On the Web: The 4 Catastrophic Mistakes of Any 
E-Commerce Website Upgrade

Along with big rewards, e-commerce website redesigns and major upgrades carry big risks. They require a high capital expenditure, lots of resources, and divert attention from the day-to-day business. Get it wrong and the ramifications can be huge. You've heard the horror stories of redesigns that lead to less traffic, reduced conversion and depressed sales.

Yet, you have to keep your site fresh and current or your sales growth will slow and the competition will zip by.

So, how do you get the result you want out of your redesign or upgrade project? Start by avoiding the common mistakes that lead to costly project overruns, long delays and plenty of second-guessing.

Mistake 1: 
Doing What's Better for Tomorrow, Not What's Best for Today
You know going in that a redesign takes time and it's important to be patient. You definitely want to get it right the first time. But you can actually have too much patience and cost yourself serious revenue.

We see it often: An organization is nearing completion on a major redesign. Sales-increasing enhancements are included in the new site, testing has been completed and the rollout could occur at any time. But rather than launch the new site and start increasing sales today, they keep postponing the rollout to add more bells and whistles, hoping to increase sales tomorrow.

Don't fall into this trap. Patience is a virtue, but not when it's costing you revenue every single day.

Remember, your current site is underperforming. Once the overall architecture is right, launch your redesigned site and take advantage of the low-hanging fruit. Then, in the coming months, you can plan for phase two, three, four, etc. Think of these phases as adding features and functionality, not redesigns.

Mistake 2: 
Getting the Website of Your Dreams ...
 And You Can't Change a Thing
You go through the time and effort of a major redesign. You finally roll out the new site, and you're ecstatic with the increase in sales. Then, after a few weeks, you want to make a change to your homepage content, create some new categories and release a free shipping offer to a special segment of your audience. But you quickly discover that these seemingly simple changes aren't so simple — they might actually cost a lot of money to implement.