How Catbird Boosted Mobile Conversion with Magento
Fashion eCommerce Website
For the ‘cool-girl’ jewelry company, a mobile-first eCommerce strategy was critical.
+39% Mobile Revenue Growth
+51.52% Mobile conversion
Catbird need to revolutionize their mobile commerce
Described by the New York Times as “the cool-girl jewelry go-to since 2004,” Catbird creates captivating, custom jewelry on demand. Their stunning necklaces, rings, and bracelets are all manufactured at the brand’s iconic offices in Brooklyn, New York, and are often seen on celebrities. The Catbird webstore, built on Magento Commerce 1, worked like a charm on desktop and did a nice job of showcasing their jewelry and providing a seamless shopping experience. But Catbird’s young, mobile buyers are glued to their cellphones, not their desktops. They needed to create a mobile commerce experience that is elegant, yet fun, and like their brand, highly functional.
“We wanted our customers to experience our brand with a sense of discovery and curiosity,” said Anna Mikkelsen, eCommerce Director at Catbird. “We needed better storytelling through content pages, high-quality product detail pages, and a more intuitive navigation to help cultivate our customer base, and communicate our vision.” Catbird customers demanded an outstanding commerce experience, including same-day shipping, and a wishlist feature. On the backend, Catbird needed the ability to completely change up their homepage during the holidays, or sale periods, to keep the site looking fresh. In 2018, they decided to upgrade to Magento Commerce 2.
Our new responsive mobile Magento Commerce 2 site has increased our conversions and elevated our brand to new levels. No one else in our industry sees the conversion rate or has the flexibility of content that we do.
Anna Mikkelsen
eCommerce Director, catbirdnyc.com
A seamless mobile shopping experience
Together with their partner, Imagination Media, Catbird embarked on a six-month project to relaunch their webstore. They used Magento to build custom functionalities including in-stock, out-of-stock, and lead-time messaging to ensure customers have full inventory visibility. They added custom gift messaging, wishlist functionality, and same-day shipping for customers who just can’t wait to get their order.
Most importantly, they built a custom mobile commerce theme that was independent of the desktop store, empowering a seamless, omnichannel experience. They simply followed the default Magento Commerce 2 stack, using jQuery, KnockoutJs and pure JavaScript code, with responsive web design to make the website look and feel amazing on all mobile devices. For their static content, Catbird are using BlueFoot, but are ready to migrate to Magento Page Builder on 2.3 by the start of Imagine 2019.
The mobile commerce experience on Catbird is now a completely different theme and layout from the desktop experience — and optimized for customer conversion. With a completely mobile-driven website, the navigation is simple, clean, and straightforward — while maximizing media (beautiful images of their jewelry). It’s all easily customizable on the backend, empowering Catbird to change out overall site themes, update the look and feel to promote a holiday or special sale, while easily adjusting core functionalities. And with Zendesk integration for customer service, the result is an eCommerce experience that is smooth, seamless, and enjoyable.
The Catbird buying and merchandising team utilize the Magento Commerce 2 visual merchandiser tools to strategically drive sales of certain products, for example, creating a landing page that focuses on vintage-style bracelets and gifts for Mother’s Day. “Our content is easier to manage through the BlueFoot integration; we are more nimble and able to evolve and match our on-site experience with our campaigns,” said Mikkelsen. “A robust mobile theme really brought this experience to life for mobile on Magento Commerce 2. We have the flexibility now of delivering amazing mobile content that is responsive and complementary to our products and is easy for our customers to navigate.”
A dazzling eCommerce Website, on all devices.
Launched on October 23, 2018, the new Catbird webstore was everything the brand had planned. “Like Catbird, Magento is a truly robust, dazzling and creative platform that allows us to build and create basically whatever we want because it is open and extensible,” said Ali Ahmed, Founder of Imagination Media. “Magento empowered us to create the overall experience Catbird customers demanded.” The brand is currently working on an upgrade to Magento 2.3.1, mainly to migrate Catbird from Bluefoot to Magento Page Builder.
Today, the Catbird team is more nimble and able to evolve and match its on-site experience with their popular campaigns. Their art department is better equipped to adapt content specifically to the mobile user, and the Catbird buyer has access to new tools like instant purchase, PayPal Express Checkout, and other options for making checkout a breeze. The results showed a 17 percent increase in conversions for Q4 from 2017 to 2018 for all devices, and impressive mobile statistics: Catbird seriously increased their mobile conversion after upgrading to Magento Commerce 2, and showed a healthy 39 percent growth in mobile revenue.
Magento is a truly robust, dazzling and creative platform that allowed us to build and create basically whatever we want.
Ali Ahmed
Founder of Imagination Media
