Case Study: Enhancing the online experience of a leading Australian beverage brand – StrangeLove

Overview

• Process Creative launched a custom-built Shopify website for StrangeLove in 2023
• This build aimed to enhance conversion, capture the brand’s quirky and irreverent personality, and optimise the user experience
• In the first six months post-launch, StrangeLove saw its monthly returns double and has continued to experience strong growth
• Other outcomes include a significant improvement in browsing and operational speed and a positive uplift in their SEO

The Brand

StrangeLove’s mission is to create exciting, interesting, non-alcoholic drinks that appeal to the Australian masses. After 11 years in the business, they have made their mark, with their premium beverages being sold at some of Australia’s best eateries, wineries and distilleries – among other establishments.

Any business knows that maintaining StrangeLove's level of success can be tricky. In recent years, there has been an influx of digitally native premium beverage brands, making the already competitive market more crowded.

With this in mind, StrangeLove knew that, to stay relevant, something had to change.

The Challenge

Over the past decade, ecommerce has grown significantly, with online shopping becoming increasingly popular with consumers. As a result, an outdated and slow website can have a serious impact on a brand’s relevancy and traffic.

For StrangeLove, they knew their own digital presence was holding them back. Their website, which was built years ago, was clunky and in need of a transformation. The backend functionality of the site constantly challenged the team. The site was slow – for the team and consumers. Updates and general site maintenance were near-impossible, resulting in a lot of headaches when it came time to promote a sale or new product. And their site's overall design no longer matched their brand's current vision.

With StrangeLove’s ecommerce website responsible for 10% of their overall revenue, the team knew a big transformation was needed. A complete rebuild and redesign was on the cards. Being a relatively small team, though, meant they were low on the resources required to start from scratch. So they turned to Process Creative to develop an exciting, fresh and new online experience.

The Process with Process Creative

StrangeLove approached us with a fairly straightforward request – to build a website that was easy to use, looked great, and felt modern. Their overall aim with this project was:

• A platform that is simple to update and maintain

• Creative and appealing design that captures their brand

• Higher online conversions

• Ease of use for customers and the StrangeLove team

• Improve overall page load speed

Having looked at our past accomplishments, StrangeLove were confident that we could deliver exactly what they were looking for. During the early stages of the project, we sat down with the StrangeLove team as part of our Discovery process to discuss the current website, weighing up exactly what was working and what needed to be changed.

Given the emerging competition, we agreed it was important to design a truly eye-catching site that stood out from other brands in the market. While the beverage range was naturally a focus, we also wanted to highlight StrangeLove’s quirky personality, attract and retain interested consumers and build a connection between customers and the brand. It was important, then, that the overall experience be contemporary, fresh and unique.

Before starting the rebuild, we also completed a thorough Discovery Workshop to pinpoint the critical functionality issues that needed our attention. This and every step we took were discussed with the StrangeLove team. Regular communication between us and our clients is always important, as it allows them to see the process, identify any design changes needed and offer their thoughts when necessary.

The Results

StrangeLove has seen their monthly revenue grow dramatically post-site-launch, doubling returns in the first six months alone. Revenue has since tripled when compared to their conversions before the launch, showing the success of this digital transformation in helping StrangeLove become more of an omnichannel brand.

Upselling and cross-promotions are now easily implemented, meaning that StrangeLove can deliver a more robust shopping experience, one that benefits the customer and their brand whilst also maximising conversions. Additionally, page load speeds have seen a substantial improvement, which reduces customer frustration and sways them to continue browsing instead of leaving the site.

A positive uplift in SEO visibility due to the site implementation also means that customers can find StrangeLove more easily online, ensuring that the brand remains increasingly competitive in a crowded marketplace.

Along with improving the customer experience, we also wanted to design a site that the StrangeLove team could easily use, making their day-to-day lives smoother. From a backend point of view, the team has experienced an exciting change. The site was so much easier to update and maintain, with the user-friendly Shopify interface allowing even non-tech-savvy users to quickly and comfortably find their way around the platform. This means that, while making any website changes was once a challenge, the whole team are now able to jump in and make a speedy update whenever needed.

Although the initial build was finished some time ago, StrangeLove has kept us on a monthly Managed Services Agreement to drive further growth and to roll out new website additions when needed. In mid-2023, we also began managing their email marketing, a decision that has led to a significant increase in their digital reach, engagement and revenue generated via email.

Why Choose Process Creative?

Like many ecommerce businesses, StrangeLove has used Shopify for their online store platform for many years. With that in mind, they knew a website build like this required a team familiar with the Shopify platform. Our familiarity and experience with Shopify allowed us to further enhance the already intuitive admin interface, leading to a better digital experience for the StrangeLove team and their customers.

Although the design aspect is obviously important, StrangeLove has highlighted our accessibility and flexibility as crucial to the success of our partnership. Jumping on a call to discuss the project was no problem, with communication remaining open at all times and suggestions taken into consideration when something wasn’t working.