Goal: to increase conversion rate and to increase average order value (AOV).
In the past year, we have made significant changes to our website with the goal of enhancing product education, refining the overall shopping journey, eliminating barriers to purchase, and seamlessly integrating customer support in order to drive conversion and AOV. Throughout this process, our main objective was to create a unique digital shopping experience that authentically reflects our brand identity: an interface that is smart, sleek and that anticipates our customers’ needs. We achieved this by implementing a strategic two-stage approach that focused on addressing high-traffic areas of the site, simplifying our cart, and increasing visibility of bundling options.
Our redesign action plan was largely shaped by the constraints we were facing at the time. We knew we were on a tight timeline; we were simultaneously gearing up for the late Sept launch of our new Travel 1.0 collection – the biggest launch we’ve had in the past six years – and also, we needed the website redesign to be complete by the mid-November holiday shopping season.
We are a small company, with a five person digital product team. Our lean team was already committed to other essential projects, including ongoing updates for the Travel 1.0 product launch, revenue-dependent holiday promotions, and critical site maintenance. All updates needed to be completed before Black Friday selling week, as that next six week period was responsible for driving 25%+ of traffic for the entire year. Due to these constraints, we decided to take a phased approach in tackling this website redesign.
The first phase began with ideation and a comprehensive competitor analysis. We dug into industry standards across various ecommerce platforms and identified the areas on our site that were performing below industry benchmarks. The insights gained from this analysis dictated our areas of focus and shaped our approach in doing so.
The focal point of our efforts was the redesign of our Product Detail Pages (PDPs). We aimed to make these pages more immersive, informative and on-brand. We needed a significant overhaul on the backend in order for product information to be in a more streamlined, digestible format. We restructured our product schemas so that essential details, such as dimensions, materials, and product pieces, were digestible and immediately visible. We then incorporated new branded iconography, updated on-model images showing product size comparisons on various body types, and more descriptive style blurbs. We created 360° gifs of our products to give customers a full product view without having to click through an image carousel, and to help with product education we created a series of engaging product knowledge videos with our Founder and Creative Director, Jessy Dover.
Once everything above-the-fold on our PDPs had been addressed, we focused on addressing points of friction on the site. We needed our cart to be more accessible. We built a slide-out “mini cart” that was accessible from anywhere on the site. Additionally, while our existing “Kits” (various product bundles available at a 15% discount) were successful as a standalone product, we created a widget for users to easily add Kits to their carts throughout various parts of the website. We also incorporated Kit cards onto our PDPs, our cart page, and our slide out cart, to give customers the opportunity to bundle products (and increase AOV) at multiple points prior to checkout.
The second phase of our project will be complete in March 2024 and is focused on addressing below-the-fold updates to our PDPs. These upcoming updates include optimized product size comparisons, enhanced product diagrams, more robust product reviews, and expanded product recommendations.
Our goal was to increase conversion rate and to increase average order value (AOV), and we were able to increase both metrics by 21-39%, despite an increasingly challenging Q4 selling environment.
Result: Conversion rate improved 39% from 1.74% (July 2023 - Sept 2023) to 2.41% (Oct 2023 - Jan 2024). Additionally, adding Kit options to those pages has been instrumental in driving up our Average Order Value by 21% from $165 (July 2023 - Sept 2023) to $200 (Oct 2023 - Jan 2024). Approximately 1.6% of all “Add to Cart” events are now coming from the new Kit cards.
Outside of these metrics, we aimed to enhance product education for our customers via Founder + Creative Director-led product knowledge videos on our PDPs. These videos have performed tremendously well, with an engagement rate of 6.8%.
Our PDPs have been so visually compelling that we believe they’ve created a new best-in-class benchmark within the fashion community. In the past six months, brands have reached out to ask which agency designed our website (which is funny because at Dagne we basically do everything in-house), and others have told us Dagne is on their brand’s inspo board for best-in-class design.
