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JVC-Kenwood
Optimization, Design, and Build using custom Shopify Theme.
The Brief
JVC Kenwood is a well-known global brand who have been innovating and providing products across mobility, telematics, public services, and media since 1927.
The UK team approached SOtech as they had embarked on two direct-to-customer eCommerce sites in order to sell Dashcams (Kenwood) and Headphones (JVC) to its UK customer base. While both sites had been successfully created and launched by their in-house UK team they felt the time was right to bring external experts in eCommerce design and performance.
Their brief to us was to do a full audit across both sites to analyze:
- The technical performance of both sites across all Google Core Web Vitals
- User Journey and UX across both sites
- eCommerce performance across both sites
With the aim to have an understanding of what could be improved to further increase engagement and sales.
The solution
The project was run in two phases, Phase one was what JVC-Kenwood had briefed us on – the full site audit and analysis.
This was undertaken by Mark Purdy (on eCommerce and User journey) and Stephen Gray (technical audit).
Our documentation included a long list of recommendations, some of which were code changes and updates in order to speed sites up and enable a better score across the google core web vitals. However, many of the recommendations were structural across the site in order to showcase more content alongside improving conversion and ability to sell products and their key features.
Switch focus from features to technology
Both websites had a heavy focus on some content pages which, while they include useful content did not lead anywhere and therefore caused dead ends for consumers. Our suggestion was to use Technology and the main content pages with each technology leading off into specific products that featured the specific technology.
Change from Simple to Configurable Products
Both sites were having success with product-specific PPC campaigns driving traffic to specific product landing pages. However, from these pages, it was not possible for a user to easily see the other variations available (i.e. different colors of the same headphone style) We therefore designed and developed a new product page template which made it easier to use swatches to showcase other variations from a single product page providing the opportunity to sell more from a single page.
Consistency of Design
With both brands, JVC and Kenwood, being well known we felt it was important to unify the look and feel of both sites from Homepage to Checkout. The previous theme used meant that some of these pages’ fonts, colors, and CTAs did not look consistent. We put together new designs for both sites to ensure the branding and aesthetic held firm across the entire site and delivered a better user experience.
Reducing Bounce Rate
One of the key areas that came out of the eCommerce analysis was that there was a generally high bounce rate across both sites, but particularly on Kenwood. Our approach to addressing this was to review the choice of imagery being used alongside focusing on traffic and navigation towards products. Once we direct users to products, a key element was then to use bundles and upsells in a way that was easy to understand and create.
The Results
After completing and presenting our findings from the audits of both sites, the senior management team at JVC-Kenwood was so impressed that they then engaged us to implement all of the recommendations we made.
This then led us into a full re-design and build of the key pages across both websites. During the project, we shared user guides and documentation of how to maintain each website and have been on hand during both site re-launches and plan to work together with the business on future developments.