arsaeusdesigns.com
E-commerce development for Toronto jewellery store
Services Provided: E-Commerce, Web Design, Web Development, Web Hosting, Web Support
Client Background
Arsaeus Designs
Heather Roblin created her jewellery brand about four years ago. Inspired by her trips to the Mediterranean, Heather began designing jewellery based on Greek mythology.
The leap into creating her own line of jewellery was made easier by the support she received from Made You Look, the locally famous Toronto jewellery store where she worked. They let Heather sell her designs in-store and use their on-site jewellery crafting facilities in exchange for a commission on every sale she made. All of Heather’s products are hand made and ethically sourced, just like everything at Made You Look. By partnering with the store, Heather knows her products are made with quality materials, letting her offer the best in her designs.
While Heather had the support she needed to become a designer, she still had to face the challenges associated with relative obscurity. She was completely reliant on Made You Look to sell her products. This led Heather to pursue marketing solutions through social media and her own website.
As an added incentive, Heather makes 100% of the profit from her online sales with no commission due to Made You Look. For Heather, a strong online presence means more money in her pocket.
The Challenge
New features with user experience in mind
Heather came to Awesome Web Designs with a site she needed to upgrade. Although we didn’t design her site from the ground up, we did provide a few quality of life improvements that have increased the effectiveness of the site as an e-commerce.
The original designer created Arsaeus Designs’ site around a free template that somewhat limited how far we could customize the sites layout. However, it didn’t stop us from adding some much-needed features that have since done wonders for user experience.
This includes adding a chat feature, re-organizing product pages, incorporating a help center, writing out a terms and conditions page, providing shipping information, suggesting related products, a personal contact page, user testimonials, and an FAQ section.
Most importantly, we integrated Arsaeus Designs’ Facebook and Instagram marketing presence into the site. We knew they were getting a lot of engagement over social media, so a seamless transition between the two would make a huge impact on the sites visitor rate.
This social e-commerce model has proven to be our biggest accomplishment. It has led to an increase in sales and engagement, mainly through custom orders, which make up the bulk of Arsaeus’ sales.
Unfortunately, being an independent businesswoman, Heather lacked the budget at the time for a full marketing campaign or a wholesale website redesign. With what was available to us, we were able to run some social media ads that let us break even on our marketing costs, but it wasn’t enough to make a real profit.
That being said, we at Awesome Web Designs consider our work with Heather to be a success. We helped her improve her business model and convert social media awareness to sales, which has had a marked benefit on her and her business.
The Solution
Improving on a pre-existing design
While we didn’t design Arsaeus Designs’ website from the ground up or provide them with an extensive marketing campaign, we did make some significant and thoughtful input that has improved her business.
For starters, we completely changed the face of their e-commerce layout. Arsaeus Designs’ products are high end and expensive, often reaching the thousand-dollar range. When it comes to buying things online, nobody wants to drop that kind of money on something they aren’t already thoroughly familiar with, especially in the case of fashion and jewellery where products can often be low quality, improper size, or blatantly miss-advertised.
To work around this major pitfall in Arsaeus Designs’ e-commerce prospects, we decided a different approach to selling her brand was necessary. To this end, we redesigned every e-commerce page to drop the focus on making a sale.
We created a template for products that would go into detail about what the buyer could expect from Arsaeus Designs. Now, instead of offering a price point and add to cart CTA, customers are given a description of the piece they’re viewing and a prompt to contact Heather directly. This lets her set up in-person appointments so she can personally go through her products with her customers.
This lets their sell products at a higher price range without scaring people off, which is what was happening before Awesome Web Designs redesigned their e-commerce strategy.
As it is now, most of Arsaeus Designs’ sales are not made online. The only people who buy their products online are people who already know what they are selling because they’ve shopped with them before. However, instead of losing all those new customers, Heather gets to take advantage of her personal contact CTAs and make sales personally.
Moving forward, we would like to evaluate Arsaeus Designs’ e-commerce presence further so they can start effectively making sales online.
We know engagement rings are one of their biggest sellers. All of Arsaeus Designs’ wedding related products are in high demand, so one thing we would like to do is create a place on her site dedicated to weddings with price points on the lower end of the spectrum that people would feel more comfortable buying online. It wouldn’t exclusively feature wedding or engagement rings. Instead, it would follow the portfolio style of the rest of the site and let people see more of what Arsaeus Designs has to offer, which should lead to more sales online.
We want to show off price points in the $100-$200 range that are more enticing to online shoppers. By providing more affordable products, Heather will be able to make sales online that can possibly lead to recurring customers.
Client Testimonial
What they say about us
The Results / Future Plans
Awesome Web Designs’ ongoing support
Ultimately, we want Heather to succeed. At just a few years old, the Arsaeus brand is still young. As a start up business ourselves, we at Awesome Web Designs know Heather can make a name for herself and succeed.
When Heather came to us for help, we knew right away we wanted to play to her strong suits. We went the extra mile to link all of her social media posts directly to her product pages with a special hashtag, thus fast-tracking potential customers directly to a point of sale.
We put a lot of focus on Heather in this project because she puts in so much work to further her business.
Moving forward, we hope to continue working with Heather so we can help her become a real force in the local Toronto jewellery scene. We plan to work together with Arsaeus Designs to further improve their SEO and design new sections of their website that will get them the sales they need.
Awesome Web Designs always offers ongoing support to clients, and Arsaeus is no different. We specialize in working with small businesses and we know that they need all the help they can get. Awesome Web Designs is the marketing department these start-ups can’t otherwise afford.
We hope to create a new plan together with Arsaeus Designs on how we can continue to improve their business by the end of the year. We’ll be focusing on their wedding and engagement line, possibly alongside a custom storefront that will differentiate her products from her competitors and help her stand out.
We’re most proud of how we managed to cater the user experience to the changing demographic of user attention via social media. We know we can continue to make these kinds of strides improving Heather’s website and brand, and that’s why we plan on further consultancy with her in the future. When you have a unique, high value, non-traditional kind of product, you need to find new ways to sell it.
We at Awesome Web Designs are up to the challenge.