How To Update a Website: A Step-by-Step Guide

At some point in your website’s life, you’ll notice it needs an update. Maybe it looks a little dated, some features have stopped working—like broken forms, outdated plug-ins, or an old theme that’s not mobile-friendly—your search engine rankings have slipped, or maybe you’re not seeing enough user engagement, causing visitors to leave without converting.

Whatever the reason, a website upgrade is something any successful business undergoes every so often, whether it’s a quick content refresh, like updating your About page or product descriptions, or a full site overhaul. Here’s how to update a website with expert insights from the ecommerce teams at clothing brand Belstaff and Australian beauty brand Fluff.

How to update your website

1. Review analytics and user data
2. Research competitors
3. Update outdated content
4. Improve SEO
5. Upgrade your design
6. Improve technical performance
7. Create new content
8. Refresh product listings and categories
9. Perform A/B testing

“A website is a continual, growing beast. We’re continually having to feed and evolve and update and tweak,” says Jodie Harrison, Belstaff’s former chief brand officer, in an episode of Shopify Masters. While these frequent iterations are part of the ecommerce process, a major update involves a more comprehensive approach. Some ecommerce experts recommend a redesign every two to three years.

Note that if you’re planning an update that could affect functionality or layout, it’s best practice to build and test your changes in a staging environment first—this way, you catch issues early and protect your live site. Here are the key steps for a comprehensive website update—you can also apply each one individually for smaller improvements:

1. Review analytics and user data

Start with the numbers. Sort your pages by bounce rate and average time on page inside Google Analytics or Shopify’s built-in reports to spot where website visitors drop off early—those URLs are your weakest links and deserve first crack at a fix. (Find these metrics under Reports > Behavior > Landing Pages in Google Analytics or under Analytics > Reports > Sessions by landing page in Shopify.)

Next, add a visual layer. Hotjar heat maps show click, scroll, and movement data on each page, revealing if shoppers hover over non-clickable images, miss a buried call-to-action (CTA) button, or rage-click a broken link—all telling signs of what’s going wrong.

Finally, map the full journey. Lucky Orange’s conversion funnels map every step, from landing page to checkout flow, flagging the exact screens where users drop off and letting you replay sessions for context. Paired with your bounce-rate data, its heat maps and recordings turn raw metrics into clear, behavior-driven priorities.

“IT transformation is really about data centralization—the one-platform view,” says Navid Gilo, Belstaff’s director of technology. “So if you’ve got a customer shopping in the store and the same customer is purchasing something online, we can see the whole journey instead of piecing it together.”

2. Research competitors

Start by sizing up the field. Competitive analysis is market research that evaluates competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, products, pricing, marketing strategies, and customer base to understand your competitive landscape and target audience. Notice how rivals stack their menus, slice up pages, and sprinkle micro-copy. Add these notes to what you already know about their brand angle, and the spots where they outshine you light up fast.

Before Fluff committed to its unconventional drop model, founder Erika Geraerts made sure she wasn’t flying blind. “We did a lot of research into our customer base and into the industry and the market to know what our potential was,” she says on Shopify Masters. That upfront homework helped her spot gaps in the saturated beauty space—and gave her a clearer sense of which strategies would actually stick.

This kind of research doesn’t just confirm your direction—it helps sharpen it. Run side-by-side comparisons of your product pages, headlines, and layouts with the leaders in your niche. If their traffic’s up and yours isn’t, your copy, search engine optimization (SEO), or design may be the missing link.

Next, pull trending tactics into your own roadmap. Compare your layout, copy, and SEO elements—like headlines, CTAs, and keyword use—side by side with top-performing competitor pages to spot design or messaging gaps you might’ve missed. Refresh that snapshot often as the market shifts.

A quick traffic pulse on Similarweb or a keyword dive in Ubersuggest (like checking estimates for monthly visits, top traffic sources, and engagement metrics) can tell you whether a competitor’s flashy new landing page is pulling real numbers or just looks pretty—perfect fuel for deciding which ideas to test first.

When you want examples that translate directly to Shopify, check out high-performing stores featured on Shopify’s curated inspiration list (the spiritual successor to the old Exchange Marketplace). Note how brands weave storytelling into product pages, streamline checkouts, and surface social proof.

Grab clear examples of layouts, wording, and features that suit your niche, then rank them based on how closely they align with the traffic and conversion data you pulled earlier, prioritizing the ones most likely to help you attract and convert more website visitors.

3. Update outdated content

Letting old pages languish costs you twice: Readers bounce and search engines notice the neglect. A quick scan of your site’s older content can reveal outdated blog stats or a leftover discount banner from last year’s holiday rush. Keep everything up to date so visitors never feel like they’re seeing outdated information.

Think of content as a living asset: The moment it stops answering today’s questions, it could start losing organic traffic. Seasonal promos deserve special attention: A “Summer 2024” sale that still ranks in July 2025 sends confusing signals, and broken links (hello, 404s) frustrate shoppers and chip away at domain authority. Dead links drag down both user experience (UX) and rankings, so prune or redirect them during each cleanup pass of your web pages.

Feeling swamped by the cleanup? Buried in edits? Pop open Shopify’s bulk editor; load the product or policy pages on your hit list; update the size charts, shipping rates, or return rules; and publish. Done—no soul-crushing copy-paste grind.

4. Improve SEO

Eyeing better rankings on search engine results pages? Tidy up the on-page pillars first—compelling meta titles and descriptions, clear H1-H3 hierarchy, and alt text that describes your image, not just “IMG_123.” These are “easy wins” for on-page SEO—along with front-loading your primary keyword for ranking higher—so both bots and humans know what your page is about from the jump.

Freshness matters just as much as structure. The top five positions in Google garner 67% of clicks, and they’re usually held by pages that keep facts, links, and language up to date—crucial for SEO. Revise the copy, swap in current stats, and rerun your keyword research before watching stale posts climb back toward page one.

“The fit and the design of [the Belstaff site] is really contemporary and quite clean and quite different to where we’ve been before,” says Jodie, “and that’s been quite purposely so.”

For a quick audit, fire up Shopify’s Plug In SEO app. It scans every product and policy page, flags missing tags or bloated titles, and even nudges you to fix broken links. Pair that with an alt-text helper like AltGenius to batch-update hundreds of image tags.

Want your listings to pop with review stars or FAQ dropdowns? Add schema markup. Google says structured data makes your videos and web pages eligible for rich results, which grab more eyeballs and clicks than plain blue links.

Last pass: Open Google Search Console, sort your queries by impressions, and spot keywords where you’re hovering just off page one. Work those terms into refreshed headings and meta tags, then resubmit the URL for a faster re-index.

5. Upgrade your design

A clean layout wins clicks. Start by checking how website visitors actually scan your pages. A clear visual hierarchy—bigger headings, bold CTAs, generous whitespace—guides the eye where you want site visitors to go.

Modern visuals have to load fast and work across every screen. Google’s responsive-design tips are simple for any business: Lean on fluid grids and media queries so the site stays crisp whether potential customers are scrolling on a phone or a full-sized laptop.

Running a Shopify store? Grab an Online Store 2.0 theme for the fastest upgrade. You’ll get built-in speed boosts plus drag-and-drop sections and app blocks you can shuffle around without touching code. Want something truly custom, like a fully bespoke layout or unique features not available in the theme editor? There’s room for that, too.

Two last checkpoints before you publish:

• Visual hierarchy. Do the squint test: if your primary button fades, bump its size or contrast.

• Accessibility. Keep headings in order and add real alt text. Accessible pages reach more buyers and sidestep legal headaches.

6. Improve technical performance

Site speed remains a huge performance checkpoint. Google’s widely cited data says when load time stretches from one to three seconds, the chance of a visitor bouncing climbs 32%.

Use the Core Web Vitals report to check how quickly main content loads (largest contentful paint), how soon the page responds to a tap or click (interaction to next paint), and whether elements jump around while loading (cumulative layout shift)—and follow Webflow’s developer guide to move any amber scores into the green.

Confirm the layout adapts cleanly on every screen by testing it in your browser’s responsive mode or using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. Mobile-friendly pages not only convert better on phones—they also rank higher in Google’s search results since mobile usability is a key factor in SEO.

Convert heavier JPEGs to WebP or AVIF; Google’s compression study shows the newer formats trim file size by about 25% to 34% without visible loss. Add the loading="lazy" attribute so off-screen images wait their turn, reducing the amount of time it takes for the first images to load.

Finally, in Shopify, delete unused apps or code fragments—its performance guide flags orphaned snippets as a common drag on every request. Crawl the store in Google Search Console, fix or redirect any 404s, and rerun the test to confirm the page speed gains hold. 

7. Create new content

Search crawlers return more often to sites that publish steadily. Fresh blog posts, landing pages, and case studies give Google and other search engines more to index and show potential customers you’re active. Google’s people-first content guidance lists regular updates as a key signal for maintaining visibility in search results.

8. Refresh product listings and categories

Ecommerce product data—like pricing, availability, and variants—can go out of date quickly, especially if your catalog changes often. Use Shopify’s bulk editor to look through your SKUs, prices, and stock levels in one pass rather than opening each item by hand. The same tool lets you adjust columns—price here, inventory there—and save everything with a single click.

Visuals deserve the same routine care. Shopify’s collections guide suggests rotating images and descriptions for seasonal lines—think holiday décor or summer apparel—so the storefront feels current and customers can spot timely offers at a glance. This isn’t about blog posts or landing pages—that’s covered in your content strategy. This step is about keeping your actual product listings and categories up to date, both visually and structurally.

9. Perform A/B testing

A/B testing means showing two versions of something—like a headline or button—to different visitors to see which one gets more clicks or conversions.

Shopify’s conversion optimization guide points out that layout or copy tweaks—like rephrasing a button or shifting the hero image—can nudge more potential customers toward checkout. Instead of guessing, use A/B testing tools to run both versions at once and see what actually works. Apps like Firebase or Shopify-integrated apps like AB Convert let you split traffic between two versions and track which performs better.

To test safely, start by duplicating your live theme or creating alternate versions of a product or landing page. Try a bolder “Buy” button, a shorter headline, or a new layout for your price section. Session-recording tools like Hotjar or Lucky Orange also help. While not true A/B platforms, they show where users pause or abandon a page, pointing to what’s worth testing next.

Tips for smooth website updates

• Test changes in a staging theme first
• Keep your website secure
• Use password protection to test new pages
• Keep your website fast

Test changes in a staging theme first

Before launching your redesign or functional update, clone your live site into a staging theme. This lets you safely preview changes, test your layout, check performance, and fix bugs without disrupting your store’s user experience. Once everything works as intended, swap the staging theme into production.

Keep your website secure

Before you make any updates, lock down the basics: Serve every page over Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)—Shopify can issue the SSL certificate for you—and enable two-factor authentication for all staff accounts. It’s the fastest way to avoid security hiccups mid-update and check off key trust signals in Google’s E-E-A-T framework.

Use password protection to test new pages

When tinkering with a new landing page or seasonal collection, turn on password protection for your online store. (In Shopify, go to Online Store > Preferences > “Restrict access”). This keeps unfinished pages hidden from shoppers and search engines until you’re ready to launch.

“I’m constantly looking at different websites and thinking about that checkout experience,” says Erika from Fluff. Reviewing in-progress updates with fresh eyes before shoppers see them can surface unnecessary friction early.

Keep your website fast

Make speed checks part of every update cycle. Shopify’s performance forum recommends three quick wins: Compress large images into WebP, remove unused app scripts, and use loading="lazy" so off-screen media loads later.

After each round of changes, run PageSpeed Insights and review the Core Web Vitals dashboard—even slight drops in Largest Contentful Paint or Cumulative Layout Shift can push a page out of top search positions.