Aqualiners Direct

The existing Magento website was desperately in need of a UX overhaul as well as a software upgrade. Our understanding of Aqualiners Direct thanks to our working relationship meant we truly understood their needs and therefore we made the recommendation to replatform to Shopify.

This move would give us the opportunity to give the website a design refresh, and introduce some new functionality that had been lacking on the old website. The move to Shopify would also enable us to save them the cost of upgrading their Magento platform and relicensing the associated third-party extensions.

The design of the website was to be in keeping with the company's brand guidelines, whilst employing e-commerce best practice in an attempt to help boost the low conversion rate. There were two non-standard requirements for the website: the pond liner products are priced per square metre, and the existing website hosted two custom calculators to help customers estimate the amount of liner product required. Both of these existing features needed to be retained / rebuilt.

Following kick-off meetings with the client, design and development teams, we set about designing the key website elements - header, footer, collection and product pages. We then performed an initial data migration from the Magento website to provide some baseline product, category, blog post and static page data to work from for styling. The development team were able to shape the bulk of the website based on the key on-page elements and the product data, all the while ensuring we worked within the framework of the client's existing branding.

For those products priced per square metre, we employed a Shopify App and customised the front-end output as well as behind-the-scenes calculations to ensure pricing was calculated correctly and presented to the customer in a logical way, and to the back-end fulfilment staff in a way that allowed them to process the orders efficiently.

The pond volume and pond liner calculators were re-coded to match the functionality of those on the existing website, and then styled to fit within the rest of the website framework.

We paid close attention to the navigation structure, reworking the old site's menus to match more closely with customer's browsing desires and habits. With the client's approval, this meant rationalising some categories and renaming others.

The end result is a website that hits the nail on the head design/brand wise, and offers a far superior customer experience. The Shopify platform offers a familiar checkout experience that helps boost conversion rates, with Shopify Payments allowing the customer to introduce new payment methods such as Google Pay and Apple Pay with minimal effort.

In the first 10 days following launch, the website saw:

• a 69% increase in conversion rate
• an 11% increase in session duration
• a 23% increase in average order value

That positive trend has continued as time has gone by. Over the 60 days following launch, the website saw an 84% increase in revenue compared to the previous year, and a conversion rate that has near-enough doubled.

The real win though is the ease of use and management by the client. They are finding it far simpler to manage the website, activate and deactivate marketing messages and discounts, and work to grow the website rather than simply maintain it.