Is your user experience slow or clunky?

Do you remember the biblical story of Moses carrying stone tablets up the mountain? It’s a fitting metaphor for how eCommerce merchants often feel about their websites. The struggle is real: slow performance, outdated technology, and a cumbersome user experience. Updating the site feels like trying to carve those tablets by hand while maintaining it is an ongoing burden. Fortunately, there are ways to lighten the load.

You will know if you belong to the 25% of websites that perform according to Google and your customers' expectations. If you do, feel free to skip past this article. Otherwise, we leverage our experience to share the pros and cons of the three approaches at your disposal. A large part of our work is focused on modernization from legacy systems.

In this eleventh edition of the eCom Buzz, we dive into three powerful options to bring your website into the modern era. But first, let's check out some of the latest industry news.

Visitors and search engines say my website sucks.

There’s a 25% chance that your website has a passable Google Page Speed score (above 40 for Mobile). Google uses the Mobile score for its ranking analysis. Your visitors may feel like they are climbing a mountain bearing Moses' tables of stone. You may feel like adding content is akin to finding and inking up, and utilizing a quill pen. Thanks to these historical inefficiencies, you may be spending more money than necessary on front-end improvements in the process.

Thus, you may ask: What is the prognosis for bringing your front end into the modern era?

This episode of the eCom Buzz will evaluate the options you have at your disposal.

• Replatform to a faster system.
• Revise to a new frontend system.
• Retheme your current website.

Replatform to a faster system.

If you’re on a legacy system or are tied up with technical debt, a platform may be the most efficient route forward. However, making this work requires a significant amount of effort. By selecting a great partner like SwiftOtter, your effort is massively cut.

This will start with a discovery phase to identify what needs to be moved. This is your chance, in collaboration with our team, to fine-tune these new requirements into a system that serves as a foundation for massive future growth.

We have written several guides on this to help ascertain the value of this move.

Revise to a new frontend system.

Technology is rapidly changing. The tooling to deliver an incredible front-end experience has moved faster than eCommerce platforms offer. By leveraging a composable front-end, your visitors will be blown away by how fast your website is. Search engines will be pleased, too.

This will require less effort from you than a website migration. Your involvement will center around the beginning and end of the project.

We wrote a book on this option.

Retheme your current website.

Budget is an inescapable part of every conversation. If this is the key driver, this option is a solid choice. The original theme (front-end) is often poorly built and inherently slows down the website. You may notice significant gains by simply using a different theme.

Hyvä is our go-to for Adobe Commerce.

Shopify and BigCommerce's default themes are by far the best. We know how to start with these themes and beautifully tailor them to match your brand and customer expectations.

Whether you need to overhaul your website or simply optimize it, these solutions offer a path forward. Start making your eCommerce experience smoother, faster, and more effective today.