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The 24 Best eCommerce Retail Case Studies Worth Reading

In the fast-paced world of retail and eCommerce, staying ahead of the game is not just a goal; it’s the lifeline of our industry. For seasoned retail executives, inspiration often comes from the experiences and successes of industry giants who paved the way with their innovative thinking and managed to thrive through thick and thin. That’s why we’re excited to bring you an exclusive collection of the 30 best eCommerce case studies meticulously curated to provide you with a wealth of insights and ideas to fuel your strategies. These case studies are more than just success stories; they are beacons of guidance for retail professionals navigating the ever-changing landscape of our industry.

In this article, we delve deep into the journeys of retail giants who have not only weathered the storms of disruption but have emerged as trailblazers in eCommerce. From adapting to shifting consumer behaviors to mastering the art of online engagement, this compilation offers a treasure trove of wisdom for the modern retail executive. 

Table of Contents

• > Case studies for grocery/wholesale eCommerce retailers
• > Case studies for fashion eCommerce retailers
• > Case Studies for home & furniture eCommerce retailers
• > Case Studies for health & beauty eCommerce retailers
• > Case studies for electronics and tools eCommerce retailers
• > Case Studies for toys and leisure eCommerce retailers

Case studies for grocery/wholesale eCommerce retailers

Retail case study #1: tesco .

Industry : Grocery stores

Why worth reading: 

• Historical evolution: Understanding Tesco’s rise from a group of market stalls to a retail giant provides valuable lessons on growth and adaptation to market changes​.
• Customer service focus: Tesco’s long-term emphasis on customer service, which is consistent across their physical and online platforms, showcases the importance of customer-centric strategies.
• Innovation in eCommerce: The case study covers Tesco’s pioneering of the world’s first virtual grocery store in South Korea, a testament to its innovative approach to digital retailing.
• Crisis management: Insights into how Tesco handled the Horse Meat Scandal, including efforts to tighten its supply chain, contributing to its logistical success​.
• Financial integrity: The study discusses the Accounting Scandal, offering a sobering look at financial transparency and the repercussions of financial misreporting.

Read the full Tesco case study here .

Retail case study #2: Walmart 

Industry : Discount department and grocery stores

• Data-driven success: The case study provides a wealth of data, showcasing Walmart’s remarkable achievements. With an annual revenue of almost $570 billion, a global presence in 24 countries, and a customer base exceeding 230 million weekly, it’s a testament to the effectiveness of their strategies.
• Marketing strategies: The case study delves deep into Walmart’s marketing strategies. It highlights their focus on catering to low to middle-class demographics, the introduction of the Walmart Rewards loyalty program, and their commitment to environmental sustainability, all of which have contributed to their success.
• eCommerce transformation: As eCommerce continues to reshape the retail landscape, this case study details how Walmart shifted significantly towards omnichannel retail. Readers can learn about their innovative technologies and approaches, such as personalized shopping experiences and augmented reality, that have helped them adapt to changing consumer behavior.
• Supply chain innovation: Walmart’s proficiency in supply chain management is a crucial takeaway for retail executives. Their decentralized distribution center model , in-house deliveries, and data-driven optimization exemplify the importance of efficient logistics in maintaining a competitive edge.

Read the full Walmart case study here .

Retail case study #3: Sainsbury’s 

Industry : Grocery stores

• Omnichannel success amidst pandemic challenges: With the fastest growth in online shopping among major retailers, the study illustrates how Sainsbury’s adapted and thrived during unprecedented times.
• Dynamic brand positioning: The analysis delves into Sainsbury’s strategic shift in brand positioning, demonstrating a keen responsiveness to changing consumer preferences. This shift showcases the brand’s agility in aligning with contemporary health-conscious consumer trends, supported by relevant data and market insights.
• Supply chain and quality assurance: The study highlights Sainsbury’s commitment to a stellar supply chain, emphasizing the correlation between high product quality, ethical sourcing, and customer loyalty. With data-backed insights into the extensive distribution network and sourcing standards, retail executives can glean valuable lessons in maintaining a competitive edge through a robust supply chain.
• Innovative technological integration: Sainsbury’s implementation of cutting-edge technologies, such as Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” and Pay@Browse, demonstrates a commitment to providing customers with a seamless and convenient shopping experience. 
• Diversification beyond grocery: The case study unveils Sainsbury’s strategic partnerships with companies like Amazon, Carluccio’s, Itsu, Leon, and Wasabi, showcasing the brand’s versatility beyond traditional grocery retail. 

Read the full Sainsbury’s case study here .

Retail case study #4: Ocado 

• From startup to industry leader: The Ocado case study presents a remarkable journey from a three-employee startup in 2000 to becoming the UK’s largest online grocery platform.  
• Omnichannel excellence: The study emphasizes Ocado’s success in implementing an omnichannel approach, particularly its early adoption of smartphone technology for customer engagement. 
• Operational efficiency: From automated warehouses with machine learning-driven robots to digital twins for simulating order selection and delivery processes, the data-rich content sheds light on how technology can be leveraged for operational efficiency. 
• Navigating challenges through innovation: Ocado’s strategic response to challenges, particularly its shift from primarily a grocery delivery service to a technology-driven company, showcases the power of innovative thinking. The case study details how Ocado tackled complexities associated with grocery deliveries and embraced technology partnerships to stay ahead.  
• Strategic partnerships: The study sheds light on Ocado’s strategic partnerships with grocery chains and companies like CitrusAd for advertising opportunities on its platform. 

Read the full Ocado case study here .

Retail case study #5: Lidl

Industry : Discount supermarkets

• Longevity and evolution: The article provides a detailed overview of Lidl’s origins and evolution, offering insights into how the brand transformed from a local fruit wholesaler to a global retail powerhouse. Understanding this journey can inspire retail executives to explore innovative strategies in their own companies.
• Global success: Retail executives can draw lessons from Lidl’s international expansion strategy, identifying key factors that contributed to its success and applying similar principles to their global ventures.
• Awards and recognitions: The numerous awards and accomplishments earned by Lidl underscore the effectiveness of its marketing strategy. Marketers and eCommerce professionals can learn from Lidl’s approach to quality, innovation, and customer satisfaction. 
• Comprehensive marketing components: The article breaks down Lidl’s marketing strategy into key components, such as pricing strategy, product diversification, and target audience focus. Readers can analyze these components and consider incorporating similar holistic approaches in their businesses to achieve well-rounded success.
• Omnichannel transformation: The discussion on Lidl’s transformation to an omnichannel strategy is particularly relevant in the current digital age. This information can guide executives in adopting and optimizing similar omnichannel strategies to enhance customer experiences and drive sales.

Read the full Lidl case study here .

Retail case study #6: ALDI

Industry : FMCG

• Omnichannel approach: Aldi’s growth is attributed to a robust omnichannel strategy that seamlessly integrates online and offline channels. The case study delves into how Aldi effectively implemented services that can overcome the intricacies of a successful omnichannel approach in today’s dynamic retail landscape.
• Target market positioning: Aldi’s strategic positioning as the most cost-effective retail store for the middle-income group is explored in detail. The case study elucidates how Aldi’s pricing strategy, emphasizing the lowest possible prices and no-frills discounts, resonates with a wide audience. 
• Transparency: Aldi’s commitment to transparency in its supply chain is a distinctive feature discussed in the case study. For retail executives, understanding the importance of transparent supply chain practices and their impact on brand perception is crucial in building consumer trust.
• Differentiation: Aldi’s successful “Good Different” brand positioning, which communicates that low prices result from conscientious business practices, is a key focus of the case study. Effective differentiation through brand messaging contributes to customer trust and loyalty, especially when combined with ethical business practices.
• CSR Initiatives: The case study highlights Aldi’s emphasis on social responsibility to meet the expectations of millennial and Gen-Z shoppers. By consistently communicating its CSR efforts, such as sustainable sourcing of products, Aldi creates a positive brand image that resonates with socially conscious consumers and builds brand reputation.

Read the full Aldi case study here .

Retail case study #7: ASDA

Industry : Supermarket chain

• Omnichannel implementation: The case study details how ASDA seamlessly integrates physical and virtual channels, offering customers a diverse shopping experience through in-store, digital checkouts, Click & Collect services, and a dedicated mobile app. 
• Market segmentation strategies: The incorporation of partnerships with young British designers and influencer collaborations, coupled with socially progressive messaging, reflects a strategic shift that can inspire marketers looking to revitalize product lines.
• Crisis management and ethical branding: The study highlights ASDA’s strong response to the COVID-19 crisis, with ASDA’s actions showcasing a combination of crisis management and ethical business practices. This section provides valuable insights for executives seeking to align their brand with social responsibility during challenging times.
• Product and format diversification: ASDA’s product categories extend beyond groceries, including clothing, home goods, mobile products, and even insurance. The case study explores how ASDA continues to explore opportunities for cross-promotion and integration.
• Website analysis and improvement recommendations: The detailed analysis of ASDA’s eCommerce website provides actionable insights for professionals in the online retail space. This section is particularly beneficial for eCommerce professionals aiming to enhance user experience and design.

Read the full ASDA case study here .

Case studies for fashion eCommerce retailers

Retail case study #8: Farfetch

Industry : Fashion retail

• Effective SEO strategies: The Farfetch case study offers a detailed analysis of the company’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, revealing how it attracted over 4 million monthly visitors. The data presented underscores the importance of patient and dedicated SEO efforts, emphasizing the significance of detailed page structuring, optimized content, and strategic backlinking.
• Paid search advertising wisdom and cost considerations: The study delves into Farfetch’s paid search advertising approach, shedding light on its intelligent optimization tools and the nuances of running localized advertisements. Moreover, it discusses the higher cost of visitor acquisition through paid search compared to organic methods, providing valuable insights for marketers navigating the paid advertising landscape.
• Innovative LinkedIn advertising for talent acquisition: Farfetch’s unique use of LinkedIn advertising to attract talent is a standout feature of the case study and highlights the significance of proactive recruitment efforts and employer branding through social media channels. 
• Strategic use of social media platforms: Exploring the brand’s highly consistent organic marketing across various social media channels, with a focus on visual content, highlights Farfetch’s innovative use of Instagram’s IGTV to promote luxury brands. The emphasis on social media engagement numbers serves as a testament to the effectiveness of visual content in the eCommerce and fashion sectors.
• Website design and conversion optimization insights:   A significant portion of the case study is dedicated to analyzing Farfetch’s eCommerce website, providing valuable insights for professionals aiming to enhance their online platforms. By identifying strengths and areas for improvement in the website’s design, marketers, and eCommerce professionals can draw actionable insights for their platforms.

Read the full Farfetch case study here .

Retail case study #9: ASOS

Industry : Fashion eCommerce retail

• Mobile shopping success: eCommerce executives can draw inspiration from ASOS’s commitment to enhancing the mobile shopping experience, including features such as notifications for sale items and easy payment methods using smartphone cameras.
• Customer-centric mentality: ASOS emphasizes the importance of engaging customers on a personal level, gathering feedback through surveys, and using data for continuous improvement. This approach has contributed to the brand’s strong base of loyal customers.
• Inclusive marketing: ASOS’s adoption of an ‘all-inclusive approach’ by embracing genderless fashion and featuring ‘real’ people as models reflects an understanding of evolving consumer preferences. Marketers can learn from ASOS’s bold approach to inclusivity, adapting their strategies to align with the latest trends and values embraced by their target audience.
• Investment in technology and innovation: The case study provides data on ASOS’s substantial investment in technology, including visual search, voice search, and artificial intelligence (AI). eCommerce professionals can gain insights into staying at the forefront of innovation by partnering with technology startups.
• Efficient global presence: ASOS’s success in offering a wide range of brands with same and next-day shipping globally is attributed to its strategic investment in technology for warehouse automation. This highlights the importance of operational efficiency through technology, ensuring a seamless customer experience and reduced warehouse costs.

Read the full ASOS case study here .

Retail case study #10: Tommy Hilfiger 

Industry : High-end fashion retail

• Worldwide brand awareness: The data presented highlights Tommy Hilfiger’s remarkable journey from a men’s clothing line in 1985 to a global lifestyle brand with 2,000 stores in 100 countries, generating $4.7 billion in revenue in 2021. This strategic evolution, exemplified by awards and recognitions, showcases the brand’s adaptability and enduring relevance in the ever-changing fashion landscape.
• Adaptation and flexibility to changing market trends: The discussion on how the brand navigates changing trends and overcame market saturation, particularly in the US, provides practical insights for professionals seeking to navigate the challenges of evolving consumer preferences.
• Successful omnichannel marketing: Tommy Hilfiger’s success is attributed to a brand-focused, digitally-led approach. The analysis of the brand’s omnichannel marketing strategy serves as a map for effective promotion and engagement across various channels. 
• Decision-making and customer engagement: The case study emphasizes the brand’s commitment to data-driven decision-making with insights into customer behavior, leveraging data for effective customer engagement.

Read the full Tommy Hilfiger case study here .

Retail case study #11: Gap

• Overcoming challenges: The case study provides a comprehensive look at Gap Inc.’s financial performance, and growth despite the challenges. These insights can offer valuable takeaways into effective financial management and strategies for sustained success.
• Strong branding: Gap’s journey from a single store to a global fashion retailer reveals the importance of strategic brand positioning. Understanding how Gap targeted different market segments with unique brand identities, can inspire retail executives looking to diversify and expand their brand portfolios.
• Omnichannel adaptation: The case study delves into Gap’s omnichannel strategy, illustrating how the company seamlessly integrates online and offline experiences.
• Unique use of technology: By exploring the technologies Gap employs, such as Optimizely and New Relic, retail executives can learn about cutting-edge tools for A/B testing, personalization, and real-time user experience monitoring. This insight is crucial for staying competitive in the digital retail landscape.
• Inspiring solutions: The case study highlights challenges faced by Gap, including logistical, technological, financial, and human resource challenges. 

Read the full Gap case study here .

Retail case study #12: Superdry

• Success story: The case study emphasizes SUPERDRY’s successful transition to an omnichannel retail strategy, with in-depth insights into their adaptation to online platforms and the integration of technologies like the Fynd app. 
• Mobile-first and social-first strategies: As mobile internet usage continues to rise, understanding how SUPERDRY leverages videos and social media to engage customers can offer valuable takeaways for optimizing digital strategies.
• Sustainable fashion focus: Executives looking to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers can gain insights into how SUPERDRY navigated the shift towards sustainable practices and became a leader in eco-friendly fashion. 
• Data-driven marketing strategies: The case study delves into SUPERDRY’s social media marketing strategies, showcasing how the company uses targeted campaigns, influencers, and seasonal keywords. 
• Global market understanding: By exploring SUPERDRY’s experience in the Chinese market and its decision to exit when faced with challenges, the case study offers valuable insights into global market dynamics. 

Read the full SUPERDRY case study here .

Retail case study #13: New Look 

Industry : Fast-fashion retail

• Strategic pivots for profitability: A decade of revenue contraction led New Look to adopt transformative measures, from restructuring credits to withdrawing from non-profitable markets.
• Omnichannel strategy: Marketers and eCommerce professionals can study New Look’s journey, understanding how the integration of physical stores and online platforms enhances customer experience, reduces costs, and improves profitability.
• Social media mastery: The case study underscores the pivotal role of social media in engaging audiences, showcasing how New Look leverages user-generated content to build brand loyalty and maintain a positive brand perception. 
• Effective partnerships for growth: New Look strategically partners with major eCommerce platforms like eBay & Next to expand its brand presence, and tap into new audiences and markets.

Read the full New Look case study here .

Retail case study #14: Zara

• Rapid international expansion through innovative strategies: Zara’s unique approach to continuous innovation and quick adaptation to fashion trends fueled its global success. Marketers can learn how to build brand narratives that resonate across diverse markets, and eCommerce professionals can glean strategies for seamless international expansion.
• Revolutionary eCommerce tactics: The case study provides a deep dive into Zara’s eCommerce strategy, emphasizing the importance of agility and responsiveness. The brand can be a bright example of implementing supply chain strategies for a swift market adapting to rapid fashion cycles. 
• Visionary leadership: Amancio Ortega’s low-profile persona and visionary leadership style are explored in the case study, aiding retail executives to learn about leadership strategies that prioritize customer-centric business models. 
• Omnichannel marketing and integrated stock management: Zara’s successful integration of automated marketing and stock management systems is a focal point in the case study. With insights into implementing integrated stock management systems to meet the demands of both online and offline channels, Zara can inspire professionals to improve their operations.
• Co-creation with the masses: Zara’s innovative use of customer feedback as a driving force for fashion trends is a key takeaway. Marketers can learn about the power of customer co-creation in shaping brand identity, and eCommerce professionals can implement similar models for product launches and updates.

Read the full Zara case study here .

Case Studies for home & furniture eCommerce retailers

Retail case study #15: john lewis.

Industry : Homeware and clothing retail

• Omnichannel perspective: The data-driven approach, especially in tracking orders and customer behavior, serves as a blueprint for any retail business aiming to enhance its omnichannel experience.
• Strategic growth factors: This case study offers concrete data on the strategies that contributed to the company’s sustained success, inspiring similar endeavors. 
• Innovative customer engagement: John Lewis’s take on customer engagement showcases the brand’s agility and responsiveness to evolving consumer needs, supported by data on the effectiveness of these initiatives.
• eCommerce best practices and pitfalls: The analysis of John Lewis’s eCommerce website provides a data-backed evaluation of what works and what could be improved. The critique is grounded in data, making it a valuable resource for those looking to optimize their online platforms.

Read the full John Lewis case study here .

Retail case study #16: Argos 

Industry : Homeware catalog retail

• Adaptation to the changing retail landscape: Argos’s journey from a catalog retailer to a retail giant demonstrates its ability to successfully adapt to the evolving retail landscape. 
• Omnichannel success story: The case study provides a detailed analysis of Argos’s omnichannel strategy, showcasing how the company effectively integrated online and offline channels to achieve a seamless shopping experience across multiple touchpoints.
• Market share and financial performance: The inclusion of data on Argos’s market share and financial performance offers retail executives concrete metrics to evaluate the success of the marketing strategy. Understanding how Argos maintained a robust market share despite challenges provides actionable insights.
• Technological advancements: The case study delves into the technologies employed by Argos, such as Adobe Marketing Cloud, New Relic, and ForeSee. 
• Overcoming obstacles: By examining the challenges faced by Argos, including logistical, technological, financial, and human resources challenges, retail executives can gain a realistic understanding of potential obstacles in implementing omnichannel strategies. 

Read the full Argos case study here .

Retail case study #17: IKEA

Industry : Home & furniture retail

• Data-driven evolution: This detailed case study offers a data-rich narrative, illuminating the brand’s evolution into a leader in omnichannel retail.
• Pandemic response: This exploration delves into the integration of eCommerce strategies, online expansions, and the balance between physical and digital customer experiences.
• Advanced mobile apps and AR integration: A deep dive into IKEA’s innovative applications, notably the AR app “IKEA Place,” showcases how the brand leverages technology for a seamless customer experience.
• Democratic design approach: The study meticulously breaks down IKEA’s success factors, emphasizing the brand’s holistic approach through the lens of “Democratic Design.” 
• DIY mentality and demographic targeting: A detailed analysis of how IKEA’s affordability is intertwined with a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mentality. The case study explores how IKEA strategically tapped into a shift in consumer behavior, particularly among younger demographics, influencing not only purchasing patterns but also reshaping industry norms.

Read the full IKEA case study here .

Retail case study #18: Marks & Spencer

Industry : Clothing and home products retail

• Valuable lessons in eCommerce: The Marks & Spencer eCommerce case study offers a profound exploration of the brand’s journey from a latecomer to the online scene to a digital-first retailer.
• Real-world application of effective solutions: By diving into the history of Marks & Spencer, the case study provides tangible examples of how a retail giant faced setbacks and strategically pivoted to revitalize its eCommerce platform. 
• Data-driven analysis of eCommerce failures: The case study meticulously analyzes the pitfalls Marks & Spencer encountered during its eCommerce journey, offering a data-driven examination of the repercussions of a poorly executed website relaunch. 
• Multichannel customer experience: Marks & Spencer’s shift towards a multichannel customer experience is dissected in the case study, emphasizing the significance of a seamless user journey for increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Embracing technology: Exploring Marks & Spencer’s technological innovations, such as the introduction of an intelligent virtual assistant can enhance the customer shopping journey, foster engagement, and contribute to revenue growth.

Read the full Marks & Spencer case study here .

Retail case study #19: Macy’s 

Industry : Clothing and homeware retail

• Resilience and adaptability: The case study showcases Macy’s ability to navigate and triumph over obstacles, especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite hardships, Macy’s not only survived but thrived, achieving $24.4 billion in net sales for 2022.
• Omnichannel innovation: Macy’s successful transition to omnichannel retailing is a standout feature. The case study delves into Macy’s implementation of a seamless omnichannel strategy, emphasizing the integration of physical and digital retail channels. 
• Private label strategy: The introduction of new private brands and the emphasis on increasing the contribution of private brands to sales by 2025 provides a strategic lesson. Retailers can learn from Macy’s approach to enhancing control over production and distribution by investing in private brands, ultimately aiming for a more significant share of profits.
• Groundbreaking retail media strategy: Macy’s innovative approach to retail media and digital marketing is another compelling aspect. For marketers, this presents a case study on how to leverage proprietary shopper data for effective advertising, including entry into connected TV (CTV).
• Community engagement and social responsibility: The case study explores Macy’s “Mission Every One” initiative, highlighting its commitment to corporate citizenship and societal impact, integrating values into business strategies.

Read the full Macy’s case study here .

Case Studies for health & beauty eCommerce retailers

Retail case study #20: the body shop .

Industry : Beauty, health, and cosmetics

• Activism and ethical values: The Body Shop has pioneered promoting eco-friendly, sustainable, and cruelty-free products. The brand’s mission is to empower women and girls worldwide to be their best, natural selves. This strong ethical foundation has been integral to its identity.
• Recycling, community fair trade, and sustainability: The Body Shop initiated a recycling program early on, which turned into a pioneering strategy. It collaborates with organizations to create sustainable solutions for recycling, such as the Community Trade recycled plastic initiative in partnership with Plastics for Change.
• Product diversity: The Body Shop’s target demographic primarily focuses on women, but it has expanded some product lines to include men. Its products include skincare, hair and body treatments, makeup, and fragrances for both men and women.
• Omnichannel strategy, technology, and eCommerce best practices: The Body Shop has embraced an omnichannel approach that incorporates personalization, customer data and analytics, and loyalty programs. The Body Shop utilizes technology, including ContactPigeon, for omnichannel customer engagement, personalization, and data-driven decision-making.

Read the full The Body Shop case study here .

Retail case study #21: Boots

Industry : Pharmacy retail

• Long-term success: Boots’ rich history serves as a testament to the effectiveness of the brand’s strategies over time, offering valuable insights into building a brand that withstands the test of time.
• Strategic omnichannel approach: The Boots case study provides a deep dive into the marketing strategy that propelled the brand to success, with valuable insights into crafting effective omnichannel growth. 
• Impactful loyalty program: Marketers can glean insights into designing loyalty programs that resonate with customers, fostering brand allegiance. 
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a pillar: The case study sheds light on how Boots addresses critical issues like youth unemployment and climate change, showcasing how a socially responsible approach can positively impact brand perception.
• Adaptive strategies during crises: Boots’ proactive role during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering vaccination services and supporting the National Health Service (NHS), demonstrates the brand’s agility during crises. 

Read the full Boots case study here .

Retail case study #22: Sephora

Industry : Cosmetics

• Authentic customer experience-focused mentality: Backed by an impressive array of data, the case study meticulously outlines how Sephora transforms its in-store spaces into digital playgrounds, leveraging mobile technologies, screens, and augmented reality to enhance the customer shopping experience. 
• Exceptional omnichannel business plan: The early adoption of an omnichannel strategy has been pivotal to Sephora’s ascendancy. The case study delves into the mobile app’s central role, acting as a comprehensive beauty hub with data-driven insights that drive the success of groundbreaking technologies. 
• Omnichannel company culture: The case study illuminates this by detailing how this amalgamation allows a holistic view of the customer journey, blurring the lines between online and in-store interactions. This unique approach positions Sephora as a global leader in turning omnichannel thinking into a robust business strategy.
• Turning data into growth: Sephora’s adept utilization of mobile technologies to harness customer insights is a beacon for retailers in an era where data reigns supreme. The case study dissects how a surge in digital ad-driven sales, showcases the power of data-driven decision-making.

Read the full Sephora case study here .

Case studies for electronics and tools eCommerce retailers

Retail case study #23: screwfix.

Industry : Tools and hardware retail

• Innovative omnichannel approach: The case study highlights how the company strategically implemented online ordering with in-store pickup, creating a seamless shopping experience that contributed to a significant sales growth of 27.9% in just one year.
• Customer-centric strategies: Marketers can gain insights from Screwfix’s emphasis on customer experience. By studying customer feedback and incorporating personalized shopping experiences, Screwfix achieved success in the competitive home improvement sector. 
• Supply chain management for rapid growth: The company strategically opened distribution centers to keep up with demand, ensuring efficient inventory management for both online and in-store orders.
• Mobile-first approach for trade professionals: With a customer base primarily consisting of trade professionals, the company’s mobile app allows for easy inventory search, order placement, and quick pickups, catering to the needs of time-sensitive projects.
• Commitment to employee well-being and community: Retail executives and marketers can draw inspiration from Screwfix’s commitment to building a positive workplace culture.

Read the full Screwfix case study here .

Case Studies for toys and leisure eCommerce retailers

Retail case study #24: lego.

Industry : Toys and leisure retail

• Global reach strategies: LEGO’s case study meticulously outlines LEGO’s focused approach, investing in flagship stores and understanding the local market nuances.
• Diversification and licensing brilliance: LEGO’s commitment to diversification through licensing and merchandising emerges as a beacon for marketers. The collaboration with well-established brands, the creation of movie franchises, and themed playsets not only elevate brand visibility but also contribute significantly to sales. 
• Social media takeover: The case study unveils LEGO’s unparalleled success on social media platforms, boasting over 13 million Facebook followers and 10.04 billion views on YouTube. LEGO’s adept utilization of Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube showcases the power of social media in engaging customers. 
• User-generated content (UGC) as a cornerstone: LEGO’s innovative use of digital platforms to foster a community around user-generated content is a masterclass in customer engagement. This abundance of UGC not only strengthens brand loyalty but also serves as an authentic testament to LEGO’s positive impact on users’ lives.
• Education as a marketing pillar: LEGO’s unwavering commitment to education, exemplified by its partnerships and $24 million commitment to educational aid, positions the brand as more than just a toy. Aligning brand values with social causes and leveraging educational initiatives, builds trust and credibility.
• Cutting-edge mobile strategy: Sephora’s foresight into the mobile revolution is dissected in the case study, presenting a playbook for retailers aiming to capitalize on the mobile landscape.

Read the full LEGO case study here .

Tons of eCommerce retail inspiration, in one place

In the realm of business, success stories are not just tales of triumph but blueprints for aspiring executives to carve their paths to growth. The case studies explored here underscore a common theme: a mindset poised for evolution, a commitment to experimentation, and an embrace of emerging trends and technologies are the catalysts for unparalleled growth.

For any executive eager to script their growth story, these narratives serve as beacons illuminating the way forward. The dynamic world of retail beckons those ready to challenge the status quo, adopting the strategies and technologies that promise scalability. The key lies in constant optimization, mirroring the agility demonstrated by industry leaders.

As you embark on your growth journey, consider the invaluable lessons embedded in these success stories. Now is the time to experiment boldly, adopting new trends and technologies that align with your brand’s ethos. If you seek personalized guidance on navigating the intricate landscape of growth, our omnichannel retail experts at ContactPigeon are here to assist. Book a free consultation call to explore how our customer engagement platform can be the linchpin of your growth strategy. Remember, the path to scaling growth begins with a willingness to innovate, and your unwritten success story awaits its chapter of transformation.

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17 Ecommerce Case Studies to Inspire You

• May 16, 2024

Table of Contents

We’ve spent hundreds of hours analyzing the world’s most successful DTC companies and ecommerce brands, including Sephora, Dollar Shave Club, Casper, Warby Parker, and Allbirds, to create ecommerce case studies you can use as inspiration for your own online store.

Today, we’ll share with you the 17 best ecommerce case studies that you can use to help drive more visitors to your website and convert more customers.

Let’s get right into it!

1. The Farmer’s Dog marketing strategy: 6 tactics that you can apply in your own business

The Farmer’s Dog was founded in 2014 by two dog lovers. 6 years later, they’re delivering millions of meals monthly. 

How did they do it?

We analyzed their sales funnel and boiled it down to 6 lessons you can apply in your own business to generate more sales.

Read the full The Farmer’s Dog case study .

2. The secret behind the Care/of marketing strategy

Every small ecommerce site owner dreams about a success story like Care/of’s. They achieved a $225 million valuation and were acquired by Bayer in just 6 years.

In this case study, we analyze the marketing strategies that Care/of used, including:

• Quiz funnel
• Content marketing
• Social media
• Paid advertising

Get inspired by these strategies to grow your own online sales. 

Read the full Care/of case study .

3. Dollar Shave Club marketing success

Dollar Shave Club is one of the most talked-about DTC brands, and with good reason. Their famous “our blades are f***ing great” video went viral in just a few days. The video went on to collect 4.75 million views in the first 3 months and has over 27 million views today.

This launch video gave them a killer head start, and their witty brand voice, strong content marketing campaigns, and direct-to-consumer business model enabled them to grow further. They were so successful that Unilever bought the company in a billion-dollar cash acquisition in 2016.

In this case study, we cover everything you need to know about Dollar Shave Club’s marketing game plan to build your own billion-dollar empire.

Read the full Dollar Shave Club case study .

4. How Casper took the mattress industry by storm and reached a $1.1 billion valuation

In this case study, you’ll get a sneak peek into how Casper was able to build unprecedented trust and convince people to purchase mattresses online.

We look at their well-rounded content marketing strategy, which covers  topics of interest  for visitors at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

We also discuss how they utilize social proof to build trust, their unbeatable guarantee, and their referral marketing strategies . Don’t miss this one!

Read the full Casper case study .

5. How Glossier became a $1.2 billion company

Glossier is one of our favorite ecommerce case studies. If you have a beauty brand, you’ll want to read it.

We’ve studied Glossier’s entire customer experience to find 5 lessons you can use for your own brand:

• Know your target audience and build relationships with them
• Use (micro-) influencer marketing
• Focus on branding
• Publish engaging content
• Provide an amazing user experience

Click the link below for all the juicy details.

Read the full Glossier case study .

6. How Happy Box 10x-ed their online store revenue during Covid

Happy Box is not as well-known as some of the other ecommerce stores on this list, but its growth is bound to inspire you. 

The company started as a side project and grew into a full-time ecommerce business during the Covid pandemic. In fact, they were able to achieve a 10x growth rate in 2021!

In this case study, we look at the marketing blueprint behind their astounding success.

Read the full Happy Box case study .

7. How Warby Parker reached a $3 billion valuation and became an ecommerce giant

The idea of buying eyeglasses online was uncharted territory for consumers a decade ago. But Warby Parker’s phenomenal marketing helped to overcome that challenge.

Their website crashed just after its official launch, their top 15 most popular styles sold out within 4 weeks, and they collected a waitlist of 20,000 customers during that time.

In this post, we share the key strategy Warby Parker used to reach its target audience so quickly and went on to become the $3-billion giant everyone knows.

Read the full Warby Parker case study .

8. 4 steps for growing your brand organically using ColourPop’s marketing strategy

In this case study, we share 4 key takeaways from ColourPop’s winning social media strategy:

• Give freebies in exchange for authentic reviews
• Build meaningful relationships with your influencers
• Get your hashtag trending
• Host Instagram giveaways

Check out the tips that you can easily copy for your own ecommerce company.

Read the full ColourPop case study .

9. Replicate Urban Outfitters’ marketing strategy with these 4 tips

Urban Outfitters is different from a lot of the ecommerce brands on this list because they didn’t start online and grow into a global retail giant… instead, they started as a brick-and-mortar business (back in 1970) and managed to make the successful transition to online sales.

It’s worth talking about them because they’re fantastic at keeping in touch with their target audience (Millennials and Gen Z). They also succeed in strengthening customer loyalty with a rewards program.

Check out this case study to learn how you can do the same with your business to drive sales.

Read the full Urban Outfitters case study .

10. How Gymshark bulked up into a $1 billion+ brand

Gymshark is well known for its influencer marketing strategy. In fact, the company was one of the early adopters of influencer marketing.

In this case study, we cover how Gymshark managed to build its fan base, and we spill the beans on what they’re still doing today to delight customers. Check out our 6 key takeaways below!

Read the full Gymshark case study .

11. How Allbirds went from a small startup to a billion-dollar sneaker brand in 4 years

Allbirds is among the most popular ecommerce businesses, especially among circles of professionals in Silicon Valley, including Google co-founder Larry Page. The company differentiates itself from competitors by focusing on three important principles: 

• Simple design
• Sustainable shoes, made from nature

Check out this case study to learn how they fight with their competitors, how they use PR campaigns and word-of-mouth marketing to get people talking about the brand, and more.

Read the full Allbirds case study .

12. How Lunya achieved $25M revenue

Lunya was able to disrupt the women’s sleepwear industry quickly by creating products that bridge the gap between style and sensibility. According to Lunya co-founder Ashley Merrill, the brand was able to grow by putting customers first and never losing sight of the customer’s perspective.

We analyzed the steps Lunya took to build their brand and create a successful customer-centric strategy.

Read the full Lunya case study .

13. 6+1 tips from Rituals to create meaningful moments online

Rituals, founded in 2000, has an impressive product line including skincare, body care, makeup, and scented candles.

They really care about their customers and focus on creating an engaging customer experience online. We wanted to find out how they do it, so in this case study, we explore 6+1 tips from the marketing masters at Rituals.

Read the full Rituals case study .

14. 13 solid tips for mastering the art of personalization like Sephora

Sephora is a cosmetic behemoth that we can all learn from. What’s the secret behind their worldwide success?

In this case study, we share 13 tips they use to delight customers and create loyalty, including:

• Driving sales through personalization
• Helping customers make informed purchasing decisions
• Using YouTube to drive conversions
• Nurturing long-term customer relationships

Read the full Sephora case study .

15. How Alo Yoga scaled to $247M in revenue

Alo Yoga is an athleisure brand known for its “studio-to-street” clothing, making it perfect for both yoga sessions and everyday wear. Founded in 2007 in Los Angeles, Alo Yoga has grown steadily, now boasting an annual revenue of $247.1M and 3 million Instagram followers.

In this ecommerce case study, we’ll share the key marketing strategies that have fueled Alo Yoga’s success.

You can discover their community-building tactics, how they leveraged user-generated content, created personalized experiences for visitors, and more.

Read the full Alo Yoga case study.

16. Bloom & Wild’s marketing strategy to become the 2nd fastest-growing startup

Bloom & Wild, an online florist operating in the UK, Austria, France, Germany, and Ireland, has become one of the fastest-growing online stores in its category. In 2021, the company raised $102 million in investment capital.

Bloom & Wild achieved this impressive business growth by focusing on:

• Caring about their customers
• Increasing on brand awareness with TV campaigns and dominating search results
• Customizing content for each social media channel
• Encouraging referrals
• Building loyalty with a subscription model

Read the full Bloom & Wild case study.

17. How SNOW® Teeth Whitening achieved $100M in online sales

SNOW® Teeth Whitening is a DTC oral care brand focused on delivering professional-level whitening with an at-home kit.

Founded by Josh Elizetxe (a.k.a. Josh Snow) in 2017, SNOW® has quickly gained millions of fans. Over 13 million people shopped SNOW® products in 2021 alone, and by 2020, the company hit $100 million in sales after just three years online.

So, how did SNOW® achieve such significant growth?

In this ecommerce case study, you’ll learn how:

• They focus on creating and continually improving a product that meets customer needs.
• Each ad SNOW® puts out highlights the pain points that their product solves.
• They diversify channels.
• They leverage owned media for customer engagement.
• They collaborate with A-list celebrities to build brand awareness and credibility.

Read the full SNOW® case study.

Final thoughts

Well, that’s it—these are the best ecommerce case studies we’ve found during our extensive research! Hopefully you’ve found plenty of inspiration on this list.

No matter how big (or small) your company is or what industry you’re in, you can use tips and strategies from these ecommerce case studies in your own store.

Which ecommerce case study is your favorite?

What should you do next?

Thanks for reading till the end. Here are 3 ways we can help you grow your business:

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Product updates: September Release 2024

19 Ecommerce Case Studies You Need To Steal From

You’ve heard it before - always be testing.

But if you’re running an eCommerce business then the tasks of analyzing your site data and identifying leaks in the funnel usually get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list. Let's face it, you’ve got 97 other things you SHOULD be doing today. 

So with that in mind, we've pulled together the following 19 real-world eCommerce lessons to help you cut straight to the chase in implementing some simple solutions to increase your online sales.

Growth Marketing Hacks for 2022

We share how we grew from 4-figure to 6-figure traffic in just one year.

In a hurry? Here are some eCommerce studies you need to steal from:

• How to improve Conversion: Envelopes.com achieve 40%
• How to improve Communication: Budapester increased mobile conversion by 29%
• Make small changes: Edible Arrangements increases same-day sales by 8%
• Make product benefits clear: Amerisleep increased checkouts by 13.9%
• Reduce website friction: Company Folders increase conversion by 68%
• Try cross selling products: Furniture retailer increased its AOV by 4.6% in 41 days
• Reduce clutter and distractions: Taloon.com ditched social buttons
• Use influencers to reach customers: Gwynnie Bee saw 5.85% CTR from Youtube influencer
• Reduce risk of purchase: Express Watches provides authenticity stamp
• Use events to drive sales: eCommerce companies saw a 27% spike during football world cup
• Remove distractions: Underwater Audio bump sales by 41%
• Get customers to take the next step: Kettlebell Kings’s takes advantage of user generated content to drive sales
• Use comparison data: Paperstone took out their competition with data
• Test and measure results: MVMT generated $90M in revenue in five years
• Find alternate channels: ECCO Shoes decreased customer acquisition costs by 14%
• Move past the product: Away generated $125M by standing out
• Drive inbound through content marketing: Bavarian Clockworks reached $1m in sales
• Build loyal engaged followers: Frank Body hit $20M in annual sales
• Be relevant to your customers: Society Socks improved survey response rate by 200%

19 eCommerce Case Studies to Double Your Sales

19 eCommerce case studies you need to learn from.

[eCommerce case study #1] How to improve Conversion: Envelopes.com achieve 40%

A common eCommerce problem is prospects exiting the page before completing their order. As consumers, we've all done it before. So the team at Envelopes.com wanted to see if they could “rekindle the flame” and land some sales from hot leads using target followups. These are visitors who created an account and put an item in their shopping cart, so we can see some real intent to purchase at some stage down the track.

The Envelopes.com team were confident that sending targeted follow-up emails generally resulted in sales but weren’t sure of the best timeframe to send them. So they tested out email sends at two alternate time lapses post cart abandonment; the first group sent the following morning at 11 a.m. and the second group 48 hours post cart abandonment.

The emails sent at 11 a.m. the following day delivered:

• an open rate of 38.63%
• a click-through rate of 19.54% and
• a conversion rate to a sale of 27.66%

The emails sent after 48 hours delivered:

• an open rate of 38.01%
• a click-through rate of 24.71% and
• a conversion rate of 40.00%

Although sending these emails on the following day post cart abandonment had a slightly higher open rate, the most important figure, conversion to sale was significantly lower. 

Take home message

Send a follow-up email to people who abandon their carts, if you’re not already doing it. Though Envelopes.com found that 48hrs later was the best performing time, a different cadence and time lag may work better with your customer base, so test out multiple alternatives. If you're looking for some assistance on the creative messaging front, we have included the exact email creative used by Envelopes.com here:

(Envelopes.com Reminder Email 1)

(Envelopes.com Reminder Email 2)

(Envelopes.com Reminder Email 3)

[eCommerce case study #2] How to improve Communication: Budapester increased mobile conversion by 29%

As anyone in the eCommerce realm can attest to, it can be pretty disheartening when a major influx in traffic doesn’t lead to an equally major spike in sales.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to German luxury fashion retailer Budapester a few years back.

Astoundingly, the brand’s website had been seeing hundreds of thousands of visitors each month—but its conversion rates were absolutely abysmal. The problem was even worse on mobile, where Budapester’s conversion rate was less than half that of its desktop alternative.

Upon realizing something needed to be done, the company’s first order of business was to communicate its unique selling propositions and other offers and policies more clearly to its visitors. This meant displaying information regarding free delivery, shipping options , and product availability prominently within its individual product pages:

(Budapester website | Source)

Along with this, Budapester also tweaked its site’s header—specifically, decreasing the logo’s size, and adding the above-mentioned info at the very top of the page. Again, this made it much easier for visitors to learn about these policies and offers right away.

Finally, the team also tweaked the appearance of its shopping cart page. From this...

(Source | Budapester shopping cart – Before)

(Source | Budapester shopping cart - After)

Once more, the above information is now prominently displayed to the consumer—this time in two ways. In addition to the change to the header, the website now displays the company’s offer for free shipping in a green font that stands out at the bottom of the screen.

The end result of Budapester’s efforts, as Growcode explains :

“Its overall conversion rate increased by 12.5%, with its mobile conversion rate going up by nearly 30%. All in all, this equated to an additional 120,000€.”

There are three main lessons to take away, here:

Firstly, it’s essential that you communicate your value to your potential customers in a clear and concise manner. If you offer something of value—say, free shipping on orders over $100—but you don’t tell your visitors about it...how are they supposed to know?

On the other side of this, you want to avoid including redundant or unnecessary information anywhere on your eCommerce website. Not only might this be distracting to your visitors, but it also takes up physical space on your site that could have been put to better use.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that optimizing your site might not mean you need to do a complete overhaul. As was the case with Budapester, a few tiny, seemingly insignificant tweaks can be all your site needs to start generating a massive amount of conversions.

[eCommerce case study#3] Make small changes: Edible Arrangements increases same-day sales by 8%

Edible Arrangements had a fairly typical marketing challenge . They offer customers a same-day delivery option (and have done so for years) but people weren’t taking advantage of the offer because they didn’t know about it.

To educate customers about this option they significantly increased visibility with a large banner in an extremely prominent position on the homepage, just below the navigation bar. This created urgency around the offer by featuring a countdown timer to the deadline for same day delivery. It was impossible to miss or misunderstand.

(Edible Arrangements website)

The result of this simple countdown feature? An increase in same-day sales by 8% !

You don’t need a new product to promote something. People might not know about a product or service you already have in play, so by increasing visibility to your existing audience, you may be able to snap up some quick wins. As a side note on this particular example, creating some urgency is always a good sales strategy. Encourage your audience to act now, instead of later (or never).

[eCommerce case study #4] Make product benefits clear: Amerisleep increased checkouts by 13.9%

Online mattress retailer Amerisleep had a problem that was quite similar to Budapester’s:

The company was seeing a ton of traffic on its website, but its conversion rates were nowhere near where the team would have liked them to be.

However, with the help of Growth Rock , Amerisleep decided to take a different approach to improving its website:

Rather than adding or deleting certain information, the team decided to focus on improving the messaging of the site’s copy—in a few ways.

First, the team dug deeper into the true benefits their products provide their customers. In Amerisleep’s case, this meant going beyond promising “a good night’s sleep,” and instead focusing on how getting a good night’s sleep every night can be absolutely life-changing.

(What would you do with more energy and less pain? | Source)

Secondly, the team aimed to reduce hesitation among its visitors by addressing the importance of immediate action. Rather than discussing the above benefits in a more hypothetical manner, the site’s copy was adjusted to address the idea that every night spent tossing and turning is another night visitors will never get back.

Lastly, the team tweaked some rather ambiguous copy comparing Amerisleep’s products to its competitors’ and made it more clear.

Originally, the website had made claims such as “No mattress is more carefully engineered.” The problem, here, is that this could be interpreted as “No mattress is more carefully engineered—but many are engineered equally as carefully as ours.”

The new copy read:

“Our innovative and proprietary materials let us build one of the most comfortable mattresses ever”

Much stronger, no?

Again, these relatively minor tweaks had major implications for Amerisleep: That 13.9% increase in conversion rate we mentioned equated to millions of dollars in added revenue over the course of the next year .

The overarching takeaway here is to write your copy with your audience in mind at all times.

This means:

• Ensuring they understand the true value your product will bring to their lives, and what it will enable them to do or accomplish
• Instilling a sense of urgency in your visitors, so they not only understand what they have to gain from using your product, but also what they have to lose by not using it
• Double- (triple-, and quadruple-) checking your copy to be absolutely certain it means what you want it to mean—and that your visitors will interpret it in the same way

[eCommerce case study #5] Reduce website friction: Company Folders increase conversion by 68%

Company Folders is an established business but had a website that their CEO admitted was “obviously last year”, which is putting it gently.

The main problem they wanted to remedy was their online quote function. This is a vital step in their marketing funnel, so making the process as smooth as possible was essential to ultimately driving more sales for the business.

This sounds a simple task but with over 15 million product combinations, the current quoting system was highly complex. Further to this, there was a very high rate of prospects dropping out of the form partially completed.

Intuitively they assumed that getting the form onto a single page would help get prospects through the process, but after surveying their best customers, they realized that a redesign was necessary. 

They took a cumbersome single step process with lots of options and broke it up into a multi-step bite size process (pictured below). Doing this resulted in a whopping 67.68% increase in total quotes .

(Company folders website)

Take home message #3

Breaking down a complicated system into manageable smaller steps can help keep people focused and increase conversion . Though additional clicks can often be seen as new opportunities to lose customers, the Company Folders experience tells us that streamlining to shorter stepped forms is the way to go right now.

Going Direct-to-Consumer: The Definitive Guide

The definitive guide to going direct to consumer.

[eCommerce case study #6] Try cross selling products: Furniture retailer increased its AOV by 4.6% in 41 days

(Note: For this study, the company did not wish to be named, so we will, of course, respect their privacy)

Perhaps the only thing better than getting potential customers to convert in the first place is getting them to add even more items to their cart before converting.

Our anonymous furniture company knows this—which is why they had been aiming to cross-sell a conditioning kit to customers purchasing leather furniture from their online store.

While sales of the company’s “main” products (i.e., furniture) were pretty decent, sales of these smaller complementary items weren’t all that great. The main problem was that most customers simply weren’t even aware the company offered the conditioning kit in the first place. Basically, the only way they would be exposed to the product is if they were to actively browse for it on the company’s website.

(We should also note that the price of the item being cross-sold costs only about 6% of the company’s average order value, while still adding a ton of value to the main product. In other words, making the additional purchase should have been a no-brainer.)

Knowing they needed to do a better job promoting such smaller-ticket items, the company decided to include a call-to-action directly within the shopping cart page when customers added an applicable big-ticket item to their cart.

So, the page went from looking like this:

(Your Shopping Cart | Source)

...to looking like this:

( Your Shopping Cart | Source)

Customers were then able to add the supplementary item to their cart with a single click (by clicking the plus sign), and could also visit the smaller item’s product page by clicking anywhere else within the pink bar.

The results were nothing short of amazing: As per Growth Rock’s data , the company’s average order value had increased by $55 (4.6%) in only 41 days . This equates to an additional $180,000 in monthly revenu e!

The first takeaway, here, is that successfully cross-selling relevant items that add value to your bigger-ticket items (and that add value to your customer experience ) can have a major impact on your overall revenues.

But simply offering such supplementary products isn’t enough on its own. You also need to promote these items specifically as supplementary to the more valuable and expensive items you offer.

(For example, it’s more likely that consumers visiting a furniture eCommerce site will purchase leather cleaner if they’re in the market for leather furniture. That being the case, you’d want to focus on promoting the product specifically to these individuals.)

Going along with this, you also need to present your cross-sell offer at just the right time to get your customers to bite. Here, the company did so as visitors showed a high probability of making a large purchase — a prime moment to add extra value to their overall experience with the brand.

[eCommerce case study #7] Reduce clutter and distractions: Taloon.com ditched social buttons

Taloon.com got caught up in the trend towards social proof, with "Like” and "Share“ icons on their product pages. However, they noticed unusually low conversions on pages with those social sharing buttons. 

To test what was going on they created two variants of the same page with and without the social share icons.

(Taloon.com website)

They assumed that by de-cluttering the page, it would keep customers focused on the task at hand - checking out.

The results?

“Pages without social share icons saw an improved “add to cart” click-through by 12% ”

Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right. Always put yourself in the mindset of your customer, and keep them focused on the main task you want them to complete. Declutter pages with unnecessary actions to focus on making the sale.

[Ecommerce case study #8] Use influencers to reach customers: Gwynnie Bee saw 5.85% CTR from Youtube influencer

By now, you’re probably well aware of how effective influencer marketing can be in spreading brand awareness and social proof, and increasing engagement among your target audience members.

A few years ago, rental clothing e-retailer Gwynnie Bee realized this exact same thing. While the team had experienced a decent amount of success using a number of other marketing strategies (such as Facebook Ads), they knew they could be generating a lot more business than they were.

So, the company partnered with Reelio to get the ball rolling.

Working with Reelio, Gwynnie Bee began digging through YouTube’s massive database of influencers in search of those who aligned with the clothing company’s target market.

(Search results for "plus size" on Youtube)

The team’s first order of business was to create a list of potential candidates who fit the “surface-level” characteristics of their target market. This meant finding influencers who were female, aged 18 or older, and who typically wore clothing of sizes 10-32.

Now, here’s where Gwynnie Bee diverged from the “typical” path most brands take. Rather than looking specifically for individuals who often worked with other fashion companies, GB also considered those whose audience overlapped with their own. This meant looking at influencers who create content related to more tangential topics, such as lifestyle, accessories, food, and more.

The team then developed guidelines for their chosen influencers, which enabled them to create content that was authentic and non-scripted—but that also aligns with Gwynnie Bee’s overall marketing goals, as well. In addition to creating content to be presented on the influencer’s channel, GB’s influencers also created a virtual “closet” on the brand’s website to showcase the specific items they loved most.

The results of Gwynnie Bee’s influencer campaigns were...well...pretty darn good. While the average click-through rate of all influencer campaigns hovers around the 2% mark, GB’s campaigns saw a CTR of 5.85% — nearly three times the average .

If you’re just getting started with influencer marketing, the main thing to focus on is finding content creators with an engaged audience full of consumers who align in some way with your own target market. They don’t have to overlap entirely, but you, of course, want to be sure that the people who end up seeing your products will have a genuine appreciation for, and interest in, your brand.

As far as content creation goes , you’ll want to provide your influencer’s with almost completely free rein in order to ensure authenticity. This will communicate to your influencer’s audience the idea that the influencer actually uses your products, and aren’t simply promoting them because they’re getting paid for it.

Finally, you might also consider inviting your influencers to create content on your channels as well as their own platforms. Again, this will prove to their audience that they truly are superfans of your brand who actively engage with everything your company has to offer.

[eCommerce case study #9] Reduce risk of purchase: Express Watches provides authenticity stamp

This is a classic problem for online stores; Do you boast the lowest price or the most authentic products ?

The team at Express Watches were debating whether to communicate a ‘lowest price guarantee’ versus a stamp of authenticity on their website. They tested variants with both, each telling a different story about the clientele: bargain hunters vs aficionados. The results were pretty surprising.

(Lowest prices vs highest authenticity)

By labeling the site with a badge of authenticity, Express Watches saw an increase in online sales of 107% . A huge differential from the price based messaging, simply from a little seal of authenticity.

 You may think you know what your audience wants, but testing out some alternate value proposition could surprise you.

[eCommerce case study #10] Use events to drive sales: eCommerce companies saw a 27% spike during football world cup

The Soccer/Football World Cup is not only the most-watched sporting event on television of the 21 st century – it is the most-watched event of any kind, period.

Needless to say, such an enormous audience makes for some major opportunities for eCommerce companies all over the world.

Of course, it also made for heft competition for brands operating in niches like sporting goods, clothing, and memorabilia.

As SEMRush explains, the brands that came out on top were the ones who:

• Increased their presence on the right channels (specifically, social media),
• Adjusted their ad copy to target soccer fans from specific nations (e.g. whose teams were making a run for the World Cup)
• Developed relevant and valuable offers to address time-sensitivity (e.g. fast and free shipping to ensure orders were received before the Wolrd Cup had ended)

The opportunistic initiatives led to some MASSIVE revenues for eCommerce companies. In Brazil, eCommerce purchases spiked by $16.6 BILLION, or 27% above the average . After Germany ended up winning, German-based eCommerce activity increased by a whopping 75%!

First and foremost – and this goes any business, online or brick-and-mortar – you need to recognize an opportunity when it comes up and strike when the iron’s hot.

With this in mind, it’s worth noting that Brazillian-based eCommerce activity dropped by 17% immediately once the national team was eliminated from the tournament.

As far as recognizing these opportunities, you’ll want to keep an eye on upcoming events – be it a sports tournament, music festival, fashion show, etc. – that relate, in some way, to your brand’s offerings.

The goal is to “piggyback” off of the hype created by these events and market your products to those who are attending or engaged with the event in some way or another.

There are two main ways to go about this:

You might simply do as the brands mentioned above did, and ramp up your marketing initiatives throughout the timespan of the event, or, if possible, reach out to the host of the event to see if they’d be interested in partnering up in some way. This might mean sponsoring the event (in lieu of upping your ad spend) or even setting up a pop-up shop at the actual event

[eCommerce case study #11] Remove distractions: Underwater Audio bump sales by 41%

Underwater Audio had a problem with visitors who were in the middle of their sales funnel, researching specific products but then dropping off at the comparison page. When they noticed this leak they decided to get to the bottom of it. 

Here are the old and new versions of the page. At first glance, they don’t look too different, but the devil is in the detail.

(Underwater Audio website page comparison)

The original one was a bit more cluttered with the table formatting breaking up the flow of information. To test what the problem was, they redesigned the comparison page to make it simpler and more streamlined.

As their CEO said:

“The (rather) unattractive table had information in terse phrases organized in no particular fashion (activity, seal, size, features, warranty, depth). The paragraphs continued below the fold and essentially repeated the table, with only a few unique additions hidden in the text. In short, it was not the most engaging page!”

The new version did away with the data tables, streamlined the text, and put everything above the fold. 

The result? The redesigned page had an increase in online sales of 40.81% .

To quote Occam's Razor, “the simplest solution is often the best” and the simpler flow worked wonders for Underwater Audio. Find pages in your pipeline where users are dropping off and see how you can simplify them to focus your customers.

[eCommerce case study #12] Get customers to take the next step: Kettlebell Kings’s takes advantage of user generated content to drive sales

In yet another case of “x isn’t working as well as we thought, let’s try something else,” the owners of fitness equipment startup Kettlebell Kings switched to a more organic approach after realizing their Google Ads campaigns were costing the company way too much money.

The team’s main focus: Instagram.

Their initiative started simply enough, creating instructional content focused on teaching their audience how to get the most out of their workout sessions. 

As engagement began to soar, the team also noticed that its customers had also begun creating their own content featuring Kettlebell Kings’ products—which led the company to begin using this UGC to their advantage.

Hailing from Ireland, Paul is a fan of good food and coffee. For Core dna he’s responsible for Partnerships both with agencies and 3 rd  party integrators.  

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The best ecommerce case studies (63+ success examples).

In this article

One of the best ways to learn how to grow your ecommerce business is to model those who have done it.

The problem?

Without the right connections, it's hard to get insider information on how these ecommerce sites became so successful.

You may want to know the details about marketing strategy , search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, and best customer service practices that these ecommerce businesses use to explode their sales.

You can now peer into the minds of these ecommerce businesses, right from the comfort of your own home.

Through detailed case studies of successful ecommerce companies.

That’s why we have done the hard work of sorting out the BEST real-life examples there are, complete with insight on everything from their marketing campaigns to their chosen ecommerce platform .

Take a peek into what these ecommerce stores are doing to succeed and see what you can apply to your online store.

(Oh, before you jump in, perhaps you'd like to hear from some ecommerce experts. If so, check out our post on the best ecommerce podcasts ).

The Best ecommerce Case Studies and Business Success Stories

1. how mellow made $200,000+ in preorder sales in less than a month.

Mellow is a company that makes a magical kitchen robot that syncs with your smartphone to cook for you at your convenience. The founder, Ze Pinto Ferreira was interning at Braun when he realized everything he knew (mechanical engineering, food, product design) could intersect to create impactful work.

He knew the sous-vide he wanted to create should change home cooking dramatically, but he also knew he couldn’t do it alone.

That’s when he set off to find a co-founder, Catarina who was working as a freelance designer.

He managed to convince her to use her talents on a potentially groundbreaking company and the two of them built Mellow together.

What They Did To Succeed

Using Trycelery.com as their pre-order platform, Mellow was launched to great success. They collected a total of $64,000 in pre-orders in ONLY 3 days and eventually made $200,000+ in less than a month.

Key Takeaway

In the case study, Ferreira mentioned how he marketed Mellow by reaching out directly to 100+ reporters. Given the background of both Ferreira and Catarina, though, PR seemed to be out of their reach.

This is where the classic Paul Graham business strategy comes into play. To get your startup off the ground, you have to do things that don’t scale. Don’t know how to do PR? Teach yourself, reach out to reporters, and get your product or service in publications like TechCrunch and TheNextWeb.

That's exactly what the founders of Mellow did, a process that earned them six figures within the first month of launching.

2. SumoJerky - The Results Of The 24-Hour Business Challenge

Noah Kagan is known for starting multiple companies and growing all of them to 7- and 8-figures in revenue (including the budgeting startup Mint.com). As part of a 24-Hour Business challenge to prove to anyone that they can start a business today, Noah asked his followers which business he should start so he could show he would make $1,000 a day.

The end result?

A beef jerky subscription company that made more than $1,000 in 24 hours.

What He Did To Succeed

Noah made $3,030 in total revenue in 24 hours.

• Made a basic budget so he could work backwards to find out how much he needed to sell to make $1000.
• Created a customer avatar so he knew who he should target
• Started reaching out to people who he thought fit the customer avatar

Not only did he complete the challenge, but he also exceeded it (not after downing 4 cups of coffee though.)

Create a customer avatar to know who your target audience is. It’s astounding how many businesses do not know who their ideal customer is. Find out who is already buying your product or service and then reach out to more people like them. This is at the core of Noah's business process and what makes him such a notable success story.

3. How Two Friends Turned Up The Heat And Sold $170K Worth Of Spicy Honey in 10 Months

Honey? Yes!

Chilli peppers? Yes!

Together? Um.. what?

If you’re confused, don’t be. Spicy honey is the brainchild of MixedMade, a company that makes delicious products by mixing unexpected ingredients together.

Their first ever product – Bees Knees Spicy Honey – combines raw honey with a special blend of chilli peppers to create a balance of sweet mellowness and spicy intensity.

(Yum… Now I want some for myself!)

Their first $1,000 came from emailing their personal contacts and posting to their own personal Facebook pages.

Then, they made a list of potential press targets and aggressively pursued them.

This worked to great success.

A few modest mentions on smaller sites like Huckberry later grew into features on Uncrate, The Kitchn, CNBC, the Today Show, Bon Appetite, Esquire and Vanity Fair.

End result?

The press coverage exploded their business, making them the ultimate success story.

Everyone loves being featured on national media, but the press begins from the smaller guys.

In Trust Me, I’m Lying, media genius Ryan Holiday discusses the concept of “trading up the chain”, where larger publications often take content from smaller publications.

Start by getting yourself featured on smaller blogs and publications, and slowly “trade up the chain” to bigger features on national media. The return on investment of this particular marketing strategy is tenfold.

4. How Opena Case Hit 189% Of Their $15,000 Kickstarter Target And Built A Million Dollar Business

Pretty iPhone cases are aplenty, but truly useful and practical iPhone cases..?

That’s rare.

Meet Opena. Opena is an iPhone case with a slide-out bottle opener.

If you’ve ever fumbled at a party looking for a bottle opener, or wondered if your teeth were strong enough to crack that bottle of Heineken open…

Opena is the solution.

Opena launched on Kickstarter in June 2011 and successfully raised $28,303 (surpassing their initial $15,000 target.)

How did they do it?

They built a tribe of early adopters before they even launched the campaign. When they launched the campaign, they rewarded the early backers with early bird rewards, who then gleefully spread the word for them.

Within half an hour of going live, the early bird backers were all sold out.

The takeaway I want to highlight here has nothing to do with Opena’s excellent customer acquisition tactics. It does, however, have to do with the founder Chris Peters.

Just take a look at his bio:

• Studied Industrial Design right out of high school.
• Spent 4 years working at a large firm that specialized in medical machines. He was involved in industrial design work, prototyping and graphic interfaces.
• Then worked at various design consultancies.
• Took a year off to wakeboard.
• Worked for a much smaller design consultancy, which helped him get a sense of what it’s like to run a small business.
• Sold software for a year to learn how to do sales.
• Ran his own design consultancy for 3 years.

This means that he had at least a decade of experience before even founding the company. This also means that he had deep expertise – both to identify a problem worth solving and developing a solution to fix the problem.

The biggest business problem we see is that most people make the jump to entrepreneurship without understanding that many successful entrepreneurs had built up deep domain expertise in their fields before starting a company. This makes it difficult to identify your strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur, which is an essential ability to have when launching a business.

5. #TheGreatBuild Project

Richard Lazazzera was part of Shopify ’s Growth Team, where he helped the platform grow from 60,000 to 200,000 merchants. A Better Lemonade Stand is his blog, where he shares comprehensive guides on how to build and grow eCommerce businesses.

#TheGreatBuild was a project he undertook to inspire others to build their own eCommerce sites. He built an eCommerce company – Finch Goods Co. – and detailed the entire journey on #TheGreatBuild (14 chapters long!)

Although Richard withheld his sales reports (so we don’t know how much he actually made), he did write a case study with an incredibly detailed step-by-step guide on how to start, brand and build your own eCommerce store.

Richard considers these 6 elements crucial to your business strategy for your eCommerce store — and he addressed it by introducing several apps:

• Up-Selling at Checkout
• Email Capture/Newsletter Signup
• Abandon Cart Emails
• Referrals ( Download ReferralCandy for your Shopify store here .)
• Exit Intent Offer
• Retargeting

The 6 elements that Richard mentioned in his post are fantastic. There are usually some holes that eCommerce entrepreneurs miss out in their rush to build their store and sell quickly, which Richard has kindly pointed out here.

Fix those areas and you should see your sales soar.

BONUS: How to Setup a Referral Program For Your Shopify Store

6 . Social Media Marketing: How A Small E-Commerce Site Attracted 293,000 Facebook Fans

Diamond Candles is a company that offers scented, soy-based candles that have a ring at the bottom. This has resulted in their customers spreading word-of-mouth about them due to the excitement of potentially winning the prize.

Instead of purchasing ads online to drive sales to their business, their predominant marketing strategy has been to utilize referrals and social media.

The key strategy behind their success has been user-generated content by its customer base.

Without spending a single cent on ads, these photos grew the company’s Facebook Fan Page to 469,661 fans while also boosting their product page conversion rate by 13%.

Knowing that more customer-contributed photos essentially made them more successful, they then created an environment of encouraging their customers to share more photos.

Here’s what they did:

• A call-to-action found on the candle urging customers to take a photo with the ring and share it on social media, exposing their brand to even more potential customers (for free)
• Giveaways that encourage customers to create and share images for a chance to win free products, developing customer loyalty
• Share all the photos gathered on social media, creating an impression that it is normal to share Diamond Candle-related photos

Your customers are your greatest ambassadors. Find a way to incentivize them to spread word-of-mouth for you (or use ReferralCandy ). This not only increases your reach to potential customers but also improves customer loyalty.

7 . How To Create a $4,000 Per Month Muse In 5 Days

It’s Noah again! (Told you he’s famous.)

In this case study, Noah retells how he helped Daniel Bliss, a postal worker, turn his hobby into a real eCommerce business making $4,000 a month. The purpose? Help Daniel quit his day-job.

Daniel started his business by solving his own problem — neck pain while belaying.

Prior to meeting Noah, Daniel had already sourced a manufacturer and set up his own website to sell his shades. He was also off to a good start – having sold 12 pairs of shades to people in his climbing group.

But here’s the best part:

After meeting Noah, he HIT his goal.

Noah taught him the same thing he did for his SumoJerky business (detailed above):

• Reverse-engineer the number of sales you need
• Try different tactics to make it work

The purpose of this was to help Daniel figure out what marketing tactics work… and double down on them. In just 5 days, Daniel and Noah tried at least 10+ tactics and found his most successful channel.

The result:

Daniel received a message from a large online site, who placed an order of $4,200!

This marketing case study is less about the specific marketing strategy so much as it's about the entire business process. You will never know what will work for your business. Reverse-engineer the number of sales you need, try different tactics, review them and double down on those that worked for you.

8. How We Built an Ecommerce Business from Scratch and Generated $922.16 in Revenue in 3 Days

Do you need a long time to build an eCommerce business?

Some people believe so. After all, there are a lot of logistics to handle – domain, hosting, website content, pricing, supplier sourcing, launching, branding...

...not to mention the effort of reaching your potential customers with content marketing (and then analyzing it all on Google Analytics).

But WHAT IF you challenged yourself to set something up in 3 days?

Could it be done?

Apparently so.

Richard Lazazzera took up the challenge and proceeded to do everything (from determining what to sell to actually making sales)… in only 3 days.

In total, Richard made $922.16 in total revenue from this little experiment.

He went down every single possible marketing channel one-by-one, tried it and see what results it delivered. In fact, in only 3 days, he tested channels like Reddit, Product Hunt, personal outreach, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

How’s that for fast?

Building an eCommerce store (in fact, any business) is a culmination of multiple small decisions. Make those decisions fast and push forward. You will never discover the results through thinking, only by testing.

9. How To Build A Menswear Brand - An Interview With Owen & Fred

Owen & Fred was a company founded by Mike Arnot after he realised that high-quality yet affordable American-made men’s accessories were not available in the market.

Make your own.

Mike then went on to create an e-commerce business that curates great products and help others like him do the same.

Repeat orders make up 35% of Owen & Fred’s revenue. In their industry, that’s incredible. Almost unbelievable.

That’s because of Owen & Fred values and prizes their customers. They made their products, their marketing campaigns and the entire customer experience amazing.

They even received a compliment from one of their customers: “never purchased from a company that actually delivered a product that amazing.”

Even if you’re an e-commerce store that does drop-shipping or product curation, you still have to ensure that your product(s) is amazing.

An amazing product makes marketing easier (because even great marketing can’t save bad products).

10. E-commerce: Moving beyond shopping cart abandonment nets 65% more checkout conversions

If you thought there were only several kinds of envelopes available, you would be wrong.

(Though I wouldn’t fault you, because I didn’t know myself either.)

Envelopes.com is an eCommerce business that sells almost any type of envelope you can imagine. White, brown, and green are common sights at this online marketplace specifically created for selling envelopes.

Remember what Richard Lazazzera said above in his marketing foundations?

One of them was Abandonment Cart Emails.

Envelopes.com discovered that a significant number of their website visitors visit multiple times before buying. They decided that these groups of visitors were the opportunity to help increase their online sales.

To do this, they sent emails to encourage these visitors to return, which reduced their abandonment rate and improved their conversions.

There are many touchpoints your customers will have with your business. Optimize these touchpoints and improve your sales.

11. How a Small Menswear Brand Utilized Word-of-Mouth to Get Over $420,000 On Kickstarter

Think space tech is cool?

How about something cooler? How about… integrating your clothes with space tech?

Fascinated now..?

That’s what Ministry of Supply did. Ministry of Supply is a menswear apparel brand that infuses fashion with space tech.

Their first-ever product, the Apollo features Phase-Changing Materials adapted from NASA spacesuits that help regulate your body temperature.

Trading up the chain.

Instead of directly approaching massive tech blogs like TechCrunch, Ministry of Supply started small. They pitched 150+ product-relevant blogs with customized emails, and got themselves featured, raising $30,000 in 5 days for their Kickstarter campaign.

Of course, as the above example of MixedMade shows, trading up the chain means bigger publications will follow the trail of smaller publications.

And naturally… that happened for MoS.

TechCrunch and Forbes later featured them — and that skyrocketed their Kickstarter funding to $400,000.

Find a unique angle to your product that everyone can easily remember — which will encourage your customers to “remark” about your product to their friends.

Their first product, Apollo was remarkable because it was clothes infused with space tech.

Their second product, a pressure-mapping sock, was eventually re-positioned to be “coffee socks” because everyone remembered they used coffee beans to remove the odours in the socks.

Make it easy to share, and people will.

12. How I Built an Online T-Shirt Business and Made $1,248.90 in 3 Weeks

Shopify’s core value on their blog is “do something, tell people.” (And of course, promote their own platform.)

That’s why it’s in their interest to show how easy it is to set up an eCommerce store in minutes and get sales in as little as 3 days (as seen in example #8.) But it’s also to our delight that we get to see firsthand how to build something from scratch.

(By the way, it's also as easy to set up ReferralCandy for your Shopify store .)

This time around, Shopify staff Tucker Schreiber took on the challenge of building a T-shirt business in a month.

In less than a month, ThinkPup, the store they set up generated $1,248.90 in revenue. Not fantastic, but a great start for a new store.

Tucker tried a variety of online marketing channels to acquire customers and found that he got the most sales from Reddit and Instagram.

This shows that you don’t have to overthink your marketing channels. Sometimes posting to free places like Reddit (where people already gather) will help you get sales.

Always test new marketing channels for your product. While you may think that [insert your niche’s favourite channel] is the way to go because that’s how people have done it, you will actually never know which channel will be profitable for you.

13. How An Ex-Con Turned His Life Around And Built an $80k per Month Ecommerce Business

As Robert himself mentions in this case study, the odds seemed stacked against him.

He was an ex-felon, he didn’t have a lot of experience in sales and marketing and he wasn’t in a great financial position.

However, something about being an ex-felon drove him to want to be different and stand out. And that’s how he eventually created National Parks Depot, an eCommerce business that sells outdoor adventure gears and apparels.

Facebook Ads.

Starting with a small ad budget of $60, he got a return of nearly $1,000 in sales. He then doubled the ad spend and got back double his ROI. He eventually scaled up his ad spend and hit $80,000 in sales.

Don’t be afraid to spend money to promote your products. Even without much money, Robert was willing to invest to test if Facebook Ads would work for his business.

Invest money to get more sales, so test to see if paid advertising can work for your business.

14. How I Imported Gaming Glasses With Alibaba and Made $2,416.51 In 5 Weeks

This is the another Shopify challenge Shopify employees took on. In Example #8, we saw how they started a matcha green tea company from scratch in ONLY 3 days. In Example #13, we saw how they began selling t-shirts online in LESS than a month.

This time around, another Shopify employee Corey Ferreira took on the challenge and decided to set up an online eCommerce store selling blue-light blocking glasses for gamers.

The result this time?

$2,416.51 in 5 weeks.

Similar to the rest of the guys who took up challenges at Shopify, he ran through multiple marketing channels pretty quickly.

The one that generated the most sales for him was setting up affiliate commissions and getting influencers to help promote his product.

( Pro-Tip: Supercharge your influencer marketing, and get more word-of-mouth sales with ReferralCandy .)

Are there people who command massive audiences in your niche? Reach out to them and propose an affiliate deal, and get them to promote your product to their audience.

15. How One Ecommerce Entrepreneur Explored New Sales Channels – And Took Revenues From $8K to $96K per Month

Eating healthily is kind of a chore.

We all know we need to eat healthier, sleep more and work out, but we do none of that. Because we’re too busy.

Enter Raw Generation.

Raw Generation is a company that makes drinking raw, unpasteurized juice from fresh fruits and vegetables more convenient.

Deal sites.

After initially promoting on social media and getting no traction, Jessica, the founder was introduced to Lifebooker, a deal site.

After promoting on Lifebooker, they hit a home run.

Majority of Raw Generation’s sales come from deal sites like Groupon, Gilt and Rue La La. (They are no longer using Gilt or Rue La La.)

Once you discover a marketing channel that is working for you, don’t go seeking new marketing channels. Double down on it and make it work for you over and over again.

16. 80/20 Validation: The Cheap And Fast Way To Prove A Business

[caption id="attachment_22471" align="aligncenter" width="600"]

Image: Kettle and Fire [/caption]

What the bleep is bone broth? Well, It is a broth simmered from bones -- and it has been touted as a superfood by the paleo community.

It’s not easily accessible online.

Well, at least until Kettle & Fire came onto the scene.

Kettle & Fire became the first-ever company to make a unique shelf-stable beef bone broth. This particular bone broth need not be frozen until it is opened.

By making sure the product was something people wanted.

Yes, bone broth was growing in popularity.

But the bigger entrepreneur question is not about popularity, but “will anyone put money down for this product?”

Justin and Nick made sure of that by throwing up a landing page and driving Bing traffic to it (classic Four Hour Work Week-style.) The end result? A simple experiment like this netted them $500 in sales, which confirmed their entire business model.

Never assume your product is something the market will want. Always test to find out (be it through messaging people, sending paid traffic etc.)

Bonus #1: ReferralCandy Case Studies

We (ReferralCandy) have been accumulating case studies from eCommerce entrepreneurs from multiple industries to show you how they have succeeded.

Here’s the list of case studies we’ve done for you:

• Ecommerce Interviews
• Powder City
• BlissLights
• Magical Butter
• 1950 Collective

Bonus #2: BigCommerce Case Studies

Our aim here in this blog post is to create the most comprehensive resource you can refer to when you want to be inspired or simply to understand how successful eCommerce entrepreneurs think.

Caveat: These case studies mostly include promoting BigCommerce’s services… but look past that and you’ll discover gems.

• BombTech Golf
• Spearmint LOVE
• Exxel Outdoors
• Bohemian Traders
• Silk Road Teas
• Bulk Apothecary
• The Pink Lily Boutique
• Di Bruno Bros
• Sportbike Track Gear
• Twirly Girl
• US Patriot Tactical
• Con Olio Oils & Vinegars
• Raven and Lily
• LaQuan Smith
• Flash Tattoos
• Pappy & Company

Bonus #3: Reddit Case Studies

Reddit is an under-utilized resource for learning about successful eCommerce case studies.

In fact, hidden in the subreddit r/entrepreneur are countless “unknown” yet successful entrepreneurs who are more than willing to share their wins and lessons with a larger audience. Here are some of the most popular posts on Reddit that detailed step-by-step of how they succeeded:

• The Inner Workings Of A Subscription Box Company. From A 4K Site Purchase On Reddit to Close To $100,000 In Revenue In Less than 6 months. How We Did It, And What’s Next!
• I created DicksByMail.com, went viral, and sold the company before even shipping out my second round of orders. AMA
• How I literally started an Amazon business in about 1 month for about $1K
• 516 days ago at 20 years old I quit my job, dropped out of school, and founded an online hippie shop. This is how it turned out.
• Beardbrand's guide to building a brand

As previously said, we aim to make this list the most comprehensive eCommerce case studies list found on the Internet.

That being said…

Did we miss out on any? Which case study do you think we should include?

Let us know in the comments!

P.S. If you enjoyed reading this, subscribe to our newsletter where we share our latest articles and helpful resources .

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Si Quan is ReferralCandy's Content Marketing Manager. He is also the co-founder of BreakDance Decoded , an online breakdance training company. He loves standup comedy, and has a dream to visit at least 100 countries in his lifetime.

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Top 10 Inspiring E-Commerce Case Studies To Learn From

Last updated: September 28 2024

Maintaining relevance should be a primary concern in the fiercely competitive realm of digital commerce.

With that in mind, in this article, we’ve compiled the following eight real-world e-commerce business case studies to assist you in attracting more customers and boosting revenue.

• Key Takeaways
• The article highlights 10 businesses that enhanced their e-commerce performance using Bloomreach solutions, including Bosch, Topdanmark, The Vitamin Shoppe, Albertsons, HD Supply, My Jewellerry, Debra’s, Burrow, Rakuten 24, and Al-Bahar.

Bosch Power Tools, part of the global Bosch Group, understands the importance of keeping pace with industry trends, especially those influenced by Amazon. Their case study about e-commerce is among the most famous examples of how an eCommerce brand overcomes its challenges.

Given their multiple international sites, Bosch recognized the need for a tailored digital experience for its customers. Their main challenge was offering unique experiences for each country while presenting a cohesive global presence.

Bosch established uniform technology systems and processes to address this challenge. This wasn’t just about control but about boosting momentum in every region.

Bosch then adopted a headless commerce approach, paired with Bloomreach Content. Unlike traditional systems, headless commerce separates the back and front ends. Combined with Bloomreach Content, this strategy allows Bosch to update the front end without disrupting operations, making processes more efficient.

As a result, Bosch can now quickly introduce features worldwide, aligning with the company’s goals and offering custom experiences from one country to another.

Additionally, Bosch has teamed up with Bloomreach and SAP. The Bloomreach Commerce Experience Cloud integrates seamlessly with the SAP Commerce Cloud, a key component of SAP’s Industry Cloud Program available on the SAP Store. This partnership enables Bosch to offer personalized experiences across all channels for every customer journey.

Topdanmark, Denmark’s second-largest insurance company, is committed to managing insurance and pension schemes for its customers while building trust. As it advances in the digital realm with Bloomreach Content, Topdanmark encountered challenges common to many financial services companies. 

The main challenges of Tondanmark include dealing with cumbersome legacy systems filled with customer data and creating custom customer elements rapidly. In choosing a platform for their digital experience, Topdanmark sought a solution that met three critical criteria:

• Ongoing product development.
• An easier way to share content across multiple brands.
• A customer-centric online experience.

Solutions  

Topdanmark sought a continually updated platform with a vibrant developer community capable of integrating with top-tier technologies and enabling its developers to enhance user experiences. Thus, they turned their attention to open-architecture CMS platforms.

For them, flexibility was crucial. They needed to test and assess new features for customers quickly. This includes letting customers easily enhance their primary insurance coverage. After seeing vital positive feedback, they made this feature a permanent option.

In their search for a platform that supported rapid innovation, Topdanmark found Bloomreach Content to be the perfect fit. With Bloomreach Content, Topdanmark smoothly shifted 500 URLs over 13 two-week periods. They also set up a responsive CMS designed for current and future efficiency.

• The Vitamin Shoppe

The Vitamin Shoppe®, a global wellness retailer, offers customers reliable products, advice, and services for their wellness journey. They observed that, although their search function efficiently helped customers find specific items, there was room to enhance their category browsing experience.

A Health Enthusiast would help uncertain customers by recommending products tailored to their needs in physical stores. Yet, before using Bloomreach, The Vitamin Shoppe had no online system to offer this level of personalized guidance.

To address and optimize its category pages, The Vitamin Shoppe incorporated Bloomreach Search and Merchandising to entice more site visitors into exploring and searching for products.

Upon deploying Bloomreach Discovery, The Vitamin Shoppe witnessed an uplift of 11% in the add-to-cart rate for category pages. Additionally, there was a 2% surge in revenue per visitor (RPV) for those who initiated their journey via these category pages. 

In the realm of search pages, after a mere two weeks post-implementation, The Vitamin Shoppe observed a 7.73% enhancement in the search add-to-cart rate, a 6.51% ascent in the search average order value (AOV), and a 5.69% rise in RPV (Source: bloomreach ).

These advancements boosted The Vitamin Shoppe’s revenue and enriched the shopping experience for their customers, further aiding them in their pursuit of wellness objectives.

Albertsons – an e-commerce case study

Albertsons, a company committed to delivering a consistent and unique omnichannel customer experience, has always been at the forefront of e-commerce innovation. As one of the first grocery chains to initiate online delivery in the 2000s, Albertsons has consistently strived to offer customers personalized content that enhances brand loyalty, making it one of the most innovative grocery brands in the market.

Albertsons saw that over half of e-commerce sales came from search and knew they needed better search results for their loyal customers.

In physical stores, shoppers usually start with a list and know where items are. Online, they begin with a search. Bloomreach Discovery’s Semantic Search uses natural language processing, detailed attribute extraction, and previous visitor actions to show the most relevant products.

Thanks to Bloomreach Discovery, Albertsons used artificial intelligence to give sharper search results, making their brand experience more personal for shoppers. Beyond tailored search results, Albertsons also began suggesting products using Bloomreach’s algorithms.

After adding Bloomreach Discovery, Albertsons saw a 25% jump in the speed of building shopping baskets, showing that customers found what they wanted faster.

HD Supply, a large company, is updating its digital strategy to address ongoing challenges and better serve customers in today’s digital world. Their e-commerce team looked into their current systems and how customers used them. They found that customers wanted a faster, more dependable way to buy items.

So, HD Supply focused on making it easier for customers to quickly find and buy products, helping them return to their day. A vital part of this was upgrading the add-to-cart feature.

HD Supply realized that using ready-made technology would reduce the need for heavy changes later. So, they picked Bloomreach Discovery for their site search needs.

Understanding customers wanted faster shopping, HD Supply revamped its search feature. Customers can see product details from the search bar and add items to their cart directly.

HD Supply used the Bloomreach algorithm for most search results to lighten their team’s load. The company noticed a 16% rise in search-related revenue thanks to these changes, showing how well the Bloomreach system works.

• My Jewellery

My Jewellery – an e-commerce case study

In a world where consumers are increasingly concerned about data protection, businesses are becoming more cautious about data collection. This includes My Jewellery, a Netherlands-based clothing and jewelry retailer. My Jewellery aims to enhance the customer experience for its loyal patrons while respecting their personal data privacy. 

My Jewellery used Bloomreach Engagement to lead in collecting zero-party data. They introduced a unique approach that engages customers while valuing their privacy.

With their “style profile test,” customers simply indicate if they like a shown item. This game boosts customer experience without compromising privacy. Items appear individually; customers click a heart or X to share their tastes. Based on this, My Jewellery creates a personalized style profile.

After sharing an email, customers get their style profile based on their choices. This method has proven beneficial. Emails using style profile data had a 20% higher open rate than regular campaigns, highlighting the importance of such innovative data collection.

DeBra’s, an Australian company specializing in women’s undergarments, lingerie, and swimwear since 2000, has seen substantial growth in online and offline channels over the past 21 years. 

The advancement of modern technologies led to DeBra’s online business exceeding its expectations, necessitating a new online platform to facilitate future growth. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with the surge in women shopping online, DeBra’s aimed to ensure their online presence could deliver a digital experience equivalent to an in-store fitting.

DeBra’s team identified BigCommerce as the optimal solution for their business, logistics, and marketing needs. BigCommerce’s open API functionality allowed DeBra’s website to easily integrate with other technologies, such as a POS system, enhancing its marketing and customer experience. 

BigCommerce also enabled DeBra’s to launch a virtual fitting service. Their in-store staff serves as virtual assistants in this service, helping customers enjoy a professional, digitally appropriate experience.

Burrow – an e-commerce case study

Burrow, a B2C furniture store established in 2017, was founded to eliminate the inconveniences of traditional furniture shopping. However, once their business achieved $3 million in sales, they encountered system issues with their existing online platform. Their business growth had outpaced their eCommerce solution. 

Additionally, the Burrow team needed practical content management tools that would allow them to update landing pages without requiring extensive technical expertise.

Burrow separated their website’s front and back ends using headless commerce. This approach provided them with the flexibility to create a unique shopping experience. Thanks to a headless CMS, the Burrow team could freely use available templates and customize marketing-focused content as needed. 

They could continually update and adjust content across channels to align with targeted customers. Furthermore, Burrow recognized the importance of offering customers unique logistical features, including the ability to delay orders and require signatures on delivery.

Rakuten 24, an online branch of Japan’s top e-commerce company, Rakuten, sells everyday items like groceries and healthcare products. Seeing the fast rise of mobile shopping, Rakuten 24 aimed to create a top-notch mobile experience for its users.

Although Rakuten 24 is newer to Japanese consumers, pouring a lot of resources into making specific apps for iOS and Android might not be the best move. Instead, they felt a well-designed, user-friendly mobile website could be a more innovative alternative for Rakuten 24’s mobile presence.

Rakuten 24 built a Progressive Web App (PWA) to increase market share and improve user retention to deliver a seamless web experience across all browsers. Their PWA successfully combined the best features of native apps with the extensive reach of the mobile web. Rakuten 24 also provided a detailed guide on manually installing the PWA on Android and iOS devices for mobile web users.

Based in Kuwait, Al-Bahar is a leading supplier of FMCG products, electronics, and office tools from top brands like Unilever and GE. It’s a trusted name in the Middle East. However, despite its strong reputation and heavy website traffic, 

Al-Bahar faced web issues like slow speeds and frequent downtimes. The main causes were poor hosting choices, an outdated CMS, and using Magento 1, which was no longer supported.

Given the website’s needs, a significant overhaul was in order, but this came with risks like data loss and compatibility problems. Al-Bahar needed to be careful.

After teaming up with SimiCart, a recognized PWA development agency, Al-Bahar updated its site based on SimiCart’s guidance. SimiCart suggested transitioning the front end to a Magento PWA and shifting from Magento 1 to Magento 2 for the backend. 

This transition not only ensured data preservation but also boosted the store. With a PWA interface, Al-Bahar enjoys faster speeds, greater adaptability, and a smoother user shopping experience.

• Bottom line

These eCommerce case studies unveil novel strategies and tactics on how others have tackled challenges in the eCommerce field. You can learn from their experiences to overcome challenges while running an eCommerce business. Follow our next articles to explore additional information related to case study email examples or case study questions examples . 

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7 Ecommerce Case Studies To Inspire You

• Feb 12, 2024
• 11 min read

In the highly competitive world of digital commerce , relevancy needs to be a top priority. 

If you’re not consistently meeting consumer expectations, they won’t hesitate to move on to a competitor. Online businesses must constantly be aware of ways to keep customers engaged and coming back.

That’s why we’ve pulled together the following seven   real-world ecommerce case studies to help you get more customers, boost customer loyalty, and increase revenue.

The Vitamin Shoppe Boosts Add-to-Cart Rate With Smarter Search

Business challenge:

The Vitamin Shoppe® is a global specialty retailer and wellness lifestyle company with the mission of providing customers with the most trusted products, guidance, and services to support them on their journeys of lifelong wellness.

The Vitamin Shoppe saw its best revenue data in its search performance, with customers who searched for a specific, desired product on the website finding exactly what they needed. But there was room for growth in its category performance metrics. Customers who were not sure of the exact product they wanted often landed on the category page and browsed products to see which ones fit their specific needs. 

For an in-store customer unsure of what they are looking for, a Health Enthusiast would provide assistance by learning more about the customer and recommending a relevant product. Prior to implementing Bloomreach, The Vitamin Shoppe did not have an intuitive ecommerce platform it was confident could fill in for the Health Enthusiast.

To tackle this challenge, The Vitamin Shoppe implemented Bloomreach Discovery to optimize category pages that convert more site visitors who are learning and browsing for products. 

With Bloomreach Discovery, The Vitamin Shoppe saw an 11% increase in add-to-cart rate on category pages and a 2% increase in revenue per visitor (RPV) for users who started their journey in category pages. 

On search pages, The Vitamin Shoppe experienced a 7.73% increase in search add-to-cart rate, a 6.51% increase in search average order value (AOV), and a 5.69% increase in RPV — all within just two weeks of implementation.

These successes were made possible because of Loomi , Bloomreach’s AI built for ecommerce and backed by 14+ years of relevant industry data. Loomi can automatically optimize category pages, deliver personalized search results, and surface in-depth insights to inform new strategies. 

Thanks to the power of Loomi, The Vitamin Shoppe has been able to reach both potential customers and existing customers and help them on the path to achieving their wellness goals (as well as boosting online sales along the way). 

HD Supply Increases Search Revenue

HD Supply needed to rethink its entire digital strategy. The multi-billion dollar company knew it wasn’t innovating at a fast enough rate. It needed a solution that would allow it to serve its customers in the new digital world.

After conducting some internal research, the ecommerce team realized that buyers wanted to be able to make a purchase quickly and reliably. HD Supply had to be able to facilitate its customers finding the right products fast and ensure that they could order them efficiently and go about their everyday business. 

HD Supply set out to make its buying experience a more optimal one, specifically looking to improve its add-to-cart feature. 

HD Supply wanted to use as much technology out-of-the-box as possible to avoid heavy customization further down the line. That’s why the brand turned to Bloomreach Discovery to open up limitless options with its search bars and merchandising strategies. 

Understanding that HD Supply customers want to complete purchases fast, HD Supply revamped its site search experience and added the ability to “add to cart” directly from the search bar.

Customers now see the product image, part number, price, and an option to add the product to their cart all directly in the search bar. 

HD Supply desired to have technology to reduce some of the workload on its team. It now relies on the Bloomreach algorithm — powered by Loomi — to drive the majority of search results.

With these changes in search, HD Supply experienced a 16% increase in revenue from search on its ecommerce website. This was the result of Loomi at work.

boohooMAN Increases ROI With Personalized SMS Campaigns

The Boohoo Group PLC has a portfolio of 13 market-leading ecommerce brands that use Bloomreach Engagement — including boohoo, PrettyLittleThing, Debenhams, and boohooMAN — to bring fashion, shoes, accessories, beauty, and homeware to millions of customers across the globe. 

While SMS marketing has proven to be a successful marketing tactic for many businesses, boohooMAN was experiencing some frustrations when it first began sending SMS campaigns to customers. 

With its previous SMS campaign solution, boohooMAN used SMS mostly as a one-off channel on big shopping days such as Black Friday. Its SMS campaigns sent non-personalized messages to unsegmented customers in the United Kingdom and Ireland to showcase big offers. 

These communications were sent to largely inactive customers and the return on investment was subpar (never better than 2x on any given occasion), as boohooMAN’s former SMS solution did not have the same targeting capabilities as Bloomreach Engagement.

Bloomreach Engagement turned boohooMAN’s SMS campaigns challenge into a success worth celebrating. 

Rather than using SMS campaigns as a one-off, boohooMAN incorporated SMS into its omnichannel strategy and is now sending personalized campaigns to segmented audiences. The company tapped into the wave of the future with these campaigns, using the combination of Bloomreach’s powerful customer data engine  and Loomi to craft SMS campaigns that meet customers where they are in the customer lifecycle . 

Overall, boohooMAN has generated a 5x overall return on investment with SMS since adopting Bloomreach Engagement for these campaigns. 

With its birthday campaign flow specifically targeting customers who aren’t opted in for email communications, boohooMAN has generated a 25x return on investment. 

On Black Friday, the brand earned a 7x ROI after being more strategic about its messaging, personalization, and segmentation with customers located in the United Kingdom — a boost that shows just how impactful Bloomreach can be in driving customer engagement.  

My Jewellery Personalizes the Customer Experience With Zero-Party Data

As consumers have become increasingly concerned about data protection, ecommerce brands everywhere are becoming cautious about data collection. This includes My Jewellery, a clothing and jewelry retailer based in The Netherlands. 

My Jewellery wanted to optimize the customer experience it was giving its loyal customers while respecting their personal data privacy. The best way to do this? Embrace the zero-party data movement.

My Jewellery used Bloomreach Engagement to create a fun method for collecting zero-party data that’s both entertaining to its customer base and respectful to data privacy. 

With “the style profile test,” My Jewellery has upgraded customer personalization , increased customer service, and curbed the need for risk taking in data collection. The style profile test is a game that optimizes the customer experience without invading privacy simply by letting customers decide whether or not they like an item that is being shown to them. 

My Jewellery’s items are shown sequentially and customers make a decision on each item presented by simply clicking on the heart or X to signify their decision. After a decision is made, My Jewellery is able to offer customers a personal style profile filled with items that individual customers will like based on communicated preferences. 

After a customer provides an email address, the results of the test are calculated and the customer is provided with a personalized style profile.

Best of all? The test was a great success. For emails that were personalized with style profile data, the open rate was around 20% higher than a typical email campaign. This shows the value of going the extra mile with creativity in data collection methods.

MALL.CZ’s Astounding Personalized Video Campaign

MALL GROUP, a Bloomreach customer since 2018, is a leading ecommerce group in Central and Eastern Europe that distributed 9.4 million orders in 2019. MALL.CZ is one of its leading general online stores in the Czech Republic.

MALL.CZ wanted to create a personalized video campaign to target computer gamers with a series of products online. 

The second season of MALL.TV’s “Life is a Game” series was used as the basis for a humorous video that pushed key products to a key target audience. 

But how could MALL.CZ distribute the personalized content to its customers effectively?

MALL.CZ’s personalized video campaign sent 20,000 personalized videos to a specific target audience with the help of Bloomreach Engagement, which played the part of technical enablement with the data flow through webhooks and API. 

Webhooks enable custom integrations with APIs outside of Bloomreach, allowing data to be sent to or brought in from a third party. Bloomreach API, on the other hand, allows the third party to send useful data to Bloomreach to be used for the benefit of your company.

Bloomreach sent data via webhook to the Motionlab video server to help create the personalized videos. Motionlab created the videos and sent them back to Bloomreach for distribution via a Bloomreach Engagement email campaign .

The results of the personalized video campaign were staggering. 

The email containing the personalized video recorded a click-through rate of more than 11x the control audience (who did not receive personalized videos). 

Users who were targeted by the video bought 701% more worth of products in the MALL.CZ shopping gallery compared to others who saw the same offer in a different manner. 

The video campaign showcased how Bloomreach Engagement can unlock limitless possibilities for marketers. Not only was the campaign a financial success, but it also boosted brand awareness and improved MALL.CZ’s overall brand image.

Bosch Wins With Headless Commerce

The Power Tools Division of the Bosch Group is the world market leader for power tools and power tool accessories. 

As Amazon drives industry trends, it’s essential that B2B brands like Bosch don’t fall behind. 

With Bosch Power Tools operating multiple global sites, the organization understood that its customers inherently expect the same tailored digital experience . This was the business unit’s main challenge — creating multiple unique experiences at the country level, while promoting and aligning holistic experiences globally.

Bosch Power Tools created an infrastructure and baseline of technology systems and processes for all corners of its organization to follow. It wasn’t about taking control — it was actually about helping to accelerate the organization regardless of the country or region.

This led Bosch to headless commerce and Bloomreach Content . Headless commerce differentiates from traditional commerce and CMS systems by untethering the back end and front end from each other. Using a headless approach and leveraging Bloomreach Content enables Bosch to replace its front-end system without bringing operations to a halt, thereby maximizing efficiencies.

Bosch is now able to build features on a global scale to accelerate the organization’s initiatives while delivering a highly personalized experience country to country. 

Bosch partners with Bloomreach and SAP . Bloomreach’s full suite of solutions seamlessly integrates with SAP Commerce Cloud and is part of SAP’s Industry Cloud Program, available on the SAP Store. This powerful combination empowers customers like Bosch to build personalized, relevant experiences that convert on any channel and every journey.

Topdanmark Embraces Digital Transformation

Topdanmark is Denmark’s second-largest insurance company, with the principle task of managing people’s insurance and pension schemes while instilling trust in its customers.

Topdanmark faced challenges that many financial services companies run into, such as cumbersome legacy systems full of customer data and the need to create custom customer elements quickly. When deciding on a platform for their digital experience, Topdanmark was determined to find a solution that met three key criteria — continuous development of the product, an easier way to share content across multiple brands, and putting customer focus at the front and center of the online experience. 

Topdanmark wanted a platform that was constantly innovating with an active developer community, easy to integrate with other best-of-breed technologies, and the ability for its own developers to continuously optimize the experience. 

This meant that its shortlist was largely CMS platforms with an open architecture.

Flexibility was a driving factor for Topdanmark because it needed the freedom to prototype and test new customer features, including allowing customers to easily add on coverage to their primary insurance, which had become an important part of its online sales strategy. 

Topdanmark was looking for an experience platform that allowed this kind of rapid experimentation throughout the entire customer experience. Bloomreach Content fit the bill.

With Bloomreach Content , Topdanmark migrated 500 URLs in 13 two-week sprints and implemented a flexible content management system designed to be effective both now and in the future.

Achieve Your Victory With Bloomreach 

You too can achieve results as impressive as these ecommerce case studies. With Bloomreach’s solutions, you get an omnichannel marketing platform, ecommerce search and merchandising, and a headless CMS — all powered by Loomi , our commerce-specific AI. 

Ready to see Bloomreach in action for yourself?  Schedule a personalized demo today to find out what Bloomreach can do for your business. 

• AI and Innovation , Ecommerce Search , Headless Commerce , Marketing Automation , Privacy and Security , Product Recommendations

Busra Sahin

Busra is a Digital Marketing Manager specializing in web marketing, design, content marketing and SEO.                

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Ecommerce: 10 mini case studies of successful marketing for online shopping

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

While ecommerce has been growing rapidly, it still only comprised a small percentage of overall retail sales. For example, in the U.S., on an adjusted basis, ecommerce accounted for 11.8% of all retail sales in the first quarter of 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

That was for Q1. Then in Q2, the number jumped to 16.1% – a 44.5% change from the same quarter a year ago. To put that number in perspective, Q2 2019 grew “only” 13.8% over Q2 2018.

What changed? The COVID-19 pandemic, of course. Even with ecommerce’s double-digit growth over the years, brick-and-mortar retail still had many advantages over ecommerce. Some products (like groceries) are hard to ship and easier and less expensive to buy in person. Brick-and-mortar retail has an experiential draw that ecommerce can’t match – from trying on a shirt to being wowed by an in-store (and Instagram-worthy) display. The ability to make a human connection and learn about a product or service.

Suddenly everything changed. That human connection became a detriment. And a no-touch version of goods and even services was preferable if not essential.

And that’s where we are in 2020 folks. A sad statement on human existence, yes. But as marketers, we must answer a practical question. How do we ensure our companies can continue to create value for customers in this changed world? Ecommerce can play a critical role. To help spark ideas for improving your company’s ecommerce efforts, here are specific examples from your peers in a wide range of industries.

Mini Case Study #1: Adding credibility generates a 46% increase in conversion for mattress company

A mid-sized furniture company selling organic latex mattresses engaged with MECLABS Institute to increase the overall number of mattress purchases (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa). It is one of only a few mattresses that is GreenGuard Gold certified.

The team conducted an experiment to determine which credibility approach would produce the highest rate of mattress purchases and ran an A/B split test.

The control landing page mentioned the certification, but it was de-emphasized.

Creative Sample #1: Control landing page for organic latex mattress

The treatment landing page added a section entitled “What is the GreenGuard Gold Seal?”

Creative Sample #2: Treatment landing page for organic latex mattress

The treatment landing page generated a 46% increase in conversion in the A/B test. The tangible value created by the additional copy helped the customer determine that the mattress was worth purchasing.

You can learn more about this experiment, and see other ecommerce experiments, in Optimizing Ecommerce Experiences: 25 valid ecommerce experiments to ideate your next A/B test from MarketingExperiments (MarketingSherpa’s sister publication).

Mini Case Study #2: Dunkin’ increases gift card sales 300% by quickly tapping into changing customer motivations

The way customers perceive your products and service can change over time. The COVID-19 pandemic is a great example. For most companies, if they just treated customers the same way they did before the pandemic, they would have overlooked customers’ changing motivations. And those changing motivations affect how potential customers perceive your offer.

Dunkin’ is an example of a company that moved swiftly to tap into new customer motivations. “As COVID-19 struck, Americans wanted to find ways to help and to show support for the frontline heroes. Dunkin’ wanted to give people a way to do so, even without being able to leave home,” said Justin Unger, Director, Strategic Partnerships, Dunkin'.

Created in just days, the DunkinCoffeeBreak.com ecommerce site gave customers a way to show appreciation by sending a virtual coffee break in the form of a Dunkin’ e-gift card. Dunkin’ donated $1 (up to $100,000) for every card purchased at this site to the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation emergency funds, specifically for non-profits helping families affected by COVID-19.

“Since the initial launch, Dunkin’ has used the site for multiple moments that matter to people, such as Teacher Appreciation Week, National Nurses Week, and Mother’s Day,” Unger said.

The site is driving incremental digital gift card sales and has generated a 300% increase in year-over-year gift card sales for certain events.

“ I think ecommerce, especially in the gift card space, is a key [you can use to] unlock growth. We saw a tremendous lift in online gift card sales with the addition of DunkinCoffeeBreak.com without any cannibalization to our existing online gift card program. It allowed us to reach new guests and tap into the wealth of information and targeting in the digital world, which you just cannot do with plastic gift cards hanging on pegs ,” Unger said.

“Online and mobile shopping surged when social distancing was introduced…based on Blackhawk Network’s partners’ sales data, gift cards sales made directly from a restaurant’s or merchant’s website since mid-March are up 92% from last year,” said Brett Narlinger, Head of Global Commerce, Blackhawk Network , Dunkin’s gift card program partner.

Mini Case Study #3: Home décor company generates $734.40 in sales from “penny campaigns”

“Throughout my ecommerce career I have successfully implemented what I call ‘penny campaigns’ within numerous Google Ad accounts for a large number of different businesses,” said Patrick Connelly, co-founder, Stellar Villa .

Most businesses focus their ad spend on a select few products or services that account for the majority of the company’s revenue, he says. The idea with a penny campaign is to go deeper into your product set and offer very low bids for the ads.

“Penny campaigns can work with both text ads and Google Product Shopping ads, although I prefer Product ads,” Connelly said. Once you have the products added to a campaign, simply set a very low bid. While this can vary by industry, Connelly typically sets bids between five and twenty cents and uses broad match for a larger reach if targeting keywords.

For example, from May through July the wall art company ran a Shopping campaign with Product Listing Ads) for its “Nursery Wall Art” collection. The team set a maximum cost-per-click of $0.20 with a daily budget of $100. “We knew we wouldn't spend close to that, but I like to let Google know we're willing to pay for as many clicks at $0.20 or less as they can give us,” Connelly said.

Over the course of three months the ad produced 354 clicks at a cost of $60.18. The ad generated $743.40 in sales.

“The penny campaign strategy can be implemented on more platforms than just Google Ads. It also works great with Amazon Advertising,” Connelly said.

Mini Case Study #4: Vegan blog grows traffic to 50,000 monthly visits with more diverse SEO outreach strategy

Thrive Cuisine had more than 25,000 backlinks but was plateauing at about 30,000 monthly unique visits.

The team was building links and publishing content on the same schedule as before and wasn’t sure why they weren’t seeing more traffic and conversions.

George Pitchkhadze, CMO, Thrive Cuisine tried a new approach. Instead of focusing on getting more backlinks he decided the site need a bigger variety of backlinks. Pitchkhadze stopped outreach efforts that were targeting the same kind of website over and over again and spent two months creating a completely new link-building and outreach strategy. This time, the team specifically focused on websites in adjacent niches instead of the vegan blog’s own niche. They started the outreach effort in May after spending two months creating more diverse content to link back to.

The new out outreach targeting more diverse websites increased the number of referring domains by more than 50%. This resulted in traffic going from about 30,000 to more than 50,000 monthly visits from unique visitors and increased “traffic value” by more than $10,000.

“If you’re looking to get ecommerce traffic, focus on backlink variety and quality; not only quantity. This will massively improve your results. Where possible, create new content on your own website to really showcase your own expertise across diverse subjects,” Pitchkhadze said.

Mini Case Study #5: Footwear store increases conversion 21.5% with clearer communication on website

KURU Footwear places a high emphasis on customer service and ease of experience by offering free shipping, free exchanges, and free returns. While this messaging did exist on the footwear brand’s website in various places, the team launched a test exploring four options that inserted those value messages higher in the customer experience.

Creative Sample #3: Control homepage for footwear brand

The top-performing treatment had a black bar with simple white text at the top of nearly all pages outside of the checkout funnel. It increased conversion 21.5%.

Creative Sample #4: Top-performing treatment for footwear website

Other treatments that included the customer service message but added in a message to reassure customers that Kuru was open and operating during COVID-19 did not perform as well. “We found simplicity performed best,” said Kelly Stanze, Manager, Marketing & Communications, Kuru.

Creative Sample #5: Lower-performing treatment for footwear website

“Making sure potential new customers know just how much we prioritize customer satisfaction can be difficult. While the proof is in the shoes, we're constantly seeking ways to elevate just how passionate about our customers we are as a company. This was just one step in that never-ending effort,” Stanze said.

Mini Case Study #6: Facebook Live show quadruples online orders for gourmet deli and marketplace

Big Bottom Market is a gourmet deli and marketplace in the heart of Sonoma Wine Country. In addition to its retail presence, the team also manages an Etsy Shop where they sell Big Bottom Market-branded products and the work of local artisans.

“We've been in the e-commerce game since 2016 when we were designated one of Oprah's Favorite Things and had to use the Amazon platform for national sales,” said Michael Volpatt, owner, Big Bottom Market. “From orders and shipping to returns and everything in between, Amazon was a great partner at the time. That changed when our sales volume slowed down so we crunched the numbers and realized that Etsy would be a better partner as we ramped up our growing product line with items that we created or partnered with someone to create for us…My point in this is that being flexible at all points in your e-commerce journey is important.”

Volpatt would be forced to be flexible once again. On March 18 th , the county of Sonoma locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the in-person retail market closed. All of a sudden, ecommerce became a much more important component of Big Bottom Market’s sales

“As a chef and cookbook author, I decided to continue engaging with our customers and launched a Facebook Live cooking show called Cooking In Place,” Volpatt said.

Volpatt cooked and showcased local wines for fans along with other products that the market sells, encouraging viewers to buy them online.

In addition, after each show he posted the video replay across all of its social media channels and shared recipes and details about the food he cooked and wine he tasted on the show.” I would broadcast on Facebook Live and save the video feed. Then I would repost a link to the video on my personal page, on Instagram TV, and then also on YouTube,” he said.

Creative Sample #6: Facebook Live cooking show from gourmet deli and marketplace

In addition to customer engagement and increasing social media followers, the goal was to drive ecommerce sales as a way to augment lost revenue from in-store foot traffic.

“We used to see three to five orders per month in our Etsy shop. In the first week of doing the show we saw three to five per week and that increased to five to ten orders per week. To some, those numbers may seem low, but for a small business located in a tourist town, these numbers were great. Our sales ended up paying for our monthly fixed expenses, which was very helpful for a business that relies on foot traffic,” Volpatt said.

Mini Case Study #7: Retail company increases revenue 311% with website redesign

The Barbecues Galore website had a low conversion rate due to technical, usability and value communication issues. For example, when a product was added in different product categories the URL slug of the product itself would change. “This presented us with issues we needed to address immediately, as a product that constantly changes in URL is not SEO friendly and would present with unwanted 301 redirects and in some cases 404s,” said Andres Aguero, Senior SEO Specialist, Barbecues Galore.

The new site fixed those technical issues, and also did a better job of communicating value to the customer. For example, the product listing page on the old website had very few pictures and did not prominently feature reviews.

Creative sample #7: Previous product listing page on retailer’s original website

“We ended up figuring out that when people are making a large purchase online they want to feel safe and secure that their money is being well spent,” Aguero said.

The team invested in adding additional photos to the product listing and reached out to previous customers from both the online and brick-and-mortar locations to request a product review.

Creative sample #8: Product listing page on retailer’s new website

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the team had to push the live date of the website to April 2020. “This was a big risk at the time as we were at the peak of COVID-19 and all of our brick-and-mortar locations had been closed. Our only source of income at that time was our online revenue,” Aguero said.

The redesign paid off. Revenue from April to August 2020 increased 311% compared to the same time frame in the previous year and revenue from organic traffic increased 172%. (Much of that increase likely has to do with the site improvements, however this reporter questions if increased demand for backyard products due to COVID-19 lockdowns may have also played a role in the revenue increase.)

“My advice for other marketers would be to focus on your website’s existing traffic first before you make any other investments. Our PPC specialist was spending a crazy amount of money on a monthly basis only to see low conversion rates. If your conversion rate is low then try to figure out why. Take a look at your competitors and see what they are doing. After you’ve done that, then you can start making investments into PPC or SEO,” Aguero advised.

Mini Case Study #8: 3D models platform increases clickthrough 12% with A/B testing

Sketchfab operate a 3D content marketplace where people can buy and sell 3D models. It features some of these designs on its landing pages. The team decided to test the effect of different background designs for the header block, which contains a search bar and other navigation menus.

The background of the landing pages consisted of colorful, contrasted 3D models of animals and characters.

Creative Sample #9: Control landing page for 3D content models platform

The team tested less prominent backgrounds to provide more emphasis to the search bar and rest of the page’s user interface. Here is the highest-performing treatment, which produced a 5.3% increase in page engagement and 12.4% increase in clickthrough rates when compared to the original version.

Creative Sample #10: Treatment landing page for 3D content models platform

“Backgrounds [with] a low contrast image that blends with the rest of the page tend to perform much better than vivid, more contrasted ones. In our case, rather than wowing customers with a spectacular image or video, having a more modest graphic allowed them to take action and flow to other internal pages,” said Guillermo Sainz, Digital Marketing, Sketchfab.

Mini Case Study #9: Automating organic Pinterest postings generates $56,000 per month for women’s clothing store

This next example may not work for every company, but it was successful for a niche brand with a very visual product.

“We used to post manually on Pinterest every now and then and didn't attract any customers/visitors to our ecommerce portal. A few months ago, we installed a Shopify plugin to automatically push product images to Pinterest,” said Akram Tariq Khan, CTO, YourLibaas .

Creative Sample #11: Automated Pinterest post from women’s clothing store

“The results were unexpected,” Khan said.

The women’s clothing store now has about 930,000 monthly Pinterest viewers with 26,000 followers and average monthly sales directly attributable to Pinterest of $56,000 within the last quarter without spending a penny on Pinterest.

YourLibaas is based in India and offers international shipping. Most of the Pinterest customers are located internationally, primarily within the US, UK and Canada with a sizeable number in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

“The majority of our international orders are customers who discovered our brand through Pinterest. We have a significant presence on Instagram and Facebook too, but the user base at these platforms is primarily located domestically within India,” Khan said.

Mini Case Study #10: Female wellness product overcomes ad ban with SEO-focused content creation and attracts 9,248 organic visitors in latest month

As digital advertising platforms work to improve their image by banning industries and products deemed harmful, some less nefarious brands are getting caught as well.

For example, Chiavaye sells an all-natural, vegan personal moisturizer. Kaylyn Easton started the company because she has endometriosis.

The company was making approximately $14,000 per month in revenue by promoting the product with paid ads. However, about two years ago its ad account was shut down for “adult content.”

“Paid ads was a strategy that worked well for us until it didn’t. Meaning, the moment we got shut down, we lost more than 90% of our monthly revenue,” said Kaylyn Easton, CEO & Founder, Chiavaye.

At the time, organic traffic from Google was only about 20 visitors per month, and 98% of its was branded searches like “Chiavaye lube.”

The company decided to pursue a strategy of SEO-focused content creation. “We wanted to implement a strategy that would build our brand long-term so that after we turn off the investment, it could still bring in value. If we were to stop writing SEO articles today, we’d still get the benefits from what we’ve done for years to come. Versus, if we turn off a paid ads strategy, we immediately see a huge negative impact,” Easton said.

The primary focus of the content is not the promotion of the product, but instead helping the target audience overcome key pain points.

“We've been creating four SEO-focused pieces of content per month targeting endometriosis-related queries. Things like ‘endometriosis diet grocery list.’ We found that women with endo are craving any type of information to help them. And, if the info is good, they'll trust that person – and even buy their products,” said Joey Randazzo, Founder and CEO, Portland SEO Growth .

After 18 months of creating four pieces of content per month, the site went from about 20 visitors per month to, in the most recent month, 9,248 organic visitors.

Every piece of content has two CTAs (calls to action). The first is to buy the product. The second CTA is for a free e-book, which is generating 250 downloads per month – building the email list.

Creative Sample #12: Email signup form for e-book from female wellness product company

“We discovered that [competitors] have salesy email campaigns – every other email is a 30% off coupon. [Chiavaye's] is designed around adding value more than anything,” Randazzo said.

The team discovered the top burning questions the target audience is asking around endometriosis, like “is dairy okay to eat with endo?” Easton answers these questions in text and video in a clear, straightforward way. The email body is succinct in answering the question linking to articles on the company’s website for more information.

“Figure out who your target audience is and then create content that adds value to them and their lives. We’ve discovered that 95% of the content we create should be adding value to the reader. The final 5% should pitch us as a solution. It builds trust and entices them to opt in for our free e-book, which consequently builds a super valuable email list for us,” Easton said.

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Best ecommerce case study: 7 case studies to learn from in 2024.

Table of contents

Whether you are new to the online shopping market or your shop is already selling thousands of products globally, it’s always essential to constantly learn eCommerce Case Study from other successful brands. These inspiring eCommerce case studies below help you gain valuable insights into how these brands turned web technology into a powerful weapon to get a huge advantage in the e-shopping competition.

1. Al-Bahar

Al-Bahar concerns

Al-Bahar is a famous eCommerce Case Study you can refer to. It is a Kuwait-based brand selling a wide selection of FMCG products, electronics, office equipment-related products from big brands like Unilever, GE, Al Alali and many more.

Being one of the most favoured and trusted companies in the Middle East, Al-Bahar received a huge number of visitors to their online website every day. However, the old Al-Bahar presence encountered several concerns that related to web speed, stability and infrastructure. There were major speed issues due to both insufficient hosting solution and a disappointing CMS, along with severe downtimes in terms of stability. More than that, as the old Al-Bahar website was based on Magento 1 which had come to its EOL, the store site was surely in need of significant improvements on both its frontend and backend. However, the migration on such a huge scale might pose some significant threats such as data corruption and other incompatibility issues, which left Al-Bahar with serious consideration.      

After consulting with SimiCart , a Google qualified PWA development agency, Al-Bahar has agreed with SimiCart solution to transform the old company website. SimiCart offered a clear action plan to rebuild the Al-Bahar front-end into a headless Magento PWA using Magento PWA Studio and migrate the existing Magento 1 backend to Magento 2. All the data from their old Magento 1 was transferred to Magento 2, while the store could benefit considerably from a headless PWA storefront, such as better speed, more flexibility, improved scalability, and a seamless shopping experience for the customers.

After the transformation, Al-Bahar’s frontend became app-like and engaging, and page load was no longer an issue thanks to PWA’s enhanced caching machines. The store received a higher purchase conversion rate on mobile, and a drastically reduced mobile cart abandonment rate as well. 

HP Concerns

HP is one of the pioneers in computers, workstations, and printers manufacturing. When HP expected to expand their market to the Asia-Pacific region with 5 new online stores, they came to a realization that the new online platform must support multiple HP stores on a global scale. In order to win the heart of potential customers, from individual shoppers to small businesses in new regions, HP Asia needed to deliver localized experiences across multiple geographies. However, this mission might be quite challenging when they’re a huge, multinational technology company. More than that, HP team also wished for controlling omnichannel , project management and customer relationship management (CRM) in one place, which required a comprehensive online platform to support.

Magento Commerce became HP Asia-Pacific’s first choice to deliver the true taste of local experience that could attract potential customers from different backgrounds. Thanks to Magento Commerce, HP was able to create several new online stores across different regions and countries that are equipped with an exclusive set of content management, payments processing, and language translation functionality.  

HP has utilized Magento Commerce to expand their online business to 5 different countries. 23% of customers decided to make a purchase online rather than going to in-person stores, and an excellent user experience is recorded both from online shoppers and HP Asia-Pacific employees. 

3. DeBra’s

DeBra’s Concerns

DeBra’s is an Australia-based company selling women’s undergarments, lingerie and swimwear since 2000. Over the past 21 years, DeBra’s has experienced significant growth in both online and offline channels. However, thanks to the development of modern technologies, DeBra’s online business had surpassed their expectations, which required DeBra’s to find a new online platform that could facilitate further growth in the future. They wanted to ensure their online presence could deliver a digital experience equivalent to an in-store fitting, especially amid the Covid-19 outbreak when the demand for women shopping online was rapidly increasing.

DeBra’s team believed BigCommerce would be the best option for their business, logistics and marketing requirements. With BigCommerce’s open API functionality, DeBra’s website could easily integrate with other technologies, such as a POS system , to help advance its marketing and customer experience. BigCommerce also supported DeBra’s to introduce a virtual fitting service, in which their in-store staff work as virtual assistants to help customers experience a professional digital fitting. 

With the new eCommerce solution, DeBra’s saw a significant 215% increase in revenue, 234% increase in site visits and 627% increase in customers.

4. elph ceramics

elph ceramics Concerns

elph ceramics is a sister-led brand creating and selling contemporary ceramics in Paddington, Sydney. Since their business grew, the inventory management process became quite troublesome, especially when they sold products on both elph ceramics’ physical and online stores. Their old POS system didn’t update automatically when sales, returns or exchanges were processed. 

elph ceramics chose Shopify as their online selling platform, and at the same time utilized Shopify POS to run their brick-and-mortar stores. By unifying their sales channels from one back office, they were able to manage inventory and update product information across sales channels with ease. Since all data is centralized, potential customers could also see accurate inventory quantities when they shop online. Also, capturing customer data became less stressful as this could be done in just a few clicks during checkout.

Since choosing Shopify POS, elph ceramics has lifted the retention rate to nearly 30% and significantly grown their customer database. 

Burrow concerns

Burrow is a B2C store selling furniture founded in 2017 with the idea of eliminating the hassles of traditional furniture shopping. Since their business reached $3 million in sales, they constantly run into system issues with the existing online platform due to the fact that their business growth has outgrown their eCommerce solution. More than that, Burrow team’s also in need of effective sets of content management tools that help them update landing pages without much technical expertise . 

Burrow decided to separate their website frontend and backend using headless commerce . Being headless gave them the flexibility to craft a unique shopping experience. Burrow team was free to utilize the available templates as well as customize marketing-focused content as wished thanks to a headless CMS. They could constantly update and adjust content across channels to make it appropriate with targeted customers. In addition, Burrow found it essential to offer customers special logistical aspects, including the ability to delay orders and have signatures on delivery. 

Only 2 months after implementing a headless solution to their website, Burrow achieved a 50% increase in site speed and performance and a 30% increase in conversion rate. 

6. Rakuten 24

Rakuten 24 concerns

Rakuten 24 is an online store by Rakuten, the leading e-commerce company from Japan. This Japanese online store delivers a wide range of daily products such as groceries, medicine, healthcare items and more. Having been soon aware that mobile commerce is growing faster than ever, Rakuten 24 put building an excellent mobile experience for users on their top priority. However, as Rakuten 24 is relatively new to Japanese shoppers, it might not be efficient to invest a huge amount of time and money in developing a platform-specific app for iOS and Android. Therefore, they believed that Rakuten 24 mobile web would work as an alternative method, as long as they can make an installable and responsive mobile web with all unique design and functionality. 

In order to gain market share and improve user retention, Rakuten 24 decided to build a Progressive Web App to deliver a smooth web experience across all browsers. Their PWA did an excellent job in combining the best of native app features and the broad reach of the mobile web. Rakuten 24 also provided a detailed guide on how to install the PWA manually on both Android and iOS devices for their mobile web users.

With the new PWA technology, Rakuten 24 reported an impressive 450% increase in visitor retention rate compared to the previous mobile web, a 150% increase in sales per customer and a 200% increase in conversion rate over a 1-month timeframe.

7. Mainline Menswear

Mainline concerns

Mainline is an online clothing retailer that distributes many designer brands in fashion. As Mainline Menswear offers market presence in over 100 countries via seven custom-built websites and an app, it’s of increasing importance to continually deliver an excellent web browsing experience. Their main goal was to complement their current mobile website with native app features that focused on mobile-friendly design and functionality.

Mainline Menswear made a strategic decision to build and launch Progressive Web Apps to provide a smooth and seamless customer experience on the web, as well as ensure the best performance. They believed transforming the original version of the Mainline Menswear website to a PWA would enable them to take advantage of the fast-moving web technology, and ensure the website framework (Nuxt.js, utilizing Vue.js) would be future-proof. 

With the new PWA technology, the Mainline Menswear website enjoyed a 55% higher conversion rate, and a 243% higher revenue per session in PWA compared to the old web. 

Hope this article about eCommerce Case Study can help you build and boost your sales well.

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Digital Transformation at Walmart: A case study.

Walmart (NYSE: WMT), the largest physical retailer based in the United States, has achieved enormous growth over the years through its EDLP pricing strategy and a customer-friendly brand image. In recent years, the company has focused on digitalization to grow sales and improve customer service. Its e-commerce sales have continued to strengthen worldwide.

Physical retailers in the US are turning to digitalization to serve their customers better, whose lifestyles are now heavily influenced by digital technology. Walmart acquired the Indian online retail brand Flipkart in 2018. Since then, it has also made a significant investment in its US e-commerce infrastructure.

While investing in technology is essential for retailers to serve their customers more efficiently, Amazon’s growing influence in the retail industry has also proved to be a key driver of digitalization across the US-based retail brands. The need to focus on digital technology was never more highlighted than during the pandemic. Customer behavior changed profoundly with the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic . Customers mostly switched to online shopping during lockdowns. These changes will last longer since the impact on people’s lifestyle has been profound. 

Walmart has been investing in e-commerce over the past several years and is reaping its benefits now. However, Walmart’s focus is not just on e-commerce but on a complete digital transformation that drives superior associate performance while driving higher customer satisfaction also apart from stronger financial returns. Cloud technology is driving similar transformations across other retailers too. Walmart is leveraging cloud technology to strengthen its competitive position and accelerate its growth momentum.

Back in 2018, Walmart partnered with Microsoft to accelerate its cloud journey and more expeditiously deliver on changing customer expectations. Walmart’s digital transformation has also come in the face of growing competitive pressure from the e-commerce giant Amazon. From its online store to supply chain and logistics, digital technology, AI, IoT, and Machine Learning are driving rapid changes. Walmart’s continuous growth in the future depends on its ability to leverage technology to swiftly respond to the changing market scenario and customers’ purchasing habits.

Factors that drove rapid digitalization at Walmart.

Walmart is the largest physical retailer in the United States. The company has been enjoying enormous growth over the last several years. However, the retail landscape in the United States is changing swiftly.  Five main factors drove digitalization at Walmart: 

• Demographic changes in the US population.
• Changing consumer habits and expectations.
• Rise of mobile computing.
• Need for more speed and efficiency.
• Growing challenge from Amazon

Demographic changes and other changes like the rise of e-commerce has also changed how people shopped. Since the retail landscape is changing, Walmart’s traditional operating model was insufficient to serve the customers’ evolving needs in the US. Millennials are now the largest segment of the US adult population (Pew Research, 2020). 

They are also the most important customer segment for retail brands like Walmart. The expectations of the millennial generation are very different from the  Baby Boomers. The millennials are tech savvier and live highly digital lives. They like to shop online for a large range of products and services. Apart from their general needs, these people also depend on online channels for their daily entertainment and various other needs like music and fashion.

The rise of social media and the millennials’ consumption habits all required the businesses that wanted to serve them to adopt a better model driven by technology. Walmart’s competitive moat lay in its pricing strategy mainly apart from the large array of products it sells. However, these things are no longer sufficient to cater to the millennial generation’s expectations fully. Walmart needed to transition to a better model that could handle things with higher speed and efficiency.

 Both these things are important for maximizing customer satisfaction in an era driven by computers, the internet, data and analytics. The dependence of retail brands on technology was also destined to grow because of the growing use of mobile computing. The need for higher mobility also drove higher investment into technology. Digital technology has altered the buying habits of the customers, who like to compare prices on their smartphones before they go for the final purchase.

Lower prices attract the millennials but there are more factors they consider before making a purchase. Customer convenience matters more than ever to win in a highly competitive retail landscape. It affects demand and sales. However, to grow the level of customer convenience requires a focus on digital technology which saves time and also helps reduce costs.

Another important factor that drove Walmart towards rapid digitalization was the rise of the e-commerce giant Amazon. Prior to that, Walmart was the undisputed leader in the US retail sector. Amazon is right next to Walmart on the Fortune 500 list, where the physical retail giant has managed to remain at the top for several years. In 2020, Walmart is on the top of the list for the eighth time (Fortune, 2020).

In terms of e-commerce sales in the US, Walmart is just next to Amazon (despite the substantial gap). There is still a substantial difference in the market shares of the two in the e-commerce industry but Walmart is trying to strengthen its position through continuous investment in digital technology. Amazon poses a major challenge before the other  US-based retailers whose continuous growth now depends on how well they can serve their tech-savvy consumers.

The drive towards a highly digital future has accelerated with the pandemic. People’s buying habits are being reshaped, and consumers will likely depend more on online shopping in the future. Walmart needed to take Amazon’s challenge since, over time, Walmart’s influence could substantially reduce due to the growth in Amazon’s, which is aggressively demanding lower prices from its sellers using its clout in e-commerce. Leveraging its existing competitive strengths for superior results was only possible if Walmart invested in digitalization.

Supply chain digitalization at Walmart

Walmart has focused on higher digitalization in nearly all areas of its business system. From the supply chain to sales, customer service, marketing, and store operations, the company has steadily been investing in digitalization to grow its operational efficiency and cost-efficiency. Walmart’s supply chain digitalization was an important pillar of its omnichannel strategy.

Digitalizing the supply chain was the first important step towards making its omnichannel strategy a success. To really gain from its investment in technology and digitalization, Walmart first needed to leverage the strength of its supply chain. A highly optimized supply chain is a critical source of competitive advantage for the retail brand. It has helped Walmart maintain consistently lower prices and could be further optimized using digital tools to gain higher cost-efficiency and derive better employee performance. 

Moreover, the traditional supply chain management model was insufficient to serve the evolving needs of US customers. Digitalizing the supply chain has enabled the retail giant to pursue its omnichannel strategy with a higher success rate. Walmart is leveraging digital technology to share information across the supply chain, and for tracking and managing inventory across its stores and warehouses in the United States.

An efficient and modernized supply chain has played a critical role in helping the company gain higher cost-efficiency. Walmart’s competitive position as the leading physical retailer in the US has strengthened with growing digitalization across its supply chain, which also helped it access a large pool of data. It gains valuable insights from the data to understand consumer behavior. Walmart’s large supply chain produces tons of data daily used to make important inventory management decisions. It also helped the company grow its supply chain resilience to serve customer needs better during a crisis like a hurricane or in the event of a pandemic like Coronavirus.

Walmart also secured its supply chain against fast-changing market conditions by leveraging data and analytics. In 2017, it invested in Data Cafe, one of the largest private clouds in the world to grow its data and analytics capabilities and process more than 40 Petabytes of data being generated from internal and external sources daily (Marr, 2017). Walmart’s data cafe is its analytics hub located at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Data Cafe allows Walmart to model, manipulate, and visualize recent transactional data, it collects from more than 200 internal and external streams.

It enabled faster decision making at Walmart and provided solutions to several critical supply chain management related problems that could otherwise take a lot longer to answer. Walmart made Data Cafe available to its suppliers so they could gain free insights into customer demand and manage their supply and inventory better. 

In 2018, Walmart introduced its Connected Content Provider Program, whose main focus was to help suppliers scale content to Walmart’s catalog and other retailers (Ogura, 2018). The program aimed to bring harmony between retailers, suppliers, and content. With its syndication partners like Salsify, the company aimed to help its suppliers deliver content with higher speed and agility. Suppose a customer comes to Walmart looking for a particular product that is not available at the time. Walmart looks up its syndication providers like ‘Salsify’ to find which supplier has the product and then arranges for home delivery. 

Walmart is also using other latest technologies like AI and Blockchain to track inventory down its supply chain (Aitken, 2017). The retail brand partnered with IBM to leverage blockchain technology and leverage and track food products’ movement across its supply chain to ensure their quality and authenticity. The use of IBM blockchain allowed Walmart to track the movement of goods in its supply chain faster. Something that could take days or weeks to trace using the traditional tracking methods was now possible in seconds. Blockchain -based decentralized ledgers have simplified the process of tracking goods in Walmart’s supply chain.

Digital Transformation through Cloud Technology

Cloud technology is also driving rapid transformation across the retail landscape. Retailers turn to cloud technologies to grow their efficiency and transform a large pool of data they generate daily into actionable insights. 

In 2018, when Walmart was already using a large set of Microsoft services for critical workloads, the company announced a strategic five-year partnership with the cloud leader to make its digital transformation possible. This partnership with Microsoft allowed Walmart to leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data platform solutions for a wide range of external customer-facing services and internal business applications (Walmart, 2018).

Walmart aimed to transform digitally, bring innovations that saved its customers time and money, and change how work was carried out inside the organization for increased productivity. To achieve its target, the company selected a full range of Microsoft cloud solutions that included Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365. The main advantages of using cloud technology for Walmart were going to be as follows:

• Leverage the capacity of Microsoft’s enormous compute capacity.
• Ability to manage workloads seamlessly in an elastic environment.
• Bring innovations faster through the new toolsets
• Drive costs lower through a cloud native environment.

From reducing energy consumption in the Walmart stores to managing logistics, the company uses cloud technology to make its work processes more efficient and save time and money. The company uses machine learning to route thousands of trucks in its supply chain. Apart from that, Walmart gained access to various tools that allow its associates to improve their productivity and collaborate on projects. Tools like Microsoft workplace analytics, Microsoft Stream, and Microsoft One Drive allow associates to collaborate, save time, and work better.

Walmart owned Jet.com also uses cloud technologies heavily to serve customers efficiently. It has built an innovative eCommerce engine on the Azure cloud platform in less than 12 months. The Jet.com platform is composed of open-source software, Visual F#, and Azure Platform as a service (PaaS) like Azure Cosmos DB. The next-generation architecture of Jet.com is built for speed. It uses Panther, Azure’s next-generation inventory processing system to make its service faster, smarter, and more efficient. 

“Within just a few weeks, a prototype based on Service Fabric proved that Panther could support the massive scale and the functionality Jet needed plus high availability and blazing fast performance across multiple regions. But what really made Panther possible was adding Azure Cosmos DB for the event store. Coupling an event-sourcing pattern with a microservices-based architecture gave them the flexibility they needed to keep improving Jet.com and delight their customers.” (Microsoft, 2020)

Sources Used:

Pew Research. (2020, April 28). Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation . PewResearch. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/

Fortune. (2020). Fortune 500 . Fortune. Retrieved 2020, from https://fortune.com/fortune500/2020/search/

Marr, B. (2017). Really Big Data At Walmart: Real-Time Insights From Their 40+ Petabyte Data Cloud . Forbes. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/01/23/really-big-data-at-walmart-real-time-insights-from-their-40-petabyte-data-cloud/?sh=1c6727f26c10

Ogura, F. (2018, September). Introducing the Connected Content Partner Program . LinkedIn. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/introducing-connected-content-partner-program-frank-ogura/

Salsify. (2018). Salsify Selected By Walmart To Join Its Connected Content Partner Program . Salsify. Retrieved 2020, from

Aitken, R. (2017). IBM Forges Blockchain Collaboration With Nestlé & Walmart In Global Food Safety . Forbes. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogeraitken/2017/08/22/ibm-forges-blockchain-collaboration-with-nestle-walmart-for-global-food-safety/?sh=66710fac3d36

Microsoft. (2020, June). Jet.com powers innovative e-commerce engine on Azure in less than 12 months . Microsoft Azure. Retrieved 2020, from https://customers.microsoft.com/en-in/story/822088-jet-com-powers-innovative-e-commerce-engine-on-azure-in-less-than-12-months

Walmart. (2018, July). Walmart establishes strategic partnership with Microsoft to further accelerate digital innovation in retail . Walmart Newsroom. Retrieved 2020, from https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2018/07/17/walmart-establishes-strategic-partnership-with-microsoft-to-further-accelerate-digital-innovation-in-retail

Abhijeet Pratap is a passionate blogger with seven years of experience in the field. Specializing in business management and digital marketing, he has developed a keen understanding of the intricacies of these domains. Through his insightful articles, Abhijeet shares his knowledge, helping readers navigate the complexities of modern business landscapes and digital strategies.

Home » UML » Navigating the Software Development Journey: A Case Study of Online Shopping System Design with UML Diagrams

Navigating the Software Development Journey: A Case Study of Online Shopping System Design with UML Diagrams

• Posted on September 14, 2023
• / Under UML

Introduction

In the realm of software development, the journey from concept to fully functional application is a complex and multifaceted process. A crucial aspect of this journey is the art of translating high-level requirements into detailed, actionable designs. Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams serve as invaluable tools for developers and stakeholders alike, enabling a comprehensive understanding of a system’s architecture and behavior. In this article, we embark on a guided tour of the software development process by immersing ourselves in a real-world case study: the creation of an Online Shopping System. Through the lens of UML diagrams, we will explore how this intricate system is meticulously designed and executed, from its inception to deployment.

Understanding the Software Design Process

Before diving into the specifics of elaborating use cases with UML diagrams, let’s briefly outline the software design process. It typically consists of the following stages:

a. Requirements Gathering: This is the initial phase where stakeholders and developers gather and document high-level requirements for the software.

b. High-Level Design: In this stage, a broad architectural overview of the system is created, outlining major components and their interactions.

c. Detailed Design: Here, the high-level design is broken down into finer details, specifying the behavior of individual components.

d. Implementation: Developers write the actual code based on the detailed design.

e. Testing: The software is tested to ensure it meets the specified requirements.

The Role of Use Cases in Software Design

Use cases are essential for understanding and documenting how a system will interact with its users or external systems. They describe various scenarios or interactions between the system and its users, helping to define the system’s functionality.

Elaborating Use Cases

To elaborate use cases effectively, we’ll discuss how to use UML diagrams in different development stages.

a. High-Level Use Case Diagrams:

• Use Case Diagrams : In the high-level design phase, start with use case diagrams. These diagrams provide an overview of the system’s major use cases and their relationships. They help stakeholders understand the system’s main functionalities.
• Actor-Use Case Mapping : Identify the actors (users, external systems, etc.) and associate them with relevant use cases. This clarifies who interacts with the system and how.

b. Detailed Use Case Diagrams:

• Activity Diagrams : As you move to the detailed design phase, create activity diagrams for each use case. These diagrams illustrate the flow of activities within a use case, including conditional and parallel paths. They help developers understand the sequence of actions required to achieve specific goals.
• Sequence Diagrams : Sequence diagrams show the interactions between objects or components in a use case. They are particularly useful for detailing the dynamic behavior of the system, showing how objects collaborate to accomplish tasks.
• State Diagrams : For use cases involving complex states or state transitions, state diagrams can be valuable. They depict how an object or system transitions between different states in response to events.

c. Implementation and Testing:

• Class Diagrams : During implementation, class diagrams play a crucial role. They define the structure of classes, their attributes, and relationships, facilitating the coding process.
• Component Diagrams : Component diagrams help developers visualize the physical arrangement of system components and their dependencies. This aids in ensuring a well-organized and maintainable codebase.
• Deployment Diagrams : In the deployment phase, deployment diagrams come into play. They illustrate how software components are distributed across hardware nodes or servers, helping ensure efficient system deployment.
• Clarity : UML diagrams provide a visual representation of complex systems, making it easier for stakeholders, developers, and testers to understand and communicate about the system’s design.
• Consistency : UML promotes consistency in design by offering a standardized way to document various aspects of a software system.
• Documentation : UML diagrams serve as valuable documentation that can be referenced throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Error Reduction : By visualizing the system’s behavior, UML diagrams help identify design flaws and inconsistencies early in the process, reducing costly errors in later stages.

Case Study: Online Shopping System

Elaborating use cases with UML diagrams is a critical part of the software design process. From high-level requirements to detailed modeling, UML diagrams provide a structured approach to understanding and documenting a system’s functionality and behavior. By following these guidelines, software development teams can create robust, well-designed applications that meet the needs of their users and stakeholders.

Let’s walk through the software development process for an online shopping system, applying various UML diagrams at different stages to illustrate the development process.

Requirements Gathering :

Imagine a client, XYZ Electronics, wants to develop an online shopping system. The high-level requirements include user registration, product browsing, shopping cart management, order placement, and payment processing.

Use Case Diagram : Create a high-level use case diagram showing actors like “Customer” and “Admin” interacting with use cases like “Browse Products,” “Add to Cart,” and “Place Order.”

High-Level Design :

In this phase, we outline the system’s architecture and major components.

Component Diagram : Create a component diagram showing high-level components like “Web Server,” “Database Server,” and “Payment Gateway.” These illustrate the major parts of the system.

Detailed Design :

In this phase, we elaborate on the use cases and components in greater detail.

Activity Diagram (Use Case – Browse Products) : Create an activity diagram detailing the steps a customer takes to browse products. It includes actions like “Search Products,” “View Product Details,” and “Add to Cart.”

Sequence Diagram (Use Case – Place Order) : Develop a sequence diagram illustrating the interactions between the “Customer,” “Shopping Cart,” “Order,” and “Payment Gateway” during an order placement process.

Class Diagram : Design class diagrams for key entities like “Product,” “Customer,” “Shopping Cart,” “Order,” and “Payment.” Define attributes, methods, and relationships between these classes.

Implementation :

Developers write code based on the detailed design. This includes building the user interface, backend logic, and database integration.

Deployment Diagram : Create a deployment diagram illustrating how the application components are distributed across servers, such as “Web Server” and “Database Server.”

Quality assurance teams conduct various tests, including functional, integration, and user acceptance testing, to ensure the system functions as expected.

Now, let’s see how these UML diagrams play a role in this case study:

• Use Case Diagram : The high-level use case diagram serves as a reference point for stakeholders to understand the system’s primary functionalities, such as browsing, shopping, and ordering.
• Component Diagram : This diagram helps architects and developers plan the system’s structure by identifying major components like servers and databases.
• Activity Diagrams : These guide developers in implementing the step-by-step flow for specific actions like browsing products or adding items to the cart.
• Sequence Diagrams : Sequence diagrams depict the dynamic interactions between objects and components, aiding developers in writing code that reflects these interactions.
• Class Diagram : Class diagrams ensure consistency in the data structures used throughout the system, helping developers implement core entities accurately.
• Deployment Diagram : Deployment diagrams assist in deploying the system, ensuring that components are properly distributed across servers or cloud infrastructure.

By applying UML diagrams at each stage of the development process, the online shopping system’s design and implementation become more structured and organized. This approach not only helps developers and designers but also provides a clear visual reference for clients and stakeholders, ultimately leading to a successful and efficient software development project.

In the software development world, success hinges on meticulous planning and execution. This article, “Navigating the Software Development Journey: A Case Study of Online Shopping System Design with UML Diagrams,” takes you on a journey through the development of an online shopping system. We dive into the software design process, beginning with requirements gathering and progressing through high-level design, detailed design, implementation, and testing. At each stage, we demonstrate the indispensable role of UML diagrams, showcasing their ability to provide clarity, consistency, and documentation. Whether you’re a developer, designer, or stakeholder, this case study illustrates the power of UML in turning conceptual ideas into functional software systems.

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Amazon Shopping App UX Case Study - An In-Depth Evaluation

Welcome to this UX case study of Amazon’s mobile app. 

Amazon is undoubtedly the leading online retailer in the US. Its rise to being a top household e-commerce brand is largely attributed to its high-converting website. Throughout the years, Amazon’s website has gone through multiple changes, and in 2011, it introduced its first mobile app. 

Yet, is it equally superior in terms of user experience (UX)? Should you replicate Amazon’s mobile layout for your e-commerce app? 

We’re afraid the answer is no. Amazon. In its bid to optimize for conversion, Amazon has sacrificed some basic UX principles that once made it the role model for other e-commerce software development. For example, the cluttered home screen is overwhelming for new buyers.

Amazon is doing great because it is in a dominant position. Buyers are already accustomed to Amazon’s layout and navigational flow. But try replicating Amazon’s layout on a new e-commerce brand, and you wouldn’t get the same results. 

Today, UX is a crucial factor in attracting and retaining visitors. An e-commerce interface with a good UX can increase the conversion rate by up to 400%.   Therefore, you’ll want to ensure that the right UI/UX design services will be provided for your e-commerce app. 

In this article, we’ll take you through a step-by-step UX review of the Amazon shopping app.

In any UX design case study, it’s important to establish the objectives of doing so. Setting the objectives provides a clear direction on how you ought to approach the UX review.

For Amazon, the objective is to determine if new, unregistered users will have a smooth experience when shopping for products on its app. As mentioned above, existing buyers shopping on Amazon for years may not be impacted by the changes as they are gradually introduced on the app.

However, a new user who’s shopping on Amazon for the first time may find the home page overly-cluttered with hundreds of product images and intersected with sponsored listings. There’s also a lack of uniformity in how the various category pages are designed. 

For example, the Baby category showcases the top brands, followed by a list of top products and subcategory selection. However, the Computers category features visually appealing images that let you navigate into different devices. 

Amazon’s take of UX design is unlikely to be helpful for new e-commerce apps. Here’s the key point. Amazon is already an established brand that’s selling to largely existing users. A new e-commerce business needs to capture new customers, and good UX is crucial.

In this UX case study, we’ll identify pain points on the Amazon shopping app and figure out how they can be improved to provide a better user experience. 

Preparation

Before commencing a UX case study, you’ll need to be well prepared for it. In this case, it means surveying competing retailers and checking out the experience of using their mobile apps. By comparing between a few competitors, you could identify similarities and differences between the apps.

In this UX review on Amazon, we turn to competitors like eBay and Alibaba. eBay serves more than 180 million users worldwide, while Alibaba is the largest online retailer in Asia. Both are successful e-commerce giants, and we wanted to know how they compare to Amazon in terms of shopping experience.

So, we downloaded the separate apps and tried them out as any regular customer will do. We noted down the process of browsing through the products, adding them to the cart, and the check-out process. The experience serves as a useful relative comparison in the Amazon UX study. 

User Research

A user experience analysis is about determining if a product fulfills the needs of the users. Likewise, an analysis of Amazon’s UX design requires an understanding of its users. It’s important to establish the demographics of users made up of Amazon’s customer base and analyze their experience using the app.

Therefore, you’ll need to set sights on user research and not the other fancy features in the app. If the users are not happy with the app, they are unlikely to buy regardless of the creative efforts in it. 

During the user research, we wanted to gain clarity for these questions.

• Who made up most of Amazon app users.?
• How do most users interact with the Amazon app?
• What are the possible pain points faced by the users?
• What’s their experience using competitor’s apps?
• How do the users make their purchasing decision?
• What are the factors that influence the user’s decisions?

In order to answer these questions, we create proto personas as it is the quickest way to envision probably users that are using the Amazon app. If you’re not familiar with proto personas, it is the process of establishing target users of a product based on the researchers’ assumption.

Proto-personas are created based on what we think the users are like. They are not based on statistics or studies, although validation can be carried out later on. Proto-personas is commonly used in user experience analysis. 

Here are some proto personas that we’ve created for this study.

• A professional executive who likes to shop spontaneously. This shopper has little time to browse through different products and would like to make quick decisions from the available information.
• A tech-savvy individual who’s no stranger to using an online shopping platform. This shopper takes the time to research a product thoroughly before purchasing. This shopper leverages features on the app and is attentive to details.
• An online marketer on the lookout for the best deals and prefers online shopping to physical stores. Ideally, this shopper prefers quality products and wants to shop in a secure environment. 
• A young shopper who’s only using the app for essential goods. This shopper takes time to compare products and is particularly interested in eco-friendly products. This shopper is annoyed by ads during online shopping.

Besides proto personas, we’ve also created customer journey maps for this case study. A customer journey map illustrates every possible point of interaction between the user and the app. It helps provide clarity in the overall customer experience and pinpoint areas with room for improvement. 

Customer journey mapping helps you to identify how different personas interact with the app. It acts as a benchmark between real user experience and their expectations. You can also leverage the customer journey map to introduce personalized features in future products.

Pain Points 

The next part in this UX case study identifies pain points faced by the proto personas when using the Amazon shopping app. To do so, we use a methodology named Heuristic evaluation.

Heuristic Evaluation is a usability testing evaluation system introduced by Jakob Nielsen in 1990. It enables evaluators to determine a product’s usability based on 10 UX principles known as ‘heuristics’. 

Usually, a group of 3-5 evaluators is tasked to evaluate a product against the heuristics. This is because it’s more probable for different evaluators to identify more problematic areas than a single evaluator. 

The evaluation starts by determining the numbers of heuristics to be used. Depending on the product, you can use all 10 of the heuristics or a smaller number. UX designers have found this evaluation method helpful in identifying UX issues before product release. It is equally valuable when reviewing an existing product’s usability.

Here are the pain points that we’ve uncovered with Heuristic Evaluation.

1. Visibility of System Status

Positive findings.

• Home page. 
• The app informs users of potential delays prior to ordering.
• Product page and shopping list.
• Interaction, which helps to understand that the product has added the cart (cart animation + vibration).
• Select Location. 
• The application determines the geolocation based on the phone number.
• Cart page. 
• User sees the total number of ordered goods, not the number of goods types.
• Includes all the necessary info about the product.

Need To Be Improved

• Search & Result page.
• The number of search results is unclear.
• There are no number of pages in the pagination - no indication of how many flippable pages.
• Several categories of the output of search results confuse users; the user does not understand whether it has displayed all results and on what principle it works.
• Not all the text from the filters fits in the line, it is not possible to see the full text.
• The delivery price is not specified.
• Filters do not display selected options, confusing options change (price).
• Product page & Shopping list. 
• Users see the product’s size, but it’s hard to understand which one she/he needs.
• There is a price range for the product, but not the exact price the user has to pay for the product.
• Users will only realize a product is not available only after choosing the color and size.
• There is a check box in the basket with a gift proposal on the cart page, but it isn’t clear which item will be selected as the gift.

2. Match between system and the real world

Need to be improved.

• Expected more specific filters on a category, on the sizes for example, but it seems like the filter is quite generic.
• Product page & Shopping list.
• Some products’ sizes are shown in numbers, but users may expect them to be shown in more familiar alphabets presented in a table. 

3. User control and freedom

• Search & results page.
• User can choose the option that suits him/her from those that the system offers. 
• Location selection. 
• A prominent message prompting you to change the location if it is not correct.
• Users can't choose the price range that they need (can’t choose a price less than $30).
• Category filter - the user doesn't understand what to choose here. 
• "Sport & outdoor" - the name of the filter does not match what can be filtered here.
• Can't get out of filters without applying them and there’s no exit button.
• Unable to locate ‘filter by size’.

4. Consistency and standards

• Clicking the "back" button brings it back to the previous page without closing the open filter. It should close down the filter on the first click, and return to the previous on the second. 
• Strange to see sorting inside filters. This is usually a separate feature for that.
• The "& Up" filter for reviews is inconsistent with the regular practice.
• Select location.
• Despite a predetermined location at the beginning, the states reverted to default when placing an order.
• Inconsistency of displaying informationDetails, descriptions, and characteristics of the product are already under the recommendations and related products.
• Non-typical usage of a drop-down for choosing the number of units.
• If you click on the "Details" button, a page opens with back navigation, although there is a top-level back button.
• Quantity selection is implemented differently than on the product page.
• The checkout button is above the items in the cart, which is inconsistent with the outside world. Usually, people read from top to bottom.
• The price for products is shown above them.
• Order page.
• Quantity selection is implemented differently than on the product page and basket.
• Strange order of fields (Country -> name -> street -> city).

5. Error Prevention

• Search & results page. 
• The system returns the right option despite errors when typing the product name in the search bar.
• No prompt for automatic street selection when filling the address (for non-US territories).
• The ‘delete’ button is not highlighted, making it easy to be accidentally clicked on.
• Can’t quickly return a deleted item to the cart.

6. Recognition rather than recall

• The search history is saved.
• Return Possibility Message.
• If you exit the screen and return, the fields will remain filled.
• The system detects a Ukrainian user but shows an American code when entering the default phone number.
• Shows default American fields in address although it has detected a Ukrainian user.
• No dropdown list with autocomplete address field.

7. Flexibility and efficiency of use

• Search & results page 
• Search with hints after entering a pair of characters.
• There is a checkbox to "make the address default".
• Very long scrolling of the product page. It is difficult to navigate and search for the necessary information - to navigate to the characteristics and reviews.
• Why is there no social log in.

8. Aesthetic and minimalist design

• Instead of indicating the items are not delivered to a specific country, the system should hide those non-deliverable items from the customer's view. 
• Many different font styles (color, size, thickness).
• Small text, not ideal for people with poor eyesight.
• Elements look like a random mess (different contours, fillets, thickness, size)—little space.

9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

• Shows an informational message that allows users to change the address and with accompanying warnings.
• Search results.

User Testing For Pain Points

At this point, we’ve got a list of pain points by evaluating the Amazon shopping app against the selected heuristics. However, they are merely opinions from our team, who are testing the app based on created proto personas.

We need to validate that the problems that we’ve encountered are posing real problems for users. Therefore, it’s important to carry out user testing for those pain points.

User testing provides an opportunity to understand the app from a different point of view. It reduces the risk of us being blindsided in certain areas during the evaluation.

To carry out user testing, we’ve prepared tasks that are to be assigned to 5 users that we’ve selected. The participants are asked to accomplish the tasks using the Amazon shopping app and record problems that occur. 

Here are the results that validated our earlier findings.

• Confused with the search results.
• Can’t add to favorites on the search results page.
• Irrelevant recommendations. 
• Confused with purchase screen - need to verify the info multiple times.
• The product page is hard to navigate, has too much info, and is not structured.
• Too many ads.
• Hard to compare items. It takes too long to return to the search screen.

Hypothesis To Test

We’ve identified what’s wrong with the current Amazon shopping app. To complete this UX case study, we’ll need to put together the solutions we perceive to lead to a better user experience. 

To do so, we’ve created a list of improvements for all the pain points that we’ve identified and added our thoughts to them. We aim to create a redesign of the app interface and confirm that our hypothesis on the pain points and solutions is correct.

There are, of course, too many pain points to implement in the redesign, and some could be very tedious to do so. To narrow them down, we utilize the impact/effort matrix and selected impactful changes that are easy to implement.

With the choices of changes decided, we moved on to redesigning the Amazon shopping app in the form of a prototype. We’re sticking with Amazon’s original fonts and colors as they represent the online retail’s brand identity.

Based on our hypothesis, the new prototype should result in an improved user experience. We created two different versions to gather better insights in testing.

Check out our redesign here.

Everything we’ve done in this Amazon UX review will lead to nothing if we’re not testing the prototype with real users. We need to be sure that we’ve uncovered the pain points with the existing app and that our recommendations in solving the problems resonate with real users.

Therefore, we decided to turn to a proven method to validate our assumptions -- usability testing. Again, we invited a few users with different age groups and professions and got them to accomplish a single task on the prototype. They are asked to buy a soccer glove on the prototype with UX fixes.

As the users execute the task, they are asked to note any problems and thoughts with the prototype. When the app review is completed, we consolidate the results by asking questions like:

• How was the experience?
• What was easy/hard to understand/interact in this prototype?
• Is there anything difficult to understand at first glance?
• Which version of the prototype do you prefer?

It’s essential to hold the post-testing interview in a one-on-one session. The participants are more likely to be more open with their thoughts when they can talk in comfort. You’ll also have a better opportunity to understand their mindset and behavior when shopping for an item with the prototype. 

Ideally, you’ll want to collect as much data as possible during the prototype testing. This is true whether you’re doing a user experience analysis for a 3rd party product or working on your own app.

The data becomes clear guidance to making UX improvements when revising the app. It removes guesswork and assumption from UX design. As a result, you’ll have a more precise strategy in creating UX that appeals to end-users. 

Amazon could do with a few UX lift-ups in its app, that is, if it intends to appeal to new users. As shown in this UX review, it doesn’t hurt to correct some of the glaring issues with the existing app. Users can get to their desired items with less hassle, leading to increased conversion.

While Amazon could get away with some UX bad practices, budding e-commerce stores will fare differently with the same blunders. It is vital to carry out usability testing to ensure that users have a smooth experience with the app.

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design-amazon-online-shopping-system.md

Latest commit, file metadata and controls, design amazon - online shopping system, let's design an online retail store..

We'll cover the following:

System Requirements

Use case diagram, class diagram, activity diagram, sequence diagram.

Amazon ( amazon.com ) is the world’s largest online retailer. The company was originally a bookseller but has expanded to sell a wide variety of consumer goods and digital media. For the sake of this problem, we will focus on their online retail business where users can sell/buy their products.

We will be designing a system with the following requirements:

• Users should be able to add new products to sell.
• Users should be able to search for products by their name or category.
• Users can search and view all the products, but they will have to become a registered member to buy a product.
• Users should be able to add/remove/modify product items in their shopping cart.
• Users can check out and buy items in the shopping cart.
• Users can rate and add a review for a product.
• The user should be able to specify a shipping address where their order will be delivered.
• Users can cancel an order if it has not shipped.
• Users should get notifications whenever there is a change in the order or shipping status.
• Users should be able to pay through credit cards or electronic bank transfer.
• Users should be able to track their shipment to see the current state of their order.

We have four main Actors in our system:

• Admin: Mainly responsible for account management and adding or modifying new product categories.
• Guest: All guests can search the catalog, add/remove items to the shopping cart, as well as become registered members.
• Member: Members can perform all the activities that guests can, in addition to which, they can place orders and add new products to sell.
• System: Mainly responsible for sending notifications for orders and shipping updates.

Here are the top use cases of the Online Shopping System:

• Add/update products; whenever a product is added or modified, we will update the catalog.
• Search for products by their name or category.
• Add/remove product items in the shopping cart.
• Check-out to buy product items in the shopping cart.
• Make a payment to place an order.
• Add a new product category.
• Send notifications to members with shipment updates.

Here is the use case diagram of our Online Shopping System:

Here are the descriptions of the different classes of our Online Shopping System:

• Account: There are two types of registered accounts in the system: one will be an Admin, who is responsible for adding new product categories and blocking/unblocking members; the other, a Member, who can buy/sell products.
• Guest: Guests can search for and view products, and add them in the shopping cart. To place an order they have to become a registered member.
• Catalog: Users of our system can search for products by their name or category. This class will keep an index of all products for faster search.
• ProductCategory: This will encapsulate the different categories of products, such as books, electronics, etc.
• Product: This class will encapsulate the entity that the users of our system will be buying and selling. Each Product will belong to a ProductCategory.
• ProductReview: Any registered member can add a review about a product.
• ShoppingCart: Users will add product items that they intend to buy to the shopping cart.
• Item: This class will encapsulate a product item that the users will be buying or placing in the shopping cart. For example, a pen could be a product and if there are 10 pens in the inventory, each of these 10 pens will be considered a product item.
• Order : This will encapsulate a buying order to buy everything in the shopping cart.
• OrderLog: Will keep a track of the status of orders, such as unshipped, pending, complete, canceled, etc.
• ShipmentLog: Will keep a track of the status of shipments, such as pending, shipped, delivered, etc.
• Notification: This class will take care of sending notifications to customers.
• Payment: This class will encapsulate the payment for an order. Members can pay through credit card or electronic bank transfer.

Following is the activity diagram for a user performing online shopping:

• Here is the sequence diagram for searching from the catalog:
• Here is the sequence diagram for adding an item to the shopping cart:
• Here is the sequence diagram for checking out to place an order:

Here is the high-level definition for the classes described above.

Enums, data types, and constants: Here are the required enums, data types, and constants:

Account, Customer, Admin, and Guest: These classes represent different people that interact with our system:

ProductCategory, Product, and ProductReview: Here are the classes related to a product:

ShoppingCart, Item, Order, and OrderLog: Users will add items to the shopping cart and place an order to buy all the items in the cart.

Shipment, ShipmentLog, and Notification: After successfully placing an order, a shipment record will be created:

Search interface and Catalog: Catalog will implement Search to facilitate searching of products.