E-commerce redesign : How not to lose your SEO along the way.

The intention to “redo your website” is often legitimate. An outdated design, a confusing site structure, pages that no longer convert, a mobile experience that is not or no longer optimal… there are plenty of reasons to rethink your website. But between the decision to redesign and its execution, there is a gap into which hundreds of companies fall every year: the loss of organic traffic.
What happens is almost always the same scenario. The new site goes live. It is more beautiful, more modern, faster. And then, two weeks later, traffic drops. Sometimes by 20%, sometimes by 60%, and leads dry up.
The problem is never the design. The problem is that no one treated the redesign for what it truly is: a strategic migration of a visibility asset. Your website is not a storefront you repaint. It is an infrastructure that captures demand, filters prospects, generates leads, and converts visitors into customers. When you change it without method, you are not just altering the facade, you are moving the foundations. Here is how to limit these mistakes.
Why Redesigns Cause SEO Drops (And What Google Actually Sees)
The first thing to understand is that Google does not perceive your website like a human does. A human sees a new design, clearer pages, smoother navigation. Google sees URLs, link structures, authority signals, relationships between pages, and redirects. When a redesign modifies several of these elements simultaneously (which is almost always the case), the search engine finds itself facing a website it no longer recognizes. And a website Google no longer recognizes is one it must reassess from scratch.
Post-redesign traffic drops rarely come from a single mistake. They come from an accumulation. URLs changed without a complete redirection plan. Pages deleted because they “seemed old” even though they generated dozens of leads per month. Internal linking broken because old texts were copy-pasted without adapting links. Content shortened because the goal was to “lighten” the pages, removing exactly what made them relevant in Google’s eyes. Technical parameters forgotten: a noindex tag left active from preproduction, an outdated sitemap, broken canonicals.
What makes the situation particularly dangerous is the illusion of progress created by the redesign. Everything looks better. The new site is objectively more beautiful. The team is proud of the result. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, SEO signals accumulated over years are silently disintegrating. The drop in traffic curves does not happen on launch day, it happens two, three, four weeks later, when Google has finished recrawling and reindexing. And then everyone panics, but the damage is already done.
Before Touching Anything, Audit the Existing Site
The absolute rule before any redesign is simple: never decide what to keep or remove without looking at the data. Not intuition, not aesthetics, not “this page is old so let’s delete it,” but the data.
Google Search Console is your starting point, and it is a free tool. In just a few minutes, you can identify the pages that truly generate clicks and impressions, the queries that bring qualified traffic, the pages ranking between positions 4 and 12 that are close to breaking through and that you can turn into real lead machines after the redesign, provided you do not delete them. This audit also reveals technical anomalies already present on your current site: indexing errors, excluded pages, outdated sitemaps. These are issues to fix in the new version rather than reproduce or worsen.
For e-commerce sites, the stakes are even higher. Category pages and product pages are often the first victims of redesigns, precisely because teams want to reorganize everything. Changing category structures, restructuring product ranges, modifying URL slugs to make them “cleaner.” All of this is legitimate in itself. But done without a solid redirection plan, it is a disaster. Google encounters 404 errors, backlinks point to nothing, and pages that were converting lose in days the authority accumulated over years.
Additional tools allow you to go further by analyzing internal linking in depth, identifying important backlinks pointing to your pages, mapping metadata, and detecting duplicate content. The goal of this audit is not to slow down the redesign but to make it intelligent. You no longer make aesthetic decisions. You make decisions based on what generates revenue and what does not yet.
Architecture, URLs and Redirects: The Core of the Migration
Once the audit is completed, you have a clear view of what must be protected. Then comes the most technical and decisive stage of the redesign: managing architecture and redirects.
Your new site architecture must serve two masters simultaneously: the user and the search engine. These objectives are not contradictory; they usually converge. An important page should be accessible within a maximum of three clicks from the homepage. Pages within the same theme should be grouped into coherent silos that send Google a clear signal about your authority in a field. Pillar pages (your main categories, main service pages) should sit at the top of the hierarchy, supported by more specific content pages that pass link equity through internal links.
Regarding 301 redirects, there is no middle ground. A 301 redirect is the permanent instruction you give Google to indicate that a page has moved. It transfers SEO history, backlinks, and authority from the old URL to the new one. Without it, the new page starts from zero. The redirection plan must be exhaustive: each old URL mapped to the most relevant destination. Not “everything to the homepage,” because that practice is an SEO disaster. No redirect chains (A redirects to B which redirects to C) that dilute authority and slow crawling. One old URL, one new URL, directly.
For e-commerce sites, the redirection plan should be treated as a project in itself. Category URLs, subcategories, product pages, but also old campaign URLs, seasonal landing pages, promotional pages with backlinks — everything must be inventoried and redirected. It is tedious work, but it is also what makes the difference between a redesign that performs from the first month and one that takes six months to recover previous traffic levels.
What Is Almost Always Forgotten
A redesign is also an editorial and technical opportunity that most companies waste by simply copy-pasting old content into the new structure. This is a double mistake. First, because old texts contain internal links pointing to old URLs, and importing them without adaptation breaks your internal linking. Second, because a redesign is precisely the right time to improve the quality and semantic density of your content, not just dress it in a new design.
Every important page deserves revision. Strengthen heading structures (H1, H2, H3) so they are clear and logical. Enrich texts with the expressions and semantic fields your prospects actually use. Optimize metadata, titles, and descriptions that appear in Google results so they are precise, engaging, and differentiated. On e-commerce category pages, invest in real introductory and concluding texts that provide semantic context, rather than leaving pages composed only of product grids.
From a technical perspective, a redesign is the time to improve Core Web Vitals: loading speed, visual stability, responsiveness. That is why we always work alongside Hyvä on our redesign projects. These indicators, measured by Google, directly influence your rankings. Images should be converted to WebP format and compressed. CSS and JavaScript should be minimized. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) should be under 2.5 seconds. Before going live, a complete preproduction testing phase is essential: test every redirect, verify that the noindex tag has not remained active from the test environment, validate the sitemap, check canonicals, test mobile speed. These checks take a few hours. Not doing them can cost several months of visibility.
And After Going Live?
Going live is not the end of the project. It is the beginning of a critical observation phase lasting between 4 and 8 weeks. During this period, your site goes through what could be called an SEO quarantine: Google recrawls, reindexes, reassesses. Rankings fluctuate. Some pages may temporarily drop before rising again. Others may remain stable. Others may fall alarmingly, and this is where responsiveness makes all the difference.
Google Search Console must be checked daily during the first two weeks. Monitor coverage errors: new 404s indicate missing or misconfigured redirects. Track ranking evolution on key pages. Verify that your most important pages are indexed. Google Analytics or your analytics tool provides behavioral insights: bounce rates, exit pages, user journeys. If a strategic page suddenly shows an abnormal bounce rate, it is often a sign of a content, loading, or user experience issue specific to that page.
In the long term, a successful redesign is not one that simply preserves the existing situation but one that creates the conditions for sustainable growth. Implement a post-redesign editorial calendar to regularly publish new content that expands your semantic coverage. Organize quarterly performance reviews to identify pages to strengthen and opportunities to seize. Inform your partners and referrers of URL changes so they can update their links. Above all, adopt the right mindset: a redesign is not a one-time event followed by a long rest period. It is the starting point of a continuous visibility strategy. A website does not perform because it is beautiful; it performs because it is alive, maintained, and managed methodically.
Find out what’s new at the company.
Because mixing fun and work is at the heart of our philosophy, we always try to make a special place for it in our business life.
Which processes should you automate with AI in your company? 10 concrete use cases for e-commerce and B2B, plus the method for a measurable ROI.
AI-augmented Magento development: what AI genuinely speeds up (code, tests, docs) and what it must never decide alone (architecture, business logic, security).
ACP, AP2, UCP, MCP: what agentic payment protocols actually do, in plain words and the three things a merchant should do right now.
When AI places the order for you, is your catalog even visible? 6 questions to get your product data ready for agentic commerce in 2026.
PIM or no PIM? Learn the catalog complexity threshold that makes a PIM necessary in 2026, the warning signs to watch, and when it becomes worth it.
Adobe Commerce PaaS or SaaS? An honest decision grid based on your size, your integration complexity and how custom your catalog really is.
Sales time, errors, missed orders: how much is not having a B2B online store really costing you? Make the cost of inaction visible and plug the leak.
Follow one order from product page to ERP to spot where an ERP–e-commerce integration breaks: source of truth, data mapping, idempotency, monitoring.
A new market opens up, a new marketplace is added, and suddenly you have three more languages to manage. Then one day you realize you’re spending more time searching for the right version of a file than actually working on it. What happens when you don’t have a PIM? And why, beyond a certain point, can improvisation cost you far more than structuring things properly?
After a historic first edition that proved the French community had plenty to say, the question was simple: could we do even better? The answer is yes!
A few years ago, having a company page on LinkedIn was considered a bonus, a good practice for the most digitally advanced companies. Today, it has become as essential as a website or a professional email address.
We structure all of our projects around agile methods, and more specifically around the SCRUM framework. A choice that is reflected in our internal organization, in the way we build our teams, and in how we support our clients in their e-commerce projects.
Conversational Advertising : Are these ad formats just a short-term monetization lever, or do they signal the birth of a lasting new advertising paradigm?
From instant cloning to staging/prod synchronisation and infrastructure as code — here’s what Upsun concretely changes in the day-to-day life of development teams.
When you invest in the creation or redesign of your e-commerce site, most of your attention naturally focuses on the product catalog, the checkout funnel, the overall ergonomics and the sales features. The blog, meanwhile, is often relegated to the background, perceived as an optional addition or a simple stylistic exercise. Yet this vision is deeply reductive.
Adobe has today released a series of important updates for Adobe Commerce: a new minor version as well as security patches for all currently supported versions. Here’s what you need to know.
A new category of readers has joined your audience: AI assistants. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity. Indeed, these tools consult content to formulate their answers, and if yours is well structured, it can appear there as well.
Discover ATI4’s Magento Academy: a Qualiopi-certified training program designed to train Adobe Commerce developers and address the Magento talent shortage.
LLMs are not designed to replace Google as a source of clicks. Their role lies elsewhere. They intervene much earlier in the user journey, at a stage that has historically been barely visible to measurement tools: the phase of reflection, framing, and understanding a topic.
Are you looking to optimize consent management on your Magento and Adobe Commerce platform without sacrificing the performance of your marketing campaigns? Axeptio might well be the solution you’ve been waiting for.
In B2B e-commerce, the blog section of your website is still too often considered an accessory, a box to tick on a marketing checklist. Yet, for companies selling on Magento Adobe Commerce, the blog is more than just a communication channel: it is a strategic tool capable of radically transforming your lead generation and expert positioning.
Hyvä Checkout boosts Magento conversions with a checkout up to 13x faster, improved UX, flexible customization, and seamless payment integrations.
Many of our clients tell us the same thing: “Our funnels don’t work like they used to.” It’s not that the sales funnel concept has become obsolete. It’s rather that the way customers move through this funnel has fundamentally changed.
Discover how Hyvä Commerce improves Magento with a visual CMS, faster checkout, better performance, and easier content management for e-commerce teams.
The current economic context reminds us of a simple truth that is sometimes forgotten in the excitement of digital: every euro spent must have a measurable impact. Should you continue investing to avoid falling behind, or slow down to preserve cash flow? The right answer is probably somewhere in between.
AI is reshaping e-commerce. Threat or opportunity? Learn how to leverage artificial intelligence to strengthen your brand, customer relationships, and long-term performance.
For years, Magento has been built through successive additions. And today, the platform is fragmented, the frontend remains heavy, content management is complex, and the admin is aging. Hyvä Commerce changes this equation. This is not a passing trend; it is a reinvention of what a modern e-commerce store should be.
Discover why organic search requires several months before delivering results. Understand how SEO works and the realistic timelines you should anticipate for your e-commerce business.
The modern consumer is becoming more demanding and brands must rethink product information, customer experience, and personalization to succeed in 2026.
Discover why podcasts are the most underrated tool in digital marketing: authentic connections, content leverage, partnerships, and internal culture building.
Discover why the data-strategy-AI triangle is now the engine of B2B e-commerce performance, and how to apply it concretely to build sustainable competitive advantage.
At the end of January 2025, we officially earned our Gold badge as an Upsun partner! A great recognition of our technical expertise and our commitment to supporting you in transforming your hosting infrastructures. Let us explain what this means concretely for your projects.
Discover how a PIM (Product Information Management) can boost your SEO by centralizing product information, automating multi-channel distribution, and enhancing organic visibility.
Why a high-performance CMP is a strategic investment for Magento B2B e-commerce, ensuring GDPR compliance, data quality, and marketing performance.
Learn how the CURL framework strengthens the credibility, utility, reputation, and loyalty of your B2B brand in the age of artificial intelligence. A strategic roadmap to becoming the trusted reference AI systems naturally recommend.
Discover how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing e-commerce, from hyper-personalized shopping experiences and 24/7 virtual assistants to predictive inventory management and fraud detection. Learn how AI reshapes customer interactions and optimizes operations for a tailored, efficient, and engaging shopping journey.
Optimize your checkout funnel with better delivery and payment experiences. Learn how to reduce cart abandonment, increase conversions, and create a seamless and efficient customer journey.
E-commerce accessibility isn’t optional—it’s the law. Avoid €20K fines and tap into a $13T market by fixing these 5 critical issues (hint: your carrousel is likely one).
In 2026, e-commerce is entering a phase of profound transformation. After two decades of almost uninterrupted growth, the European market—especially in France—has reached a stage of maturity where performance is no longer driven solely by traffic acquisition or conversion rate optimization.
Learn how to combine growth hacking and SEO to boost visibility, increase qualified traffic, and turn your website into a true growth engine.
Websites have a limited lifespan (often 3 to 5 years) before they require a refresh. Technology evolves, user behavior changes, and expectations regarding design and digital experience continue to grow. However, “redesign” does not always mean the same thing.
During Meet Magento, held in the Netherlands in early November 2025, Willem Wigman, the founder of Hyvä, made official a decision that is shaking up the Magento ecosystem: the transition of the theme to an open source license. This announcement marks a decisive turning point in the company’s strategy and redefines the platform’s accessibility for the entire e-commerce community.
In today’s context, every millisecond gained on your site matters. Optimizing your web performance is a real advantage for customer experience.
Matomo 5.5.0 marks a turning point for web analytics. This version introduces features that allow you to better understand traffic from emerging digital sources, particularly AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or Claude.
Web writing increasingly borrows techniques from journalism, and one of the most effective for capturing attention is the inverted pyramid.
How to Celebrate Our 5th Anniversary? Here’s a recap of our trip to Spain, in Palma de Mallorca.
Personal branding has become a key lever in building your marketing strategy. Indeed, it’s no longer just about selling your product or service — it’s about selling a story, a vision, and a personality around your brand.
In B2B and B2C e-commerce, the effectiveness of product pages relies on the notion of copywriting, which is the art of writing texts that inform, engage, and drive action.
For four years, the Shopper Trends barometer has reflected the evolution of purchasing behaviors and consumer expectations. And in 2025, the French are reinventing their shopping journeys.
In the B2B context, new skills are essential. And at the heart of this strategy, one element plays a key role: the product sheet.
In the current economic context, it’s difficult to convince that brand awareness deserves its place among marketing priorities. And yet, SEO remains a major lever for B2B companies.
We operate in a fragmented ecosystem, where consumers can juggle an infinite number of information sources, different platforms, and touchpoints before making a decision. It is a disordered, unpredictable cycle, yet one that is decisive in the final purchase decision: the Messy Middle.
For decades, the famous conversion funnel was enough to understand and interpret consumer behavior. But in 2025, consumer habits have radically changed, in line with new consumption trends.
Today, it’s impossible to ignore the power of video content in a marketing strategy. We break it all down in our article.
With new buyer expectations and the transformation of usage patterns, B2B e-commerce has become a growth driver.
The B2B journey is more thoughtful, longer, often interrupted, but rarely insignificant. When a user adds a product to their cart, they demonstrate genuine interest in the brand and/or its product. An abandoned cart is therefore not necessarily an end in itself, but can be the beginning of a purchase intention.
Product information is vast, so how to manage, structure, and distribute it without friction ?
When we think of e-commerce, we often picture a consumer comfortably seated on their couch, placing an order from a computer or smartphone. Yet, another reality of e-commerce deserves our full attention: B2B.
Today’s professional buyers, well-informed and accustomed to seamless B2C interfaces, now expect customized purchasing journeys that are relevant, efficient, and tailored to their business needs.
The Google Core Update of June 2025, officially launched on June 30, marks a new milestone in the evolution of the search engine and organic search.
If aiming for the moon seems unrealistic, there is a strategic, more precise, and above all, much more profitable long-term approach: that of long-tail keywords.
According to the latest industry data, more than 66% of businesses say they plan to expand internationally in the coming years.
Behind the smooth interface lies a system based on machine learning, which uses entered queries to refine its responses.
Far from being just communication showcases, these social platforms are now real sales channels.
Starting June 28, 2025, new digital accessibility standards will come into effect, directly impacting e-commerce websites in France. This legal obligation no longer applies only to public platforms—private companies are now included.
In France, the RGAA consists of 106 compliance criteria grouped into 13 fundamental themes that guide the audit of your platform.
Over the past several months, Hyvä has been revealing a series of technical and strategic innovations that are set to transform the entire Adobe Commerce ecosystem.
TikTok, originally known for short, entertaining videos, has recently launched TikTok Shop, a feature that could very well redefine the rules of the e-commerce game.
Agencies, software publishers, digital experts and all players in the digital space—you’ve likely heard the news. Starting June 28, 2025, all e-commerce services will be required to comply with new digital accessibility regulations.
The Speculation Rules API allows browsers to pre-render pages that a user is likely to visit, providing a smoother and faster browsing experience.
Through the AI Tour of France, organized by Medef and Numeum, French companies shared their experiences with AI and the concrete benefits they have gained, as part of the “AI Action Summit.”
In a world where e-commerce has become a cornerstone of the global economy, B2B and B2C sales models represent two essential facets of the system.
The PIM, or Product Information Management solution, is a tool that collects your product data and integrates it directly into the most suitable format for your team, all within a single digital platform.
Design thinking is a methodology that emerged in the 1970s and gained momentum in the 1980s with applications across various sectors, including e-commerce.
The Gen-Z consists of individuals born between 1997 and 2012 and now represents a significant sector of the digital market.
Millions of internet users conduct searches every day via various search engines, whether to find answers to their questions, a restaurant, a specific item, or a schedule.
The Gorilla Club, part of ASPTT Strasbourg, is a sports section dedicated to promoting and teaching American football in Alsace.
These marketing techniques encourage buyers to complete their carts with complementary products to their initial items. Although often confused, these two sales techniques have distinct objectives and can be very effective when implemented correctly.
C2C sales, or “customer to customer,” represent a major evolution in the e-commerce landscape. In this model, individuals are the main players, using specialized sites or applications to sell and buy goods or services among themselves.
Sales funnels, known as “sales funnels” in English, refer to a technique aimed at maximizing conversion rates to sell more effectively online.
In today’s digital landscape, customer reviews—whether positive or negative—inform consumers about the quality of the products or services they are considering purchasing. Positive reviews can significantly boost sales by influencing the purchasing decisions of other consumers.
The new generation spends a lot of time on social media, which has led to the emergence of new professions, notably that of influencer or content creator.
Cross-border e-commerce has transformed the global commercial landscape. This ability to sell anywhere and anytime has significantly boosted companies’ revenues.
Nowadays, social media play a prominent role in our lives. Some use them to share their daily lives, others to spread messages, and some simply to stay in touch with their loved ones or to stay informed about the news.
ChatGPT, this new artificial intelligence tool, allows for the rapid creation of content. Launched by OpenAI in 2022, its goal is to “help by answering your questions and providing information.” Impressive, right?
Soft skills play an equally important role in the success and sustainability of your digital platform. They can transform the way you interact with your customers, your team, and your market.
Over the years, the focus on user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) has been constant, but today, we are increasingly moving towards another equally crucial concept: customer experience (CX).
Virtual Reality (VR) is a rapidly growing technology that is disrupting many sectors, including e-commerce.
Product listings are the cornerstone of the commercial strategy. They play a crucial role in converting visitors into customers as they provide detailed information about the products offered by a company. What are the key points to watch out for and the best practices to optimize them and maximize sales?
The functionalities, costs, and levels of complexity can vary from one CMS to another.
When it comes to optimizing your website’s performance, paying attention to images is a crucial yet often overlooked step.
The dynamics of e-commerce are evolving rapidly, with the primary goal of businesses being to provide an optimal customer experience to maximize conversion rates and, most importantly, sales. For the past two years, a new solution has been making waves: it’s the Hyvä solution and its Hyvä Reset theme.
In the dynamic universe of online marketing and sales, the conversion rate emerges as a key indicator, reflecting the performance and success of a strategy.
In the world of marketing, efficiency reigns supreme.
The e-commerce industry continues to grow at a rapid pace, driven by technological innovation, changes in consumer behavior, and evolving market expectations.
In a constantly evolving digital landscape, it is crucial to ensure that your website is performing well, secure, and meeting the needs of your users.
The realm of web marketing plays a central role, where the scope of digital strategy may vary, but merely existing on the web is equivalent to an active approach to online promotion.
In today’s digital era, Web Marketing has become an indispensable element for businesses aiming to expand their online product and service offerings.
In the current context of e-commerce and marketing communication, the engagement rate has become a crucial indicator for measuring user interaction and involvement with content or a brand.
The sales, that long-awaited event for consumers in search of good deals and discounts. But this event is also a major date in the calendars of e-commerce websites.
Branding and e-commerce have been continuously evolving, particularly since the expansion of the internet.
In a digital world where competition is fierce, the technical optimization of a website is a crucial element to ensure a smooth user experience, enhance performance, and strengthen its search engine ranking.
Online commerce is in constant evolution, and the security of your website, whether you are a small business or a major brand, must be a top priority. E-commerce websites handle vast amounts of data to personalize their product and service offerings, tailoring them to the needs of their target audiences.
We celebrated our third birthday last June 1st…. Yep, so soon! 🥳
With Magento 2, enhancements and new features have been introduced, thus providing businesses with optimized site management.
We recently conducted an internal study to assess our ATI4 employer brand and highlight areas for improvement.
A year ago, we hired 4 developers to join our Magento Academy. We aimed to train them to use this new technology.
Last November, ATI4 joined forces with Numéric Emploi Grand-Est to host its first Apéro Dev event.