Aesop US store and Mobile development
Completed November 2011
Project Overview
Aesop came to butterfly looking to extend their online store into the US and Canada. Having recently completed a Virtuemart store for Australia, we suggested an innovative solution – to create a plug in for Virtuemart that allows two stores to be managed from the same website CMS.
Butterfly also created a fully mobile compatible template for the Australia/New Zealand store, allowing customers to order from their mobile phone or tablet device, as well as find a store and access all the desktop site content.
Design
Aesop’s branding uses a very clean and minimalist aesthetic so our design was very focused on delivering all the necessary navigation while retaining the simple and minimalistic feel of the main site. Trying to fit all of the product details into the mobile layout proved to be a challenging task, but we successfully achieved it and simultaneously reduced the number of clicks required to get to a product (and therefore page loads!). As a result, speed on mobile internet is improved. This was managed by listing all of the products in a category and allowing the user to purchase directly from this list view – as opposed to a new page per product. We also cut down on the number of checkout steps, and introduced a registration-free checkout.
Technology – US store
Our talented development team custom coded a database switch that could go from the Australian to the US version of the store at the touch of a button. That meant the management, configuration, shipping, products, prices, user accounts etc could all be managed separately, but via the same central back end as the existing Virtuemart store. This saves huge amounts of time and money when compared with setting up a brand new online store.
This is the first time we have seen this done on a virtuemart platform.
Technology – Mobile
Joomla mobile sites use templates to display a different version of the same content to mobile users – which means that all website content is managed centrally- no duplication required.
Adapting Virtuemart to work within an extremely customized template was one of the more difficult aspects of the job, along with optimising the forms and check out process to minimize typing on tiny touch-screens or keys.
To minimize load time in the main site, we used the templates to manage how much content was shown at one time, using accordion menus and thumbnail images wherever possible. This also has the advantage of keeping the space uncluttered and reducing scrolling.
Conclusion
By creating a duplicate of Aesop’s existing store for US and Canadian customers, Butterfly was able to deliver a fully functioning brand new store at a low cost and in a very short space of time.
With the use of mobile websites predicted to overtake desktops by 2015, Aesop are ahead of the curve, giving their customers the option to shop from wherever they may be, whatever device they are using. The new design has already led to a significant increase in conversions on mobile devices, and we’re sure this will only improve!
