigation.
Never let it be lost on you that online shoppers have many options. It is incredibly easy to jump from one site to the next. The process, of course, is a lot less time consuming than visiting various physical store locations. How easy is it to navigate through your online store? If navigation presents any difficulties, your visitors are a lot more likely to find other sites than trudge through the trouble of finding what they want in your online store.
“Too often it comes down to a situation, when your e-commerce store features a lot of advantageous services and contagious content to be shared with website visitors, but it’s next to impossible for users to find any particular information on the fly,” writes Denis Z. on Medium.com, “All you need here is to get a sitemap intuitively rearranged and smooth navigation implemented so that users can easily find and reach all the necessary information they look for.”
Promote social media engagement.
One of your top objectives as a business owner is to secure repeat business. In this day and age, an effective way to do that is to be engaging via social media. Does your online store contain links to your company’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts? If not, it’s definitely time for an update. You don’t just want your visitors to make purchases. You want them talking about your brand with their friends and followers. This helps to grow your customer base.
“When we talk about e-commerce, social media is one of the main areas of advertisement which needs constant attention,” notes Dinarys.com.
Is your company website all set up with an online shop?
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