ShabbyApple.com is one of the most chic women’s fashion sites on the internet, but it wasn’t always that way. With a company mantra of empowerment, beauty and confidence, they didn’t feel like their site experience was embodying that message.
“We were, frankly, always in crisis mode with Magento.. now we’ve been able to focus on our business.”
– Carl LeSueur, Co-Owner, ShabbyApple.com
A change was long overdue, and with the help of IntuitSolutions, the answer was BigCommerce Enterprise.
Since their previous e-commerce service, Magento, was not an integrated management and hosting service like BigCommerce, their site became slow and daunting to use. Having to worry about separate hosting and e-commerce services, along with expensive fees and a lack of support, caused headache after headache for Shabby Apple co-owner Carl LeSueur.
“We had consistent issues with Magento being glitchy,” he lamented. “We moved off the platform less than a year after going over to it. Overall, it was a very negative experience.” BigCommerce solved this problem with an inclusive management system, handling both their hosting and e-commerce needs.
BigCommerce’s Built-in Capabilities Shine
With simplicity and reliability of primary concern, BigCommerce was the easy choice for Shabby Apple. “Everything with Magento needed to be customized from beginning to end,” noted LeSueur. “With BigCommerce, there are a lot of solutions that you can just plug in as an add-on.. it doesn’t require significant customizable coding.”
That savings in customization time allowed ShabbyApple.com to be ready on BigCommerce in just five months – 44% faster than it took to set up with Magento! “We’re also able to explore the capabilities of BigCommerce,” he continued. “We recently purchased an add-on that asks customers to sign up for our email list, and they get a discount. It didn’t require significant custom development. The first three months we increased our email list by 10%. That’s valuable to us, as is the ability to implement that kind of tool without significant development costs.”
BigCommerce makes it easy to add value to your site via an extensive plugin, app and API marketplace, as well as great customized solutions.
Customization Helping Drive Sales
Apart from just migrating the Shabby Apple site from Magento to BigCommerce, IntuitSolutions incorporated top-shelf customizations that have really taken them to the next level.
A responsive layout and custom megamenus are just the beginning; IntuitSolutions created a custom one-page checkout for Shabby Apple, ensuring that their customers would have all their order information available at one glance, and to make the checkout process as painless as possible. (Learn more about our BigCommerce One-Page Checkout here.)
IntuitSolutions also implemented a custom review system that included the ability to comment on the fit and quality of the garments, not just give them a star rating.
“For us, [the custom review system] results in fewer returns, and helps us communicate more specifics about our garments by having customers who try it on and learn something about the product,” praised LeSueur.
“It helps other customers who might have similar concerns or priorities make their own buying decision. It’s helpful to the customers and helpful to us.”
BigCommerce Security
Shabby Apple had already been considering leaving Magento for a few months, when suddenly they were hit with a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service Attack), rendering their site nearly unusable. A DDoS attack is a malicious site attack where hackers take advantage of server capacity vulnerabilities and overload a server, taking it offline for long periods of time.
“BigCommerce has its own DDoS defense system – and it’s one of the better systems out there.”
– Carl LeSueur
LeSueur said, “We were trying to replace Magento even before the DDoS attack, but the fact that BigCommerce has its own DDoS defense system on the platform – and that it’s one of the better defense systems out there – certainly edged us toward BigCommerce as opposed to some other solution.”
After Magento left Shabby Apple worrying about when the next attack would come, BigCommerce’s built-in DDoS protection system helped them feel at ease.
BigCommerce Enterprise Resource Planning System
On Magento, Shabby Apple had been using an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, to help with their business management needs. After receiving training from BigCommerce and IntuitSolutions on how to integrate it, Shabby Apple discovered that BigCommerce’s built-in inventory control and order routing capabilities were as good or better for their needs!
While this solution may not work for everybody, Shabby Apple was able to roll another piece of the puzzle right into BigCommerce, saving them hundreds of dollars a month in auxiliary expenses and further streamlining their workflow. They were then able to take those monthly savings and apply the money in a more useful way with IntuitSolutions webmastering and SEO services, along with Google compliance, site maintenance and conversion rate optimization offerings.
BigCommerce and IntuitSolutions – The Perfect Pair
All in all, moving to BigCommerce was a huge win for Shabby Apple. Their entire system is more streamlined, their overall costs went down, their support is better, and they simply have a better site on BigCommerce than they did on Magento. Some of their notable results include:
- increased conversion rate by 12%
- increased page load speed by 81.4%
- decreased marketing spend by 30% YoY while keeping the same sales
- decreased abandoned cart rate by 10% within three months
- decreased bounce rate by 21.7%
- increased average order value by 3.6%
“I’ve found IntuitSolutions to be very responsive, helping us reach a practical solution that will help us get what we want for our customer experience.”
– Carl LeSueur
Shabby Apple couldn’t be happier with BigCommerce, and IntuitSolutions’s experience with both Magento and BigCommerce made it the perfect fit. “Specifically, I’ve found [IntuitSolutions] to be very responsive, to recognize when things are urgent, and to very methodically explain to us the challenges that [they] are facing.. and when our ideal solution is not available, helping us reach a practical solution that will help us get what we want for our customer experience.”
Considering a switch from with Magento to BigCommerce? IntuitSolutions will help you ease the pain. Give us a call today at 866-590-4650.
Check out the BigCommerce case study about Shabby Apple here.
