High-Ranking eCommerce Client Needs Responsive Redesign & Possible Domain Name Change

[TheWeeb]

Hey guys.

I've got a client with an e-commerce site that ranks pretty high in the Google search results and they wanted to re-design the site to make it mobile responsive. I am wondering what's the best way to do this?

Will changing the site completely (new backend, frontend) mess up the ranking on SERP?

I am thankful for any suggestions.

Edit: They are willing to host the new site in another domain. But it would be best to have it in the same domain as the old one.

 

[bernard]

I've got a client with an e-commerce site that ranks pretty high in the Google search results and they wanted to re-design the site to make it mobile responsive. I am wondering what's the best way to do this?

That sounds like a huge task, but the first question to ask is why it isn't responsive already?

Most e-commerce systems are responsive, so are they running on some very old legacy software?

Do they just don't know how to update to a newer version?

In any case, unless this is a small scale operation, then this should be done by someone competent on a testing server.

I assume you would want to do an export and import between systems, but I have no idea how it works.

You'll also need a full list of url's so you can redirect each of them to the new webshop. If there are many thousand url's you might need advanced regex.

If its a smaller site, then you simply need to make the correct redirects, carry over the title tags etc.

In any case, it could mess up things big time, so not a job for a noob. Honestly I would find someone specializing in this.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Will changing the site completely (new backend, frontend) mess up the ranking on SERP? [...] Edit: They are willing to host the new site in another domain. But it would be best to have it in the same domain as the old one.

Both of these things have a great potential to disrupt your rankings.

If you simply tweaked the CSS to become responsive that wouldn't cause any issues but would probably cause an immediate lift in rankings (in a mobile-first index). If you're designing a brand new "theme" for them, then yeah, the entire source code is going to change. It could screw things up. I've seen it happen many times where Google needs to "re-calculate" and make sure the main content is the same, then they can trust their previous rankings. I've seen it not cause issues too. It's hard to tell why and when it will or will not happen, but there's no question in what triggers it. A redesign always comes with an SEO risk.

With that said, becoming mobile responsive is an absolute must, so might as well get it behind you.

I wouldn't move it to a new domain. You should avoid 301 redirects as much as possible. Same goes for the inner pages unless the URLs for each page must change due to the change in platform. In which case, gotta bite the bullet here too.

There's two ways to approach this:

1) Do the redesign first, let Google react and settle. And then do the redirects, and let Google react and settle. This minimizes how bad the reaction might be and smears it out over time.

2) Do the redesign and the 301's all at once. Regardless of how bad Google's reaction is, this gets it over faster so you can get back to business as usual.

You'll have to decide which is right based on how ancy you feel your client is. But the redesign isn't negotiable if they want to continue to have a business that doesn't rely only on PPC.

 

[TheWeeb]

That sounds like a huge task, but the first question to ask is why it isn't responsive already?

Most e-commerce systems are responsive, so are they running on some very old legacy software?

Do they just don't know how to update to a newer version?

In any case, unless this is a small scale operation, then this should be done by someone competent on a testing server.

I assume you would want to do an export and import between systems, but I have no idea how it works.

You'll also need a full list of url's so you can redirect each of them to the new webshop. If there are many thousand url's you might need advanced regex.

If its a smaller site, then you simply need to make the correct redirects, carry over the title tags etc.

In any case, it could mess up things big time, so not a job for a noob. Honestly I would find someone specializing in this.

Both of these things have a great potential to disrupt your rankings.

If you simply tweaked the CSS to become responsive that wouldn't cause any issues but would probably cause an immediate lift in rankings (in a mobile-first index). If you're designing a brand new "theme" for them, then yeah, the entire source code is going to change. It could screw things up. I've seen it happen many times where Google needs to "re-calculate" and make sure the main content is the same, then they can trust their previous rankings. I've seen it not cause issues too. It's hard to tell why and when it will or will not happen, but there's no question in what triggers it. A redesign always comes with an SEO risk.

With that said, becoming mobile responsive is an absolute must, so might as well get it behind you.

I wouldn't move it to a new domain. You should avoid 301 redirects as much as possible. Same goes for the inner pages unless the URLs for each page must change due to the change in platform. In which case, gotta bite the bullet here too.

There's two ways to approach this:

1) Do the redesign first, let Google react and settle. And then do the redirects, and let Google react and settle. This minimizes how bad the reaction might be and smears it out over time.

2) Do the redesign and the 301's all at once. Regardless of how bad Google's reaction is, this gets it over faster so you can get back to business as usual.

You'll have to decide which is right based on how ancy you feel your client is. But the redesign isn't negotiable if they want to continue to have a business that doesn't rely only on PPC.

I am very grateful for the detailed answer.

I have decided that I will not take on this client.
1) I don't want to risk it because it's not worth the effort or time. And I think it's better to leave it to someone who knows better.
2) The client is cheap-ish and I have no interest in dealing with someone like this. Not to mention, he just gives off the wrong vibes.

Once again, thank you bernard and Ryuzaki for the answers. Even if I can't apply the knowledge right away, it's gonna be useful in my future projects.