Great Little Trading Company
Migrating Great Little Trading Company’s award-winning business to Shopify Plus
increase in overall conversion rate
+3%
increase in total conversions
+7%
drop in bounce rate thanks to fixed pages and faster load
-93%
Services
UX
Design
Development
Migration
CRO
SEO
Technology
Shopify Plus
Klaviyo
Challenge
Despite achieving success over their two decade long history, Great Little Trading Company recognised that their current platform had limitations preventing them from progressing towards their goals.
"We were restricted to strict release cycles that needed to be planned heavily in advance," explained Jamie. "The website itself was becoming dated and functionality that had been on our wishlist for some time still wasn’t progressing."
Adding products, creating content, launching new sales and promotions were all being held back by the workflow of their existing site. It wasn’t a matter of technical expertise either, they just didn’t have the tools to do what they needed to do. The business itself was held hostage by the very platform they used to reach their customers.
Besides being inaccessible to employees, there was a deeper lack of functionality. Even when they could arrange development time to release updates, they couldn’t always accomplish the things they needed. For a store as large as GLTC, there were a number of tools missing from their businesses toolkit when it came to selling online. Not having these tools held their online sales and their business back.
Solution
We migrated Great Little Trading Company to Shopify Plus so their team can finally work the way they want to do.
Now, they have the freedom to create the site they want to represent their brand, and there’s no more waiting for developer availability to update products.
For a company as large as GLTC, a simple redesign wasn’t enough. Our experts created a bespoke, data-driven site design that reflects the brand and product range, while driving sales across multiple product collections. This involved carrying out in-depth research into how visitors were using the site to inform building best-practice UX/UI frameworks. Trading copy-heavy pages for a more visually-focused layout and cleaner, clearer use of text made the new site layout more effective and easier to use.
We also seamlessly managed the data migration from the old platform, GLTC’s CRM, warehouse and third-party distributor systems, and other third-party tools, including hundreds of products, thousands of customers, and a decade of order history.
Beyond a better workflow and more freedom, GLTC’s new site is easier to use and more engaging for customers. Conversion rates are up +3%, customers are spending more time on the site and they saw an impressive -1361% drop in bounce rate from organic search traffic.
Story
After over 20 years in the business, CEO and owner Jamie knew that the platform Great Little Trading Company had used to reach this level wasn’t going to carry them further on toward their goals.
There were several limitations on how far their old platform could take their business. First and foremost was the lack of control over their site.
Seeking flexibility and functionality, they knew Shopify Plus was right for them. Shopify Plus is the most accessible ecommerce platform on the market. To get the most out of its features, Jamie knew that he would need outside expertise, saying “We knew early on that we wanted to do a bespoke web design and add in new functionality, and for that we would need Shopify experts - it was way out of our capabilities.”
For the redesign, research and planning played a key role. Many think that making a website look good is all that matters. While it helps to be pretty, user experience is what drives revenue for online stores.
Working together, UWP and GLTC carried out extensive user testing that uncovered potential problems in their existing site. Focus groups showed that consumers needed better navigation and product sorting options. Heatmaps and analytics data brought more insight into how visitors were using the site.
When it came to the data migration, GLTC knew they had too much critical data to tackle this themselves. Instead, working with Shopify Plus developers, we established a plan to make the data migration as smooth as possible, seamlessly moving customer and product data from Magento into the Shopify ecosystem.
The result was a visually-impressive, data-backed ecommerce site that puts the power back into the hands of the GLTC team. They are no longer held back by limited functionality. Instead, they have the freedom to optimise their site, enhance customer experiences, and drive growth with confidence.
“We’ve always trusted and valued UWP’s feedback and recommendations, and we’ve always felt like our website is in the best hands. I’d strongly recommend UWP to anyone looking to migrate to Shopify Plus.”
