10 Tips for Your Successful Shop Relaunch

Whether it's a rebranding, technical optimizations like mobile first, or simply because it's time: Sooner or later, every e-commerce company faces a shop relaunch. The team at dc has already planned and implemented many different relaunches. We've compiled the 10 most helpful tips from our experience in this article. You'll also learn why the best shop relaunch is no relaunch at all.

1. Buffer Instead of Deadline

Set an approximate internal timeline, but do not communicate a fixed date externally. If you decide on a major shop relaunch, plan generous buffers for delays and never communicate a fixed date or even a countdown externally—nothing would be more annoying than presenting your customers with an unfinished online shop. If your shop relaunch is actually imminent, you can of course inform your website visitors about why and for how long your online shop will likely be unavailable. A professional offline page is suitable for this. However, you should inform your employees, involved agencies, and marketing partners about the shop relaunch and your rough schedule in good time so they can align their activities accordingly.

2. Carry Over Favorites

Carry over the most popular elements from your old shop to the new one. Of course, you want to offer your customers a new and improved shop after the relaunch. It's especially important not to forget your customers' favorite features and other well-performing elements from the old shop. Before the shop relaunch, make a list of all important features and check beforehand whether they have been carried over. These could be, for example, blog posts that rank well on Google, but also popular payment methods or custom features.
 

3. Test, Test, Test

Plan enough test cycles, analyze user behavior, and adjust your shop accordingly. Your new online shop should be thoroughly tested before going live: Does it display correctly on different devices and browsers? Does it withstand performance tests during simulated peak times? We also recommend UX tests. Let some existing customers test the shop in a beta version and use the results for your shop relaunch. Thank them with a voucher or discounts for their support.

4. Make Your New Shop Legally Compliant

Have the legal compliance of your new shop checked by a specialist lawyer. It's not uncommon for a shop relaunch to also involve some legal changes—especially if you use new external tools. It's best to outsource the review of terms and conditions, privacy policies, customer information, imprint, cookie banners, etc. to an expert. Don't neglect this topic, otherwise you risk warnings, fines, and loss of customer trust.

5. Prepare External Tools

Check the behavior of your external tools and inform the providers about the shop relaunch in good time. Make an overview of which interfaces and external tools are connected to your old shop and test whether they also work in the new online shop. Most such tools require minor adjustments and must also be prepared for the shop relaunch. Payment service providers like credit card companies and quality seal providers like Trusted Shops often want to review the new shop before the relaunch to maintain their certification. Interfaces to other systems such as your ERP software or your newsletter may need to be adjusted and implemented again. To ensure you and the providers have enough time for possible corrections, plan enough time for this before the relaunch and inform your partners in good time.

6. Set Up Redirect Management

Prevent your shop from losing SEO rankings and backlinks by using 301 redirects. To ensure your shop remains easy to find on Google & Co. after the relaunch and all links continue to work, set up a well-thought-out redirect management for your listed pages. Make sure that all pages indexed by search engines and URLs linked on blogs and other websites are redirected to the correct pages of your online shop via 301 redirects.

7. Adjust Marketing for Go Live

Adjust your marketing campaigns and deactivate your ads during the relaunch. You don't want to see your valuable advertising budget wasted. Therefore, turn off your ads on the day of the shop relaunch and up to two days after. It usually doesn't make sense to drive a lot of traffic to the new shop on the day of go live, as it first needs to prove itself under real conditions. But remember to reactivate your actions and campaigns after the relaunch. Adjustments to your campaigns may also be necessary if conditions such as category structures or URLs have changed due to the shop relaunch.

8. Transfer Data

Transfer all data from the old shop so your customers can continue shopping seamlessly in the new shop. Test in advance whether all master data, items, and customer data have been transferred. Especially with customer data, it's important to transfer them again shortly before the relaunch so that new customers and login data are up to date in the new shop. Check whether more unusual data, such as partially used vouchers, have been correctly migrated. Still, free up additional support capacity for the days and weeks after the relaunch so you can quickly respond to any difficulties your customers may have.
 

9. Have an Emergency Plan

Do not shut down the server of your current system and have a plan B to revert to it if necessary. Despite good planning, extensive testing, and following our tips, something unforeseen can always happen. Prepare for this with a precisely defined plan that allows you to revert to the old shop in an emergency. Reverting is especially advisable if your customers have difficulties with the new shop. With this plan B, you'll have enough time to calmly solve the problems and can try again afterwards.
 

10. The Best Relaunch Is No Relaunch

Avoid a major relaunch and implement changes in small steps instead. Consider your webshop as a 24/7 project that you continuously improve and expand. In most cases, we even advise against relaunching shops in one big bang. A gradual transition is easier to plan for everyone involved and doesn't overwhelm your existing customers. Therefore, ideally implement your shop relaunch in small, regular updates.

Our Conclusion for You

We are convinced that online shops should be thought of sustainably. Ideally, invest in your shop not just every few years, but continuously. We recommend that you avoid a major relaunch and instead optimize your online shop in small steps. Such a mindset is sustainable and will also make you digitally successful in the long term. At dc, we are already working to ensure that our software enables even complex e-commerce projects to update the online shop in small monthly updates.

With realistic planning and enough testing, even a major shop relaunch is possible without stress or problems.