Redesigning an E-Commerce Site for Conversion
Lessons from a Major Retailer

Publishers Clearing House runs a large-scale e-commerce operation alongside their sweepstakes business. When they came to us, the shopping experience was built on an aging Shopify implementation that had accumulated years of technical debt. Pages took over 3 seconds to load. The catalog architecture made product discovery difficult. And the checkout flow had friction points that were costing them conversions every day.

The mobile experience was particularly painful. With the majority of their traffic coming from mobile devices, slow load times and a desktop-first layout meant shoppers were abandoning before they ever saw a product page. The brand itself was strong — people knew and trusted PCH — but the site wasn't converting that trust into purchases.

They needed a complete catalog rebuild on Shopify Plus without losing the brand recognition their customers expected. And it had to be done in a way that was measurable — not just “it looks better” but “here's what changed in the numbers.”

Before we touched a single design file, we ran a full diagnostic on the existing store. This is where most redesigns go wrong — teams skip straight to wireframes without understanding the baseline. Here's what the data showed:

Page load times correlated directly with abandonment

Every additional second of load time increased the bounce rate measurably. At 3+ seconds, a significant percentage of visitors were leaving before the page fully rendered. On mobile connections, those numbers were even worse. This wasn't a design problem — it was an infrastructure problem masquerading as a conversion problem.

Navigation and product discovery friction

The catalog structure made it hard for shoppers to find what they were looking for. Categories were deeply nested, search was unreliable, and product filtering was limited. Shoppers who knew what they wanted couldn't get to it quickly, and shoppers who were browsing didn't get helpful recommendations.

Checkout had unnecessary steps

The checkout flow included extra pages and form fields that added friction without adding value. Every additional step in a checkout is a chance for the customer to reconsider. The existing flow had at least two steps that could be eliminated or consolidated.

Mobile was an afterthought

Despite mobile being the dominant traffic source, the store experience was clearly designed desktop-first and scaled down. Touch targets were too small, the cart experience was clunky, and the checkout forms weren't optimized for mobile input.

With a clear diagnosis, we rebuilt the store from the ground up on Shopify Plus — focusing every decision on conversion impact rather than visual novelty.

Performance-first architecture

We rebuilt the entire catalog architecture with performance as the primary constraint. That meant optimized image delivery, minimal JavaScript, efficient API calls, and aggressive caching. The result: page loads went from 3+ seconds to sub-1-second across the site. That single change had the largest impact on every metric we tracked.

Custom bonus threshold bar

We built a custom feature that showed shoppers how close they were to unlocking a bonus reward. This wasn't decoration — it was a conversion lever. When shoppers could see they were $12 away from a bonus, average cart value increased. The feature was designed to feel native to the shopping experience, not like a pop-up or interstitial.

Streamlined checkout

We consolidated the checkout flow, removed unnecessary form fields, and optimized the entire experience for mobile-first interaction. Fewer steps, larger touch targets, autofill-friendly inputs, and clear progress indication. The goal was to make completing a purchase feel effortless.

CleanSweeps API integration

PCH's sweepstakes business is core to their brand. We integrated their CleanSweeps API directly into the shopping experience so customers could see sweepstakes entries tied to their purchases. This connected the two sides of the business in a way that reinforced purchasing behavior without feeling forced.

The numbers told the story. Sub-1-second page loads across the site. Measurable improvements in conversion rate through the cart and checkout funnel. Higher average order values driven by the bonus threshold feature. And a mobile experience that finally matched how customers actually shopped.

Perhaps the most telling result: PCH moved to an ongoing retainer relationship after the initial build. When a client keeps working with you after launch, it means the work delivered measurable value — not just a new coat of paint. We continue to optimize, test, and iterate on the store based on real performance data. You can see the full PCH case study here.

Whether you're on Shopify, WooCommerce, or a custom platform, the principles from this project apply to any e-commerce redesign:

• 1.Measure before you design. Know your current page load times, conversion rates at each funnel step, and where visitors are dropping off. Without a baseline, you can't prove the redesign worked — and you might fix the wrong things.
• 2.Performance IS conversion. Every second of load time costs you revenue. This isn't theoretical — Google's data shows that a 1-second delay in mobile load time can reduce conversions by up to 20%. Invest in speed before you invest in visuals.
• 3.Don't rebuild everything at once. Start with the checkout funnel — it's where the highest-intent visitors are and where friction has the most direct impact on revenue. Fix checkout first, then work backward through the product pages and catalog.
• 4.Custom functionality should serve conversion, not complexity. The bonus threshold bar we built for PCH was simple to understand and directly drove behavior. Compare that to the over-engineered recommendation engines and pop-up sequences that most stores deploy — complex to maintain and easy for shoppers to ignore.

An e-commerce redesign is one of the highest-ROI investments you can make — if it's done with conversion as the primary goal. A faster site, a cleaner checkout, and smart functionality that nudges behavior will outperform a beautiful site that loads slowly every time. If you're weighing the cost of a redesign, we cover the full breakdown in our website redesign cost guide. And if you want to see how we approach e-commerce and web development projects, we're always happy to talk through your situation.