Why “we designed it once and moved on” doesn’t work for online stores
UX is primarily a process. You can’t design UX once and consider the job done. In e-commerce, this is especially obvious: user behavior constantly changes, interactions become outdated, and shopping flows need refining. If you decide to build an online store around the customer, accept that you need to do this continually — improving, updating, and perfecting the experience.
The reason is simple: your store is not a static interface. It’s an ecosystem where people browse, compare, hesitate, lose trust, change their mind, return, and buy — or don’t. What worked last quarter may stop working after a product lineup change, a traffic shift, a new device mix, a new competitor standard, or a different customer expectation. Your UI and user interactions can be a powerful trigger for boosting sales — or not — but none of this is effective without continuous UX analysis.
UX research is what keeps this cycle alive. We ask questions. We take note. We learn everything we can about the people who use your online store, then test our theories and work. Once the first phase is over, we start the cycle again. And so on, indefinitely.
This is not a “nice-to-have” for mature brands. It’s a survival mechanism for any online store that wants to grow. Research helps identify and confirm or disprove assumptions, reveal needs and behaviors, and continuously refine how customers interact with your product pages, collections, cart, checkout, and post-purchase experience. This always leads to improved processes and increased profits, because the store keeps adapting to real customers instead of outdated beliefs.
Kate Kolody
Senior / Lead Digital Product Designer · E-commerce / DTC / Growth · Subscription / Shopify / Conversion
