5 Common Mistakes to Avoid During a BigCommerce Redesign

A redesign is one of the best ways to breathe new life into your BigCommerce store. Done well, it can make your site faster, more modern, and more effective at turning visitors into customers. Done poorly, it can leave you frustrated — or worse, cost you sales.

The good news? Most BigCommerce redesign pitfalls are easy to avoid if you know what to watch out for. Here are five of the most common mistakes I see merchants make when redesigning their stores.

1. Focusing on Looks Instead of Function

It’s easy to get caught up in the visuals — sleek fonts, bold colors, and flashy banners. But if your redesign only makes the site prettier without improving the shopping experience, you’ve missed the point.

Customers care about finding products quickly, reading clear descriptions, and checking out easily. A modern design is great, but usability should always come first.

2. Forgetting About Mobile Users

Over half of ecommerce traffic now comes from mobile. Yet many redesigns still focus heavily on desktop layouts.

If buttons are too small to tap, menus are hard to navigate, or pages take forever to load on a phone, your conversions will suffer. Make sure your redesign is planned and tested with mobile shoppers as the priority — not an afterthought.

3. Skipping the Performance Check

A gorgeous new design that slows your site to a crawl is worse than what you had before. Oversized images, heavy animations, and bloated themes all drag down performance.

Always test speed during the redesign process. A clean, lightweight custom BigCommerce theme can often load faster than trying to pile more onto an old one.

4. Ignoring SEO Basics

Your redesign should protect — and ideally boost — your search rankings. But too many merchants forget about the SEO side of things when they refresh their site.

Watch out for:

• Missing title tags or meta descriptions.
• Broken redirects if URLs change.
• Dropping important content that was ranking before.

Even small slip-ups can cause a traffic dip after launch. A good BigCommerce partner will include SEO considerations as part of the process.

5. Trying to Do It All Yourself

BigCommerce gives merchants a lot of flexibility, but that doesn’t mean you need to handle a redesign solo. Many DIY attempts end up taking longer, costing more, or creating new problems down the road.

Working with a BigCommerce expert can save you stress and get better results.

Final Thoughts

A redesign is an investment — and like any investment, you want to do it right. Avoiding these five common mistakes will keep your BigCommerce store on track for better conversions, smoother performance, and happier customers.

Don’t just chase a “new look.” Build a site that actually works better for the people who shop there.