Problem

Our client, a well-established manufacturer and reseller of home furniture that operates on a nationwide scale, found themselves constrained by an outdated e-commerce platform. This legacy system, far from being a robust solution for their business needs, instead became a source of numerous issues, creating a bottleneck that had a significant impact on their overall sales pipeline.

The user experience for their online store lacked the smooth and intuitive interface modern shoppers have come to expect. It was blocky and poorly structured, leading to a disjointed customer journey that did more to frustrate than to facilitate purchases.

The checkout flow was notably problematic. It was discontinuous in its best moments, but all too frequently it presented server side errors that not only interrupted the purchasing process, but also caused complete user sales to bounce. This not only affected the immediate sale, but also risked damaging the client’s reputation and customer relationships.

In addition, the client’s shop was devoid of proper analytics. Without these crucial insights, their retrospective sales analytics were not only inaccurate, but also ambiguous. This lack of data made it difficult to identify areas for improvement or to plan effective strategies for growth.

Despite these multiple issues, the client was working within financial constraints and had a limited budget to invest in improving their online store experience. It was a challenging scenario that required a careful, strategic approach to ensure that every dollar spent would have a tangible impact on improving the user experience and, ultimately, the sales performance.

Solution

In response to the disorganized and scattered setup of the e-commerce platform, as well as the lackluster frontend user experience, our team took a comprehensive and meticulous technical approach that was squarely centered around optimizing the path to purchase for each user. This strategy required a deep understanding of our users and their shopping habits, which we achieved by leveraging the seamless design that was provided to us. This design facilitated the creation of an organic funnel that smoothly guided users through their shopping journey, from initial product discovery to final purchase.

To further enhance the user experience, we implemented a progressive sales incentive introduction. This feature gradually introduced users to various sales incentives as they navigated through the site, enticing them to make a purchase. To complement this, we also ensured a persistent checkout flow presence, subtly reminding users of their potential purchases and encouraging them to complete the transaction.

Moreover, we undertook a complete overhaul of the checkout flow to make it more user-friendly and intuitive. By doing so, we ensured that the tail end of the path to purchase was robust, hardened, and guaranteed. This meant that once users had made the decision to purchase, they could do so quickly and easily, without any technical glitches or complications.

Additionally, we rebuilt the shop with a core focus on taxonomy. This involved reorganizing the products in a way that made the most sense to our users, making it easier for them to find what they were looking for. With this improved taxonomy, our shop was able to provide effective recommendations to users. This not only improved their shopping experience but also kept them close to the path to purchase, increasing the likelihood of them making a purchase.

In conclusion, our comprehensive approach to revamping the e-commerce platform not only improved the frontend user experience but also ensured that each user was gently guided along the path to purchase. By doing so, we were able to increase sales and improve user satisfaction.

Technology

• Shopify
• GSAP
• Internal Systems APIs

Differentiators

Our team brought two differentiating factors to the rebuild and revamp of our client’s e-commerce solution.

With a decline in sales, our client was in need of dire action on their e-commerce platform, but they were hamstrung by a limited budget. As is our mantra, we find solutions within all bounds. We avoided massive e-commerce platform changes and migrations to mitigate cost and instead consulted internally and with technical resources within the e-commerce platform to push it’s performance to the bring. We executed on the design vision and bent the platform to our needs all while staying within budget.

Instead of building a solution which satisfied current site requirements, we understood that our client needed the new e-commerce build to extend beyond its existing functionality to turn sales trends around. While bending the platform to our needs, we also implemented all appropriate features of the platform to result in an impressively robust checkout flow and path to purchase.

Results

The e-commerce build that we executed was not merely an ordinary one; it pushed the boundaries of what was expected from an e-commerce platform. It was a showcase of all the modern technical offerings available on the platform, it was a prime example of how to perfectly execute a design vision in a realistic and functional manner. This was not just about aesthetics, but also about ensuring that everything was within the WCAG accessibility guidelines. Our collaborative efforts resulted in a user experience that was nothing short of extraordinary, truly living up to our client’s vision.

The success of our work was not just theoretical, but was clearly tangible in the revamped analytics that we provided to our client. It was not just about numbers and data, but about insights and understanding of the customer behavior. The sales trends after the launch of the new build were a clear testimony to this. They immediately pivoted to the positive, indicating that the customers were responding favorably to the new changes. This was the ultimate proof of the effectiveness of our work, as the ultimate goal of any e-commerce platform is to drive sales and customer satisfaction.