1. Objective
Castle was required to generate revenue and increase conversion for Steven Brown Art through their eCommerce site. To do this, we implemented a number of different strategies including designing and developing a new Shopify website, optimised for conversion, setting up an affiliate marketing programme to generate significant revenue on a risk-free basis, and through running targeted social ad campaigns through Facebook advertising.
2. Solution
Through redesigning and developing a new Shopify eCommerce store for Steven Brown Art, with a focus on UX and conversion optimisation, and then through the implementation of a range of effective marketing strategies, Castle managed to increase sales through their eCommerce site by 43% in 2020 compared to 2019. This was achieved by increasing traffic by 56% and increasing the conversion rate by 4% up to 3.48%.
We first focused on making vital improvements to the website to improve user experience and increase the conversion rate. Alongside this, we implemented a cross-selling strategy on the website to try increase the average order value. This involved a complete redesign of the existing Steven Brown Art Shopify site. We did this to maximise the marketing budget as there was no point sending an increased amount of traffic to the website if it wasn’t fully optimised for conversions. After we had optimised the Shopify website by implementing a number of proven Shopify SEO strategies, we started implementing a range of strategies to increase brand awareness and generate traffic.
Website
Firstly, Castle designed and developed a new Shopify website for Steven Brown Art. As Steven Brown Art was already quite a well-known and popular brand, we focused on conversion rate optimisation to convert more of the leads the website was already getting.
User-friendly Shopify web design and development
The new designs focused on making the site more user friendly and efficient to increase conversions. To achieve this, we developed a fully customisable and responsive theme with user-friendly UI/UX aimed features to help increase conversions. The design was completely bespoke, which allowed us to have full control over features, functionality and how it looked. The new website was developed with an SEO friendly site architecture and navigation to ensure it ranked highly in search engine results pages.
To make the website easier to navigate and increase conversions, we implemented an advanced search facility which was much more prominent on the page and allowed users to search fast with instant suggestions and a spellcheck feature. The new Shopify website also featured a more prominent and easier to use megamenu facility with the ability to showcase sales and new releases, allowing people to go directly to these highly searched for products.
This included adding a dynamic collection filter with product options, variants and tag filters, so people can look through all the products available in a particular design and find what they are looking for much quicker. This is because we knew if people liked a particular print, they were more likely to buy multiple products with the same design to match. We also split the lifestyle section into ‘homeware’ and ‘accessories’ to make it quicker for people to find the product they wanted to purchase, improving user experience.
UX-focused homepage redesign
On the homepage we added a promotional video banner to the top of the page, so as soon as anyone landed on the site it was eye-catching and made the promotions clear, encouraging people to click through and buy. We also integrated Dot Digitals ‘trending items’ element onto the homepage. This used real data from the best-selling and most viewed products and applied an appropriate weighting balance to the strength of a purchase vs. a product browse, pulling through popular products into the ‘trending’ section on the homepage, so people could find and buy them quicker.
On the newly designed homepage, we also added a section that showed off different designs so new customers landing on the site, who didn’t know much about Steven Brown Art or his range of designs, could filter through product designs easier and all in one place.
Cross-selling strategies
We also implemented a cross-selling strategy across the website to encourage the purchase of products with similar and related designs. This consisted of putting a ‘frequently bought together’ section on each product page, showing people custom product recommendations displayed as bundles on product pages with an automatic discount, encouraging people to buy more to increase average order value. There was also a quick add to basket button, allowing people to quickly and easily add these extra products to their basket, again working to increase average order value. This led to a 16% increase in average order value in the first six months of 2021.
Easier checkout process
Our Shopify web development team replaced the default cart page with a on-page dynamic cart with in-cart upselling based on the products already added to the basket. This allowed customers to check out much faster with less steps involved, allowing for a quicker more streamlined purchasing process and faster conversions. The in-cart upselling also helped to increase average order value, as it showcased products that a particular customer may be interested in based on what was already in their cart and made it easier for customers to add these products to their basket whilst checking out.
Product page optimisation
When redesigning the Steven Brown Art site, we developed optimised product pages. These pages were image-led to better show off the art work, and featured a range of payment options, optimised product descriptions, customer reviews and a ‘frequently bought together’ section allowing customers to add similar products to their basket for a reduced price and a ‘you may also like’ section featuring a range of other products in that collection. We also added an ‘About’ section talking about the particular piece or character and what inspired Steven to paint it to add more of a background and story to each piece.
Once the site was live, we continually worked on optimising the product pages using keyword optimisation and technical SEO strategies to ensure the website and specific products ranked for both branded terms and relevant keywords.
43% increase in sales
The Shopify website redesign and development contributed to the increased conversion rate of 3.48%, up by 4% from the previous year. This helped contribute to a 43% increase in sales compared to the year before.
To improve the website, Castle:
- Created a fully customisable responsive and user-friendly theme with SEO friendly site architecture and navigation and image led pages
- Developed megamenu facility with the ability to showcase sales and new releases
- Implemented an advanced and prominent search facility which allows users to search fast with instant suggestions and spellchecks to improve accessibility
- Recategorized the menu to make it easier to navigate, improving user experience
- Implemented cross-selling across all product pages
- Added quick add to basket buttons on all products and pages to allow for faster transactions
- Redesigned the layout to make the website more attractive and to better utilise the space
- Added an innovative and responsive live chat, to improve customer experience and interactivity
- Added ‘frequently bought together’ custom product recommendations to be displayed as bundles on product pages with an automatic discount
- Implemented a dynamic slide cart with in-cart upselling