The Brief
Alfreshco is the UK’s leading spray paint retailer, offering a wide range of high-quality brands to both professionals and hobbyists. Known for their next-day delivery and exceptional customer support, Alfreshco needed to modernise their digital operations to better serve their growing customer base, stay competitive and ensure sustainable growth.
Main Issues
Before partnering with us, Alfreshco relied on a WordPress WooCommerce-based website, which had become a bottleneck for their operations. While they had sold large volumes of spray paint through this platform, they faced many critical issues. Alfreshco was interested in migrating to Shopify but had been told by other agencies that it wasn’t possible to meet their requirements. The reason given was Shopify’s limitation of displaying only 100 variants per product. This was a major barrier, as the spray paints Alfreshco offer can have up to 300 colour variants. These were the key problems they faced:
- Inventory Management Failures: Their system struggled to accurately track stock levels, leading to overselling.
- Payment & Checkout Problems: Persistent issues with payment gateways and a poor checkout experience resulted in a loss of orders.
- Bad Search Engine Visibility: Technical and on-page SEO issues hindered their visibility in search engine rankings, limiting their ability to attract organic traffic.
- Poor User Experience and Interface: The website was outdated, difficult to navigate, and failed to provide a seamless shopping experience.
- Integration Limitations: The existing platform did not integrate with external systems like Google Merchant Centre or Facebook Commerce Manager, restricting Alfreshco’s ability to advertise effectively.
- Operational Inefficiencies: From order placement to warehouse fulfilment, the process was riddled with inefficiencies, such as failing to notify customers about delivery statuses and manually creating delivery address labels.
- Low Conversion Rate: There were no key tactics implemented to improve conversion rates, such as optimising landing pages, using urgency, or upselling products to drive sales.
- No Automated Email System: No email marketing system was in place, missing opportunities to upsell, recover abandoned carts or engage customers with targeted workflows.
Solutions
We identified that Shopify was the ideal platform for Alfreshco. The robust platform’s ability to scale with ease and seamlessly integrate with other systems made it the perfect fit to address their challenges and optimise their digital infrastructure.
Key Solutions Delivered:
- Custom Variant Display:
- Engineered an innovative solution on the Shopify platform that enabled Alfreshco to display an unlimited number of product variants on a single product page.
- All variants were presented in a clean, user-friendly table format, ensuring customers could easily find and select their desired colours.
- Search Engine and Performance Optimisation:
- Migrated to a cloud-based architecture, using a reliable content delivery network and serving the best image sizes for different devices to significantly improve site loading speeds.
- Developed expandable dropdown sections on collection and product pages, allowing rich text to be indexed by Google while ensuring a clean, user-friendly experience.
- API-Driven Fulfilment :
- Implemented an API-driven workflow within Alfreshco’s warehouse operations, integrating Shopify with a new warehouse management system.
- Delivery updates and preferences were provided via email and phone, significantly reducing customer support enquiries.
- Redesigned UX/UI:
- Redesigned the entire user interface with a focus on intuitive navigation, clear product categorisation, and usability across devices.
- The customer experience was improved by automating delivery updates and streamlining return and refund requests.
- Advertising Integrations:
- Integrated third-party platforms for both advertising and additional sales channels, including TikTok Shop, to expand reach and drive more traffic.
- Generated over 1,600 unique product images for each colour variant, enabling them to display in listings on third-party platforms like Google Merchant Center and Facebook Commerce Manager.
Significant Results
This digital transformation delivered noticeable results for Alfreshco:
- 40% growth in SERP rankings due to SEO improvements.
- 8% increase in online sales, attributed to the streamlined customer journey and optimised site.
- 40% reduction in warehouse processing times through fulfilment automation.
- 60% fewer customer support inquiries, thanks to proactive shipment tracking and delivery updates.
- 70% faster loading speeds across the whole site compared to the previous website
Looking Forward
Alfreshco is now a fully modernised, scalable business with streamlined operations. We continue to support Alfreshco through an ongoing partnership, providing regular updates and new developments to ensure they remain competitive in an ever-evolving market. Our retainer and support services ensure the platform evolves with their needs, keeping them at the forefront of their industry.
