Pela's UX transformation that drove a 38% increase in purchases

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Pela, a sustainable tech accessory brand, approached Fuel Made with a unique challenge. They were previously running a headless website, which required a lot of time from their technical team to manage. 

They sought to re-platform to a Shopify front end, aiming to leverage the latest features, enhance speed, and improve internationalization while reducing their reliance on their engineering team. Fuel Made was tasked with transforming Pela's website to achieve these goals, while adhering to Pela's brand guidelines and improving website accessibility.

What We Worked On

  • Ecommerce Strategy
  • User Experience Design
  • Conversion Rate Optimization
  • Migration to Shopify 2.0

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The challenge

Pela's website faced several challenges prior to partnering with Fuel Made. One was the conversion rate disparity between new and returning visitors. Although new visitors accounted for 80% of the traffic, they converted at a discouraging 59% lower rate than returning visitors. 

The opportunity here was clear: monetize first-time visitors effectively by optimizing the site for an easy shopping experience, highlighting brand differentiators, and ensuring that all necessary information was readily available.

Also, product pages, despite being responsible for approximately one-third of total page views, experienced high bounce rates. This signaled the need for a major focus on UX design, particularly concerning Product Detail Pages. Additionally, desktop collection pages consistently outperformed their mobile counterparts, indicating a substantial opportunity for improving design and UX on smaller devices to encourage more users to transition to product pages.

Our approach

Pela’s website was originally built on a headless platform. Part of our project was to move Pela away from headless and onto Shopify 2.0. This was because maintaining the website became extremely difficult on the headless infrastructure, and the team wanted the flexibility to create and update pages seamlessly. Also, many features that were once only available on a headless platform are now available on Shopify 2.0. It made sense to migrate.

Fuel Made tackled these challenges head-on and implemented key strategies to transform Pela's website:

  • Enhanced Product Page UX: One of the primary focuses was improving the user experience on product pages. Fuel Made made changes to streamline navigation, making it easier for users to find the right category based on attributes such as phone type/model or design. This ensured that potential customers could access the information they needed swiftly.
  • Flexible Site Map: Recognizing that large-assortment websites can quickly outgrow their initial structures, Fuel Made developed a site map that could adapt and expand with Pela's evolving product offerings. This flexibility not only accommodated new categories as Pela expanded but also empowered Pela's team to manage content without requiring extensive developer involvement. This agility enables Pela to respond swiftly to content and market changes, while design and development resources can focus on conversion-oriented optimizations.

By addressing conversion rate disparities, optimizing product pages, and providing a flexible site structure, Pela reduced its dependence on website technicalities and can focus on business growth and customer satisfaction.