Major technology & operations overhaul resulting in a platform migration from Demandware to Shopify Plus

Project Overview

Tied to expensive legacy systems, but with a keen eye on modernising their technology stack, The Cambridge Satchel Company engaged us to review their entire digital sales operation. In collaboration with the Cambridge Satchel team, we spearheaded a major platform change from Demandware to the Shopify Plus platform, factoring in four currencies and a tight, custom integration with their mission-critical middleware technology.

In Numbers:

4

Shopify instances for various key marketing territories.
10

Weeks to launch from project commencement.
8

Members of the BAO team involved.
1

Day remaining - deadline successfully met.

Design Summary

It was critical that the new website offered a significantly richer brand experience to their customers. As goes for most premium brands, the CSC website isn't just a simple e-Commerce website - but 'showroom' designed to showcase products, aspiration and lifestyle as part of the user's sales journey. We needed to design and build a framework that was easy for the marketing team to merchandise - including changes to the campaign and lifestyle imagery needed to encourage brand advocacy. Crucial to the project was ensuring we followed best practices in e-Commerce to keep conversion at the forefront of the visitor experience.

Home Page

Cambridge Satchel Company required a flexible that would work for their marketing purposes moving forward, so we adopted a "section" based design, allowing them to drag-and-drag content and build custom pages.

Collection Page

Clean and intuitive was the goal here. Abiding by ecommerce best-practices and providing a friction-less journey. We made use of their fantastic imagery in the hero, and used lifestyle imagery on product hover states.

Product Page

Huge consideration was placed on finding the right conversion formula for this product page, and it is one that has adapted and evolved constantly to hone in on the greatest conversion rates.

Bag / Cart Page

Often overlooked, we wanted to ensure that users felt comfortable checking out on the store. The right-hand column fixes so that the checkout button is in constant view and we reinforced confidence with the company's glowing Trust Pilot reviews.

About Page

A key part of potential sales journey, this story was certainly worth telling. We also used the page to highlight key selling points and services.

News Feed

News feeds are incredibly powerful at garnering search traffic and no brand is too big to ignore good content.

Store Location

With stores all over the country and the ability for users to get product delivered to their nearest store, we needed to highlight where the stores are located. The page also serves to enforce brand credibility and value.

Dynamic Features

Unique elements of the website bespoke to the Cambridge Satchel Company project.

AJAX push cart

A dynamic push cart that could include information on custom personalisation that a user could add to their satchel. Using Shopify Plus enabled us to incorporate this information into the checkout flow for an elevated experience.
Dropdown menu

Given the large volume of products, categories and ancillary branded content available, it was important the site was easily navigable.
Collection hovers

Mixing in lifestyle and still-life photography with standard pack-shots on collection / category pages offers the opportunity to seed brand DNA into the often sterile e-commerce flow.

Mobile Design

Given the volume of mobile traffic the site experiences, an extremely considered approach was taken to ensure that we serve a more appropriate interface solution for touch devices. It's simply not acceptable to strip back a desktop interface and serve up as a solution under the guise of 'responsive'.

Home Page

Push Menu

Collection Page

Collection Page

Product Page

Push Bag

Brand Story

News Article

We have recently migrated from Demandware to Shopify Plus and selected BAO as our design and integration agency. BAO impressed us from the start with their speedy grasp of our business needs and very thorough knowledge of Shopify Plus. They were under pressure to deliver 4 new Shopify stores for us within a very short time period. Not only did they achieve this but actually had the sites ready a day before the go live date. The project itself was complex and during the project we faced a number of business challenges, BAO went above and beyond to help our business come up with workable solutions. We are delighted with the new sites and would not hesitate to recommend BAO.
Clare Dixey - Global Head of e-Commerce

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