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BigCommerce Lifts THE UPSIDE to a Better Ecommerce Vantage Point
Discover how customizable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.
103%
increase in conversion
164%
increase in orders
163%
increase in revenue
Performance metrics compare July 1-September 30, 2021 to July 1-September 30, 2020.
Activewear that’s meant for everywhere
Women who enjoy activewear will want to set their sights on Australia’s THE UPSIDE for stylish, sophisticated and multi-purpose apparel.
Jodhi Meares, an avid yoga enthusiast, founded the company in 2013, after realising there was a gap in the market for fashion-forward activewear during her time abroad in Hawaii and India. She believed activewear should be suitable for and transition from morning workouts to afternoon meetings. It was from this belief and her genuine love for fashion and fitness that THE UPSIDE came into being.
Today, THE UPSIDE touts four stores in Sydney, Australia, where the company is headquartered and a satellite office in the United States. The clothing retailer is not only a successful international B2C company, but is making significant inroads in the B2B space as well.
“B2B is actually a massive part of our business. We sell our products on a large number of premium wholesale sites,” said Airi Sutherland, Head of Digital for THE UPSIDE. “It works well for us because it gives us visibility in markets that can be a little bit harder to tap into.”
CHALLENGE
Needing room to stretch
THE UPSIDE began its ecommerce journey on Magento 2, but as time went on, the company noticed an increase in the cost to maintain the platform across version changes, security patches and bugs that arose from development changes.
“We were finding that the vast majority of our agency development retainers were being consumed by simply keeping the lights on, which left very little room to progress the site in terms of improvements as well as keeping up with the changing requirements born of a growing business,” said Jesse Chan, Operations Manager for THE UPSIDE.
The decision was made to migrate to a platform that would not limit the brand, but offer greater flexibility and extensibility in terms of supporting the company’s growth. “We wanted more seamless integrations and a user-friendly content management system in addition to being less reliant on an agency to keep things running,” said Chan.
“It wasn’t a difficult decision. We liked the idea that there was greater native functionality on BigCommerce.”
Airi Sutherland Head of Digital, THE UPSIDE
SOLUTION
Building on a user-friendly, agile platform
Although THE UPSIDE looked at Shopify Plus, it took the advice of its digital agency, Matter Design & Digital, and built on BigCommerce.
“It wasn’t a difficult decision,” said Chan. “We liked the idea that there was greater native functionality on BigCommerce. We were sold a lot of unnecessary features when we were on Magento 2 and most requirements in Shopify needed to be fulfilled via apps. Reliance on third-party applications was something we wanted to avoid.”
“The user-friendly nature of the content management system empowers our team to do more themselves. And the use of some of BigCommerce’s out-of-the-box solutions meant we could launch quickly and recognize the benefits of a better experience and increased conversions much sooner,” said Sutherland.
Other deciding factors for why THE UPSIDE selected BigCommerce include the platform’s product management capabilities, integration with Searchspring for onsite personalization, its promotional engine and its multi-site/multi-currency functionality for Australia and the United States.
Highlighted Applications:
Online Search: Searchspring
Onsite Personalization: Searchspring
Customer Relationship Management: Klaviyo
Technical Features:
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP):
Apparel21 (AP21)
Order Management System (OMS):
AP21
Product Information Management (PIM)
AP21
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) / Middleware
Zimble
CDP (customer data platform)
Lexer
Bridging the customer experience and journey
THE UPSIDE uses the Searchspring app as its search and onsite merchandising tool. It allows the brand to merge all of its product categories and put rules in place so things are managed automatically within the parameters the company sets within the platform.
Another app the company uses is the email marketing solution, Klaviyo. This particular app feeds in all of THE UPSIDE’S transaction-level data picked up directly from BigCommerce, which enables the brand to get real-time insights on individual customer profiles and create seamless customer journeys.
“We can easily tailor and personalize our communications. One of the ways that we do this is by reading off the transaction-level data that we get from BigCommerce, applying it to the individual customer and then sending comms accordingly,” said Sutherland. “The benefit of being on BigCommerce is that these integrations are all fairly straightforward. Whereas on other platforms, there'd typically be a lot more heavy lifting involved. BigCommerce has just been really straightforward, and it's fantastic.”
Facebook and Instagram Shopping are part of THE UPSIDE’s marketing mix as well. Currently shoppers complete their purchases by clicking through either social media platform to checkout via THE UPSIDE’s website. “We're also working on introducing in-platform checkout with Instagram. That's something we're currently looking at so shoppers don’t have to leave the app,” Sutherland said.
“The benefit of being on BigCommerce is that these integrations are all fairly straightforward. Whereas on other platforms, there'd typically be a lot more heavy lifting involved. BigCommerce has just been really straightforward, and it's fantastic.”
Airi Sutherland Head of Digital, THE UPSIDE
“BigCommerce is at the heart of everything that we do. We're in a great place right now where we're really realizing the benefits of having a much better website, and that's absolutely reflected in the conversion rates and subsequent revenue that we're seeing from the site.”
Airi Sutherland Head of Digital, THE UPSIDE
RESULTS
Freedom to flow and grow
The abundance of BigCommerce’s out-of-the-box features played a pivotal role in reducing THE UPSIDE’s cost of ownership from when the company was on Magento.
Growth since launching on BigCommerce has been impressive. Comparing data from July 1-September 30, 2021 (post BigCommerce) to the same time frame for 2020 (before BigCommerce), THE UPSIDE experienced a 103% increase in conversion rate, a 163% increase in orders and a 161% increase in revenue.
“One thing that's been really helpful for us is actually the analytics that are available on BigCommerce. Myself and the team are using certain parts of the analytics platform as an alternative to Google Analytics,” said Sutherland. “We find that it picks up on a lot more transactions, particularly in the US market. It’s been really nice to have. We're in there every day.”
LOOKING AHEAD
BigCommerce: At the heart of it all
High on The UPSIDE’s list of future endeavors is harnessing the power of machine learning and AI to provide a more relevant and meaningful customer experience, such as personalized product recommendations based on customers’ shopping history. This is on the brand’s roadmap for 2021. A couple of key roadmap initiatives for 2022 are a customer loyalty program and click and collect.
“BigCommerce is at the heart of everything that we do. We're in a great place right now where we're really realizing the benefits of having a much better website, and that's absolutely reflected in the conversion rates and subsequent revenue that we're seeing from the site,” said Sutherland. “Really, everything eventually comes back to BigCommerce. I would say BigCommerce plays a huge part in our success, which is why we're so pleased that we now have such a robust platform and foundation in place.”
Published: November 2021
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