On the Web: The 4 Catastrophic Mistakes of Any 
E-Commerce Website Upgrade

Along with big rewards, e-commerce website redesigns and major upgrades carry big risks. They require a high capital expenditure, lots of resources, and divert attention from the day-to-day business. Get it wrong and the ramifications can be huge. You've heard the horror stories of redesigns that lead to less traffic, reduced conversion and depressed sales.

Yet, you have to keep your site fresh and current or your sales growth will slow and the competition will zip by.

So, how do you get the result you want out of your redesign or upgrade project? Start by avoiding the common mistakes that lead to costly project overruns, long delays and plenty of second-guessing.

Mistake 1: 
Doing What's Better for Tomorrow, Not What's Best for Today
You know going in that a redesign takes time and it's important to be patient. You definitely want to get it right the first time. But you can actually have too much patience and cost yourself serious revenue.

We see it often: An organization is nearing completion on a major redesign. Sales-increasing enhancements are included in the new site, testing has been completed and the rollout could occur at any time. But rather than launch the new site and start increasing sales today, they keep postponing the rollout to add more bells and whistles, hoping to increase sales tomorrow.

Don't fall into this trap. Patience is a virtue, but not when it's costing you revenue every single day.

Remember, your current site is underperforming. Once the overall architecture is right, launch your redesigned site and take advantage of the low-hanging fruit. Then, in the coming months, you can plan for phase two, three, four, etc. Think of these phases as adding features and functionality, not redesigns.

Mistake 2: 
Getting the Website of Your Dreams ...
 And You Can't Change a Thing
You go through the time and effort of a major redesign. You finally roll out the new site, and you're ecstatic with the increase in sales. Then, after a few weeks, you want to make a change to your homepage content, create some new categories and release a free shipping offer to a special segment of your audience. But you quickly discover that these seemingly simple changes aren't so simple — they might actually cost a lot of money to implement.

Over time, you'll want to make changes to your new website. Don't find out after the fact that enhancements aren't easily implemented — or worse, that they'll be costly and time consuming.

Spend time while selecting an e-commerce platform to understand the following:

● Exactly which areas of your new site will be flexible and which will be rigid?

● How easy will it be for users to make changes 
or enhancements?

● Can the site grow over time as new functionality becomes available in the marketplace? How much will that cost?

By answering these questions up front, you can make an informed decision regarding your platform provider and avoid the trap of finding out too late that you can't change your site ... or that it would cost you an arm and a leg to do so.

King Ranch Saddle Shop did its homework and recently unveiled a new e-commerce website that can quickly and easily be changed completely in-house. Assistant Marketing Manager Robin Robertson said, "From a marketing perspective, our new site is wonderful because we can change the whole face of our homepage and category pages with no outside help. That kind of flexibility is priceless!"

Mistake 3: 
Making it Hard for Your Shoppers 
to do Business With You
The ultimate goal of your e-commerce website upgrade is to sell more products. So don't make it hard for shoppers to do business with you. How can you make it hard?

1. Providing limited categorization across the top of your homepage;

2. no calls to action on your homepage;

3. including very few links from your homepage to your product pages;

4. no email sign-up above the fold on your homepage;

5. no search functionality on your homepage;

6. no cross-sell/upsell opportunities on product pages or in the shopping cart; and

7. a lengthy checkout process.

Just to name a few …

In the day-to-day mire of an upgrade, it's easy to lose sight of e-commerce best practices. Stay focused on the buy/flow process and make it easy for your customers to find and purchase the items they're looking for.

Mistake 4: 
Losing Focus on SEO
The last thing you want to do is watch your traffic, search engine rankings and sales take a dive when you relaunch your new site. Yet this happens often when companies spend all their energy on the latest e-commerce bells and whistles and lose focus on the important task of maintaining the traffic needed to grow online sales.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is key to your e-commerce success, and the rules change almost weekly. Keep this top of mind throughout your entire upgrade process.

Follow these steps to avoid an SEO meltdown:

● Search engine spiders can't read Flash or JavaScript very efficiently. You don't have to avoid these altogether — just make sure your homepage includes plenty of navigational links that will take the spiders deeper into the site.

● If you have content that already ranks well, use the same URLs in your new site. If not, it's imperative to use 301 redirects. These are the most efficient and SEO-friendly method for web page redirection.

● Don't lose focus on the things that built your rankings to begin with: keywords, content, title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, URLs, etc.

● Don't forget to map existing traffic to your new site. This can easily get lost in the last-minute shuffle.

Website upgrades are part of selling successfully in the online world. It takes a lot of time and energy, but the rewards can be huge if you avoid these mistakes outlined above.

Larry Kavanagh is founder and CEO of D.M.insite (lkavanagh@dminsite.com).