Planning on redesigning your e-commerce site? Focus on a key goal that can generate revenue. That’s the advice of Marketing VP, Timothy Peterson, of NutraOrigin.com [at right]. The site had less then 100 visitors a day and a conversion rate of 0.25%, well below the e-commerce norm of around 3%. Recognizing that they needed a complete overhaul but had limited funds to work with, he commissioned a phased redesign.

Phase one focused on improving the web shopping user experience to give customers the confidence in the site to become regular customers. The phase would be funded with 10% of projected first-year revenue for the new site. While the amount was high, Peterson believed that if they were going to reinvent the business, they needed to commit more than a few thousand dollars which would have accomplished nothing.

The redesign launched in two months and a year later, the traffic is more than 10 times more per day, the conversion rate is about 2.4% which is more than 10 times more, and the average order value is down from $60 to $30. But according to Peterson, not only is the site attracting more first-time visitors who have the potential of becoming long-term customers, the first order is usually less than subsequent ones as people are taking a chance.

The advice of their design agency are to focus on a single goal at a time to improve the chances of attaining it; map out plans for at least the second and third years of a redesign, if not for five years out; build in ongoing annual maintenance costs for a new site of 25-50% of the original site design cost; and, online retailers also should budget a similar amount for promoting a site.

Read more