This project was one of my favorites –– a story of a late 90's relic of a website that generated ~$2M in revenue and parabolic growth. Through rigorous competitive research, a dedicated development budget, and keeping it simple we doubled revenue and fixed the 80% mobile cart abandonment rate..
To line up with new marketing efforts we were granted the time and the budget to redesign the only B2C website they company had at the time. That said, our team was small, had lots of projects in the queue, and Volusion –– the e-commerce platform the site was built on –– was a closed platform; pre-Shopify. At the time, Volusion offered a direct-to-client custom development at a very convenient price that kept the project under-budget. I was tasked with designing a theme that was in line with the digital rebrand that was just launched and managing the release of the site with the Volusion development team.
After about two months of development and testing it was time to launch. We did it at night, turned our analytics and funneling programs back on, and slept. Like waking up on Christmas morn, sales starting pouring in –– lots of which were on mobile –– and we monitored the post-launch progress over the next few months.
The results?
- ~800% increase to mobile conversion rates.
- ~100% increase to desktop conversion rates.
- 2x sales.
I attribute the results mostly to competitive research. When you’re working with a brand that sells incredibly niche products like gate openers and garage door openers, having a simple website design that's reliable and accessible goes a long way.
But equally important is studying what high-exposure, high-volume companies not in your industry do. If you sell online, sites like Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay are worth taking the time to understand what makes them tick. Small collections of features like highlighting top reviews, AJAX cart-updating, and effective cart abandonment programs make a huge impact. The same design is still being used today.
