Welcome to your Monday morning cup of buzz. My name is Mike and i’m the owner of MJTrends.com, broadcasting every Monday morning bringing you news and information related to small business and ecommerce.
Today I’m going to talk about website design. Our site hasn’t been updated in 3 years. In dog years – the design would be 21 years old, in internet years, the design would be about 80 years old.
In February of this year Google announced that they would begin prioritizing sites that are mobile friendly. I knew we needed to update the site to work better on mobile phones.
Best practices dictate that you make small, incremental design changes over time, so that you’re users don’t get shocked by a major overhaul. While I totally support this in theory, we couldn’t support it in practice.
The cost and time involved to incrementally update the site to a mobile friendly design was too high. We are moving forward with a total overhaul. We won’t be releasing it all it once – instead we are giving our users a taste of the changes by pushing it out to different non-critical parts of the site first.
The blog has been updated – which you can see here. Next will be the forums, then our tutorial pages, user account pages, and the rest of the site last – product pages and checkout pages.
I’m crossing my fingers that we don’t alienate our current customer base. The new design feels current, versus the old outdated version, and it works great on small and large screens. I’m hoping that despite the shock of a brand new design, we won’t see conversion drop and may even see it increase.
In closing – I don’t recommend this approach. It’s a risk, and if you have the money and time – update your site incrementally. As a small business with limited resources, we didn’t have that option. Furthermore, I felt that Google had forced our hand into moving faster and that ultimately this was the best solution for us.
Do you have a great story about site design or ecommerce? If so, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at: mharris@MJTrends.com.
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I like the honesty about the site being “80 years old” in internet time, that really hits home for how fast things change. Rolling updates to non-critical areas first seems like a smart way to test reactions.
The order you laid out—blog, forums, tutorials, then checkout—makes sense from a risk management standpoint. You’re basically sandboxing the redesign before it touches money pages.
The explanation about Google pushing mobile-friendly sites up the rankings makes the full redesign feel less optional and more necessary. It’s interesting you chose the blog as the first testing ground before touching checkout.
It’s interesting that Google’s mobile update was the main catalyst here. Shows how much external platforms can dictate timing even when you’d prefer a slower, incremental approach.
Pushing updates to non-critical sections first seems like a good compromise between a full overhaul and gradual changes. You still get feedback without risking revenue immediately.
The dog years versus internet years comparison made me laugh, but it also underscores how overdue the redesign was. Three years really is a long time in ecommerce.
I’m curious how users responded to the blog redesign specifically. That seems like a good place to gauge whether the new look feels intuitive or not.
The phased rollout strategy feels like a middle ground between shocking users and dragging the process out. It’ll be interesting to see if conversions actually increase after everything is live.
The admission that you wouldn’t recommend this approach if you had more resources adds credibility. It’s clearly a calculated move rather than a trend-chasing redesign.
Your point about cost and time making incremental updates impractical is something a lot of small business owners overlook. It’s not just a design decision, it’s a resource decision.
Mobile performance being the driver is spot on, especially with how many customers browse on phones now. A desktop-first site just doesn’t cut it anymore.
I appreciated the transparency about potentially hurting conversions during the transition. A lot of people pretend redesigns are all upside, but there’s always that short-term risk.
Starting with the blog and then moving to forums and tutorials feels like a thoughtful rollout. It gives regular users time to adjust before the high-stakes areas like product pages change.
I’ve seen sites lose customers after big redesigns, so the concern about alienating your base is valid. Hopefully the improved mobile experience offsets any initial confusion.
That bit about incremental updates being ideal but unrealistic for a small business really resonates. Sometimes theory just doesn’t match budget or time constraints, and you have to take the bigger risk.