Our successful partnership with Hostie Hats began in 2016 when we created its first successful e-commerce website. This WordPress and WooCommerce site, meticulously designed based on detailed SEO research and planning, has been a key driver of significant revenue growth since its launch.
This trusted relationship is why, when the time came to refresh the website, Hostie Hats trusted our expertise and knowledge to create a redeveloped website that will be fit for at least another eight years of success.
Before implementing any changes, we undertook thorough user testing on the existing platform to pinpoint the perceived barriers to purchase. This approach centred on the client’s needs and preferences, was the guiding principle of our website redevelopment process.
We also wanted to understand what improvements we could make to the product-specifying process. When purchasing a highly bespoke product with many potential options for each element, arriving at the final item can feel complicated.
This testing process was to be repeated on the new website design prototype to ensure we had addressed the findings of the first round of testing.
The initial round of user testing identified several elements of the specifying and adding to cart process that we could improve to make it smoother, including colour selection of individual hat elements such as feathers, ribbons and headbands (clients can pick individual colours for each hat element) and even the delivery date selection.
After gathering user insights, we created a UI (User Interface) prototype that adopts a more modern, high-class fashion aesthetic and makes the most of the incredible photography of the product designs.
We simplified the specification process and made it much more visual. Customers now follow a step-by-step flow through the colour selection of each component, and picking the swatches from the colour ranges is much more intuitive.
If a client doesn’t want a bespoke piece and wants to purchase a hat shown on the website as an example, the ‘choose from a model’ option is a simple, single-step process of clicking on the image showing the chosen colourway.
We also reconfigured the website’s PDPs (Product Detail Pages), using the space to present an uncluttered overview of the product and delivery options and maximise the beautiful imagery.
In addition to the design aspects, we introduced new functionality, such as automation to request reviews from verified purchasers and display these directly on the PDPs to assist with CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation). For rapid checkout, we also equipped the new e-commerce site with Ajax predictive search and easy pay buttons – Apple Pay and Google Pay.
The second round of user testing gave us confidence that we had addressed the points raised in round one and that the new design had the visual appeal needed to reflect the quality of the hats.
Because of the build quality of the original website we created seven years ago, we retained the site’s original WordPress and WooCommerce back-end and built the new bespoke theme to sit on the front end. This approach meant that content remapping was minimal, and there was no need to do any exporting or importing.
Since we launched the new website, Hostie Hats has received many compliments from customers, both old and new, and has recorded an increase in sales compared to the same period last year. The website is also starting to gather verified reviews, evidencing how happy customers are with their stunning headwear.
