Episode 4: Online shop relaunch

Your online shop can sell more! Arrange a free strategy appointment with Jörg Dennis Krüger now: https://jdk.de/termin/

Do you really need to relaunch? And if so, what questions should you ask? Conversion hacker Jörg Dennis Krüger asks the right questions, shows when a relaunch is necessary and when it is not - and what advantages and disadvantages relaunch has compared to continuous optimization.

Make your own shop more successful with conversion hacking? Make a free appointment with Jörg Dennis Krüger now: https://jdk.de/termin/

TRANSCRIPTION OF THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST

Welcome to the fourth episode of the Conversion Hacking Podcast. My name is Jörg Dennis Krüger and as my welcoming commando just said, yes, I am the conversion hacker. My topic today is Relanuches. Relanuches, especially in the online shop, and why you should perhaps avoid them. 

First of all, the note again: Think-Conversion is in Berlin on November 5th, 2019. My little event with two seminars on the topic of conversion thinking and conversion hacking. There are still tickets available! More information at Think-Conversion.de. I'm looking forward to seeing many people there in Berlin. 

But now straight into the topic of Relanuches. Because honestly, relanuches are bad relanuches: I don't know why so many companies are always thinking about the next re-launch. Because with a re-launch like this you can do so many things wrong! Such a re-launch is incredibly complicated, incredibly risky and the re-launch insolvency is not a fairy tale, it has happened often enough. And maybe just the risk of bankruptcy.

But you rebuild a lot and think, yes, everything will be better now. But you completely move away from what the users actually want, what the users are used to and so on, and build something where no one feels at home anymore. 

And then you wonder why all these great thoughts you've been thinking don't work. But it should actually be clear that everything we think up, what we design ourselves, what we come up with in endless meetings is mostly just bullshit and we have to think much more from the user perspective. 

Okay, let's get started: Why are you doing a relaunch? What am I hearing? Well, we don't like the shop anymore, it's no longer up to date or, well, we want to reposition ourselves. Somehow it doesn't work like that anymore. So we have to do everything differently somehow or the shop will become technically outdated. Or there is a new version of the shop software. Or maybe yes, we want to modernize our brand and present ourselves differently with the brand.

There are a few arguments that I would accept. So just the repositioning. Well, we strategically decided it would be best based on market research. We have to change a little bit in order to continue to be active in the market, to keep up with our competition or to simply continue to be a leader in our market.

Then of course you have to change something in the shop then you can't stay like that. So repositioning. Of course, this has to be very well planned. But that can really be a good reason for a relaunch. Likewise, if the shop is really technically outdated, then at some point you might have to go and really do it again and then you can't keep anything but have to completely restart and really see a relaunch. But the other points. We don't like that anymore. Oh come on, just because we don't like the shop anymore has nothing to do with it. A hippo problem - often the high-speed poses and pine trees. 

The boss says: “Oh, we have to change again. My wife said the site doesn’t look great, give it a new look and make it hip!” Oh, that's no reason for a re-launch. Or if we say: “Yeah, well, somehow our marketing doesn’t work like that anymore. We have to think of something else.” That's really no reason for a re-launch. And the biggest mistake for a re-launch is just because the shop software comes around the corner and says: “There is a new version now you have to use it and therefore launch it”. That just causes huge problems and isn't worth it. But I also don't understand why people so often think directly: I have to do a re-launch - there is something alternative to the re-launch.

And that is the permanent optimization, i.e. the relaunch. We make everything new, mostly technically and graphically and often the processes and the optimization is, well, we change what already exists. And what is the basis for these two approaches to becoming better and becoming different? Let's start with data. Such a relaunch is usually based on relatively little data but on a lot of discussion. Because I don't know how the individual things I'm coming up with work. That means I can take inventory data and look, yes, the products have sold, there were drops and something like that. If that is taken into account at all and there are not a lot of purely emotional discussions about the re-launch about how we want to present it in a new way and where we can add hope and so on. 

Whereas an optimization that takes place a bit step by step can always work incredibly well with data. I see what the change brings about and then I know okay, we'll continue to use it or we'll just leave it out because it didn't work well. Accordingly, the risk of re-launch and optimization is completely different. The risk of a re-launch is incredibly high. So it doesn't have to work. This is just so common and is simply because it is so completely re-planned. The risk of an optimization not working is quite low. Well, when I see that something isn't working, I go back and continue as before and I can try the next thing.

I never fall into this deep hole like many shops after a re-launch, the chances are of course generally greater with a relaunch because I really have the opportunity to change everything, the chance to really get started here and develop something totally ingenious is of course huge. When it comes to optimization, the chance is a bit smaller, more like medium, because of course you simply move more slowly and somehow work in an existing framework in the existing grid. You can't throw everything away right away. The expectations for a re-launch are therefore incredibly high.

You expect everything to get better after the re-launch and I keep talking to Shop. They say yes, yes, we are already working on the re-launch. In six months it will be ready and will then be completely reorganized. Then everything will be different anyway. We don't need to worry about any issues now. When optimizing this expectation is relatively low, I would often argue too pessimistically. Well, if we just change a few things, change things like that, then we won't achieve much and stuff like that. And then I ask myself why? Because you can achieve an incredible amount in optimization and change things little by little.

And you don't have this high risk, because this high risk combined with the high expectations, because you see these high opportunities, it's basically a plan for disaster because you think we have these opportunities and you put this huge pressure on. We have to achieve a lot and have high expectations and then with this high risk. It's just incredibly likely that I'll go wrong and then not meet these expectations and really fall into a deep hole. When it comes to optimization, if I play well, I can exceed expectations very well and use the low risk to still take advantage of my opportunities and achieve much more, which is why I actually don't see why people relaunch so often.

In addition, there is so much and it usually takes a very long time until I see results, my resources are tied up and so on and the optimization is simply continuous, I always have successes, my convergence increases, my shopping cart value increases, my value increases Customer satisfaction I can address current problems and so on, so that optimization simply has many advantages. That means if I don't have to dig around, then maybe I really shouldn't relaunch because this risk shouldn't be underestimated, even if the opportunities are great and yes, the expectations are usually very high, but you really have to dampen these expectations because of the risk. As I said, very high even if the chances are very high. 

And if I have to relaunch, then I should try to ask the right questions. Because the wrong questions are often asked: what do we have to do differently? or – how do we want to present ourselves in the future? What is our future strategy? How would this work in the future? Which innovations do we want to use in our new Gere-launched shop? Which new image do we want to use? or the worst question here again from the shop software corner. What can the new shop software do? It's quite fiddly oh so many new functions, it's really great.

Now we have to implement them somehow. Oh great, you can do something about it, that's what marketing says. And then people really think about what to do with all the things that are there. But the actual right question is completely forgotten because the really important question is what has worked well so far. Because we absolutely have to maintain what has worked well so far, because that is the reason why our customers are there, why they come back, why we have regular customers, why we are successful and we are not just relaunching a shop because nothing is working at all.

Then I would also optimize to find out why nothing works, but we optimize, we relaunch because we are doing well, because we want to continue to be doing well and very often the child with the beard is really poured out in the classic way by simply doing everything remodels and leaves out what worked well so far because you think it's ugly because you think we've been in the shop for so long. This has to be new and what do I know? But these are often the elements that simply drove conversion in the past, where customers found themselves and why customers made a purchase decision.

Some time ago I received an inquiry from a shop who said: “Oh, we switched to the new Shopware version and have seen business drop by 50 percent since then.”

How can that be? The shop was previously outdated, it wasn't responsive, it was just bad and didn't look good anymore. And now we have a really chic new shop. But we don't sell anymore. Why is that? I thought about it for a moment: where can I see what the shop used to look like? I went to Akajew.org and looked at the old shop design that was so well archived at Agrarforschung and noticed that the shop was really outdated and difficult to use, everything was a bit small, not responsive at all and so on. But there were so many individual arguments, so many individual statements. The shop really had a face of its own. It really was such an individual shop. You immediately felt comfortable and immediately felt a connection with it. There were so many USPs there, so it's somehow a unique selling point. And over time we had optimized this old shop so well that the right things were at the top, they had great filters just right and everything was so great. 

I noticed that it's old and it's simply no longer state of the art - far from it, but it was really thought through! It was really user-focused and had matured properly and sold well. And then you wanted to become current, all this maturation. All of this well thought out stuff was thrown away because they said, you use a Shopware template wonderfully and you use the possibilities of the template and in the end it just looked like a Shopware shop like the run of the mill Shopware shop. And all that maturation was gone and the customers ran away because they said, “Yeah, that's kind of - I don't know anymore. This is something completely different here. This is no longer the shop where I fell in love, where I thought man here because I was really well received.” People had become interchangeable. One was technically great, but the rest was just meh. and now you basically had to optimize back. 

All of these things that had been removed in the re-launch now had to be laboriously reinstalled if you asked this question in advance; What has worked well so far and what we need to maintain has not been provided. So, how do we go about relaunching? We ask ourselves what has worked well so far. We change as little as possible. We create a consistent concept from the outset so that the new shop is just as well thought out and mature as the shop we have so far and we look at the concept of the old shop and then transfer that to the re-launch so that If possible, no one gets lost and everyone says: “Yes, it looks different and is more chic and modern, but I still feel entitled. I still feel good. I'm still finding my way around. Because it's kind of like the old shop. But better.” And we have to achieve that. The best way to do this is to use wireframes. I love wireframes for planning a Veda and the Royer Performing really really great and function follows form. So let's first think about how this stuff is supposed to work. And then we think about what that should look like. And there are not ready-made icons here, there is something ready-made here that we are using now. Or we paint what they think is beautiful and then somehow add the function to Baumwall: No, we first think about how it is supposed to work. And then we think about how we implement it and how it should work. 

For example, it also means that the filters are high up, the right filters are suitable for my products, that I can properly penetrate the product range and so on and fan zone function function is important. Form is really part 2 everyone buys it at Aldi although it looks ugly but the function is there. So plan first, then do it and please don't focus on technology. A relaunch that only takes place for technical reasons and where the design of the shop ultimately depends on the technology is rubbish. Accordingly: no, we really have to plan and develop it from the user perspective.

And please don't fall into a relaunch state six months in advance where everyone says: No, we can't change anything anymore, we're planning a relaunch. Then you essentially optimize yourself to death in two directions. You no longer update the shop, you no longer learn, you are no longer state of the art in meeting customer needs and then at some point the relaunch comes and it is based on old findings and then If it all somehow falls apart, a relaunch like this has to be integrated very smoothly and organically into the entire Schopp marketing strategy and shouldn't be an eternal project where everything else is suddenly postponed for six months until finally the Vina and Loop is there would also be one of the quasi-negative secret recipes for making you worse off after a relaunch. And you can't put so much work into Nylon's project that this idea arises, so now we're done. Because a relaunch like this has to be the start of permanent optimization. 

You don't have to start with a thousand finished things, but rather a relaunch. It just has to fit exactly into this organic that I develop further, sometimes with a few major changes, but then immediately have a plan to further optimize it so that I don't just stand there and say, so that we'll try out the relaunch first and then start straight away with okay. We immediately have 20 ideas that we will further optimize. The relaunch will be further developed here so that it really becomes an overall concept and it is best to never launch again afterwards but to develop further bit by bit. We can think about when the last relaunch of Amazon was. 

Tip There was never a reason why you wanted to do one. But then you realized that wasn't working at all; you had to develop yourself little by little. Amazon has changed extremely in the 20 years it's been around for 15 years, I have no idea, in which Amazon has been around. A lot of testing and so on and that is ultimately a secret from Amazon but actually a secret for every shop. Of course, there were also major changes at Amazon that were almost like a relaunch, but they were always part of the overall strategy and always involved learning and not easy. We want to look different but always linked to a clear goal and then Tia you also generate more convergence because the goal of relaunch has to be to generate more convergence. 

And if we think again from the conversion hacking perspective, we can really use JavaScript with arbed testing in the worst case scenario delivered statically via a Teck Manager. Just try it out first to learn how it works. Our customers understand that because in the end it's really the ones we work for who don't understand this. Then we can leave it alone because it shouldn't be the case that after the relaunch, customers need weeks or months to get used to the new site. Then it is too high and the risk of it backfiring is too huge. But don't misunderstand. Sometimes you have to launch like that. All good but you have to do it right because ultimately we all want to sell more, be more successful online and a relaunch can help with that. But done right.

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