Redesign, or a new e-shop?
With a company website, a redesign is mostly about looks. With an e-shop, it's different — every screen decides whether an order goes through. The product page, the cart, shipping, and payment. One extra field in the checkout and some of your customers drop off. So the question isn't "does it look dated?" but "where are we actually losing orders?".
A redesign of an existing e-shop makes sense when the platform fits your needs functionally but conversion is lagging. A new e-shop makes sense when the platform can no longer do what you need, or when you have technical debt that a redesign would only paper over with cosmetics.
4 places where e-shops most often lose orders
When I audit an e-shop, the overwhelming majority of losses hide in four zones:
1. Checkout flow
The most expensive screen in the e-shop. Pointless "register before you can buy" requirements, too many fields, missing express payments (Apple Pay, Google Pay). This is where tens of percent of completed orders are decided.
2. Product page
Poor or small photos, confusing variants, unclear availability, missing reviews. A customer who doesn't have enough information or trust will leave rather than buy.
3. Speed
For an e-shop, speed is measured directly in money. Slow loading of product pages and the cart increases the bounce rate — especially on mobile, where most people shop today.
4. Search and categories
If a customer can't find a product within a few seconds, they're gone. A logical category structure, working filters, and full-text search are often underestimated.
How a data-driven redesign works
A good redesign doesn't start with a designer — it starts with data. First we find out where you're actually losing money:
- Heatmaps and session recordings — we see where customers click and where they leave.
- Cart drop-off analysis — which checkout step they abandon.
- Speed audit — Core Web Vitals on product and category pages.
- Proposed changes with hypotheses — we change only what measurably lifts conversion.
- A/B test — for e-shops with enough traffic, we verify the impact before rolling it out site-wide.
What an e-shop redesign costs
An e-shop redesign costs more than a company website redesign — it has four times as many critical screens, plus integrations with payment gateways, carriers, and feeds (Heureka, Zboží.cz). Our real-world prices:
| Package | What's included | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Fix | Checkout and product card refresh, speed quick wins | from 25,000 CZK |
| Standard | Full redesign of 15+ pages, A/B tests, payment gateway integration, feeds | from 60,000 CZK |
| Premium | Custom features, ERP integration, multilingual, Black Friday ready | from 120,000 CZK |
For comparison: a new Shoptet e-shop with a custom design starts from 80,000 CZK and takes 6–10 weeks. A redesign is often 60–80% cheaper and faster — provided the platform fits your needs functionally.
When a new e-shop is the better choice
A redesign doesn't always make sense. I recommend a new build when:
- You have an old platform that can't handle a modern checkout or express payments.
- You want to move to headless (Shoptet/Shopify backend + custom frontend).
- The technical debt is so large that a redesign would be mere cosmetics.
If you're not sure which category you're in, this comparison of e-commerce platforms or the article on when you need a custom e-shop will help.
A redesign keeps your SEO
The biggest worry with a redesign tends to be losing your Google rankings. That's why every redesign includes an SEO migration with 301 redirects — product URLs are redirected, the structure is preserved, and rankings don't drop. A new e-shop, on the other hand, does carry that risk: Google often "tests" a new domain or structure for 3–6 months.
Conclusion
If your e-shop works but doesn't convert, a redesign is almost always cheaper and faster than a new build. The key is to start with the data, not the look. Write to us and tell us where your biggest pain is — checkout, products, speed — and we'll propose a package that fits your scope. But first, take a look at e-shop conversion optimisation so you know what to expect.