From a site redesign to Anthony Burrill prints: reflections on exploring eCommerce within the innovation hub at the British Red Cross

It was just over a year ago that we launched the new British Red Cross gift-shop.

Which means it’s 1 year and 6 months since I joined the Innovation hub to work with Talya Edmondson on redesigning the British Red Cross’ eCommerce offering.

We joined off the back of a cross-organisational workshop held by Jessica Ferguson in January 2019. The workshop and her research highlighted the potential opportunity eCommerce held for the British Red Cross, not only as a means to increase income but as a tool to engage new supporters in fresh and exciting ways. However, before we were going to attempt to scale anything up, we first had to fix the basics and test, test, test.

The site redesign

Before I jump into what we tested and where we are today, here’s a quick look at what changed in the first three months.

The old giftshop.redcross.org.uk site that was set up in 2011, that sold gifts from our retail shops, first aid and assisted living products.

We started by redesigning the gift-shop site that had been built 11 years earlier and was in major need of some TLC. First taking to a whiteboard back when we had Elliot with us, we mapped out all the various product areas and the necessary functionalities of the site. Then we got stuck in with our UX designer (thanks Joungmin!) who really helped us to bring the ideas to life, test them and crucially, communicate them clearly to our web developers.

The first step was to really focus on what the purpose of the gift-shop was — a place for people to explore and shop for products they love, whilst knowing their purchases would have a powerful impact by supporting the work of the BRC. To maintain that focus on our purpose as well as create a clearer user experience, we decided to simplify our offering. Separating our cause led products (assisted daily living and first aid) from our ‘want’ based products (tote bags, gift cards etc…). We also redesigned the cause-led shop, but that’s for another blog!

The giftshop.redcross.org.uk site in its current form

We moved over to Shopify, for a number of reasons, but mainly because:

• It’s fairly cheap to build a modern, simple and intuitive website, especially when using Shopify’s own templates
• It offered us a really easy to use, simple back end with basic analytics features
• It provided us with a base with which we could add more functionality — testing concepts such as virtual gifts and subscriptions for the first time, we could utilise plug-ins easily where necessary

Testing product areas cheaply and quickly

So now we had a jazzy new website, we needed to work on our product offering. This would allow us to really understand who our current audience was and what they wanted to buy, but also crucially what other audiences we could attract and how we could grow.

Keeping our organisational values in mind, we knew we wanted to test ethically made gifts, but we also knew that investing in expensive stock without any idea whether it would sell would be risky. So we partnered with the amazing Urban Makers, who are a collection of designers and individual makers based across the UK. We listed their products on our site, taking a percentage of sales, meaning we could test product areas quickly and cheaply whilst also supporting small businesses and knowing the provenance of our products.

Initially we have focused on gaining insight and understanding into who our supporters are, rather than attempting to make quick profits. Along the way, we’ve gathered more than just insight though; we are slowly building a community of supporters that want to help our mission through buying our products.

One learning that come out of this test was that home and living was one of our top performing product areas and our supporters loved tea towels, tote bags and cushions. We also learnt that our supporters were willing to pay a premium for products if they knew they were made in an ethical and environmentally friendly way. The British Red Cross’ 2030 strategy highlights the importance of working in climate conscious ways. So when the ‘I’m with Greta’ tote (made from 40% salvaged pre-consumer polyester and 60% post-consumer cotton which would otherwise have gone to landfill) became our Q4 2019 bestseller from their range — it felt exciting to know we could offer products that not only aligned with our values, but advocated for the issues we were tackling as an organisation.

I’m with greta tote bag — made from SALVAGED 40% pre-consumer polyester and 60% post-consumer cotton, which would otherwise have gone to landfill.

Another test was cause-led products — products which acted as an advocacy tool, but also directly benefited one of our services. With our Refugee Art Therapy workshops losing some key funding, we were keen to see if we could create a social enterprise model. Running art workshops where designs produced during the sessions could be turned into products to sell via the gift-shop and returning all income back to the service. So in November 2019, we held our first print workshop with the lovely Jenna and had some really great results — check out our pomegranate and duck tote bags, prints and tea towels.

At the same time, our friends over in Innovation Fundraising launched their beautiful baubles — also designed by refugees. They were a huge hit on the gift-shop, selling out within 5 days last year!

Our ‘Designed by Refugees’ collection on the gift-shop.

We were also keen to test virtual gifts — a concept that has been around for a while now, think of Oxfam’s ‘Unwrapped’ or Water Aid’s ‘Shop for life’. Essentially, they are donations that can be sent as cards or eCards. Allowing supporters to choose a card that resonates with them or as a gift for someone else, whether that’s a hygiene pack for a refugee or helping someone home from hospital. We knew that other charities were really nailing this and had been in some cases, for up to 10 years. We weren’t sure if we were too late to the party, but we still wanted to give it a go. Virtual gifts offer supporters a unique alternative to traditional donating and can help people understand the work we do in a more tangible way.

Initially, we broke our virtual gifts down into ‘Support refugees’ and ‘Support local’ as we are one of the largest providers of refugee services in the UK, and we had feedback from across the organisation that people were keen to give back to a particular area after being helped by that service. However, for what could have been a multitude of reasons, when we marketed our virtual gifts they didn’t perform as well as we’d hoped. Our first test included two options, send an e-card or send a greetings card, but we received feedback that the product page was slightly confusing and people weren’t sure whether they were leaving their message for the recipient or for a service user.

Since the launch of our virtual gifts in October 2019, we have continuously reviewed our findings and feedback, which has led us to:

• Remove ‘Virtual Gifts’ from the name, replacing this with the much more explanatory ‘Send a greetings card or e-card’ in our navigation
• Remove options which had not sold as expected over the year, including our local virtual gifts, which brought down the average price of our range to £25
• Add in more relevant gifts which reflected our current organisational response, such as the ‘food parcel for someone self-isolating’
• Update our images, including more recent case studies and added a mock up of the greetings card that would be sent
• Add a ‘Don’t send anything’ option, so people could leave a message of support or solidarity instead of sending a card
• Redesign our e-card templates to improve how they arrived in recipient’s email inboxes

They’re still a work in progress but so far, the response has been really positive — we’re really happy to see that they’re resonating with supporters and that we’re seeing an uptake in sales!

Some of the messages of support and solidarity left by our supporters in response to our Wrapping for Refugees virtual gifts.

Back in April, as a response to COVID, there was an opportunity to list the incredible ‘Kindness will keep us together’ designs from 10 artists such as Anthony Burill, Rose Blake and Supermundane as free downloads on the gift-shop. Chatting with the retail team, we quickly went back to see if we could extend the license to sell their designs as prints and products. Within a week we’d set up a new supplier, who offer incredible green and ethical products printed on demand. Huge shout-out and thanks to Kim at WWF for sharing her contacts and expertise!

The collection was a huge cross-organisational effort and really backed up our previous learnings and belief that eCommerce can become a steady income stream for the organisation if embedded into our communications channels. So for Q4 this year, we worked with the creative agency VCCP and teams across the organisation to once again collaborate with UK artists, designers and illustrators, launching the ‘I have the Power’ artist collection. Featuring 9 artists this time, such as Morag Myerscough, Lesidris and Craig and Karl — we’re running a competition on social media to find a 10th artist to join the collaboration.

Both collections featured products that were printed on demand in the UK, which not only meant we didn’t have to invest in stock which might not sell but every product has a far lower carbon cost and we are only producing stock that we know we have sold. Our suppliers also recycle 100% of all fabric and paper waste and the products are manufactured solely using sustainable energy generated from wind and solar power.

As the new gift-shop has reached it’s 1st birthday and we move towards 2021, we’re really excited to see where we can take the site next. How we can continue to build our community of supporters, improve our user experience, test more products and ultimately, how we can raise money so that the British Red Cross can continue being there for people in crisis.