Crafting a new commerce experience

When IFI contacted us to build a new e-commerce website, there was little content or brand to work with. In order to create a great digital product, we were going to have to start from the ground up.

When IFI contracted us to build their new e-commerce website, they told us that we would be handling both design & development. In order to create a great digital product, we were going to have to start from the ground up.

The old IFI website was fast yet inflexible & hard to edit; in order to preserve performance while also adding the ability to easily manipulate content, we were going to have to be strategic in component, layout & CMS design. Large product catalogs create a number of challenges during development, but given some strategic thought, we knew we could create a performant website.

One of our biggest challenges was figuring out how to migrate thousands of products to the new platform while taking into consideration a large number of new & old content types. In an ideal world, we would have a 1:1 content match, meaning title with title, description with description, etc. However, being that the website received a design & content upgrade, there were a number of new content types that didn’t match old content & vice versa.

In order to map old content to new, we used a number of tools & methods to transform, manipulate & curate content in a way that best fit the new website.

When a feature was added to the website, it was added with a specific goal in mind. There were 3 unique pieces of functionality added to enhance the shopping experience; quick add to cart, quick sample request & save for later.

Given their consumer buyer behavior, we discovered that many of IFI’s customers were repeat customers, browsing the site already knowing what they were looking to purchase. Similarly, many new customers typically show interest in a number of fabrics, but in the textile industry, it’s commonplace to request samples prior to purchasing. With this same consumer behavior in mind, we knew it would be beneficial to allow shoppers to save fabrics for later viewing to prevent them from having to search through thousands of products.

The common phrase in the textile industry is “exclusive to the trade”; in turn, only those who are approved showrooms, buyers, resellers, etc. have the ability to purchase fabrics. To allow for this, we created a membership system that required IFI to approve applicants after they submitted an application. By doing so, IFI was able to limit & vet those who were able to purchase from their website. This meant that only those approved were able to see pricing, add to cart, request samples, save for later & ultimately complete checkout. For those interested but not yet approved, they were still given the ability to browse their massive catalog of fabrics.

After months of design & development, we were able to successfully launch their new ecommerce website. 9 months post launch, IFI has received over 200 new wholesale applicants, most of which are likely to be recurring customers. With their uptick in success, we look forward to our continued partnership.