Website redesigns can be hugely impactful for businesses and other organizations. There are cases all over the internet of site redesigns causing massive drop offs in visitors and conversion rates.

For example, the news site Digg lost over a quarter of their regular traffic after an untested redesign. On the other hand, there are also abundant examples of mega boosts in online revenue due to redesigns. E-commerce tshirt design site, Spreadshirt saw a 606% lift in clicks after their redesign. The difference between the two outcomes lies in the use of data to drive decisions.

When the multi-channel sports retailer, soccerloco wanted to redesign their website, they decided to make data a strong factor in their decisions. To do so, the team enlisted the help of the experts at Digital Operative, a digital marketing agency focused on e-commerce. Thanks to a well thought out testing plan, soccerloco completely redesigned their site and increased projected online revenue by 26% in just 90 days.

Starting the Process with Data & Analysis

Soccerloco’s primary goal for the redesign was to improve site usability and ultimately increase conversions. With these goals in mind, Digital Operative started by examining the site analytics to identify areas to focus on in the redesign tests. They generated a detailed, page-by-page analysis of the site and recommendations for areas to optimize.

The homepage and checkout funnel were two areas focus areas. Here’s what they tested.

Homepage

They experimented with simplifying the homepage carousel, using one main promotional image instead of four rotating modules. The winning variation proved that fewer options would ultimately push more visitors down the funnel.

Original:

Winning Variation:

Checkout page

They also tested layout on the first page in the checkout funnel. Instead of radio buttons to select your preferred checkout method, Digital Operative suggested making the options more defined calls to action. Larger call to action buttons increased clicks in this case, making a better user experience for shoppers.

Original:

Winning Variation:

Final Results & ROI

Through this process of discovery and analysis, not only did they increase projected revenue by 26%, all in all, the additional revenue from the Optimizely experiments actually covered the full cost of the redesign process.

The soccerloco redesign is another great example of using data to make informed decision about each element of a redesign. Since realizing the impact that testing instincts and hypotheses about site design can have on revenue, testing and optimization has become a part of how soccerloco frames conversations around design changes and decisions.