Marson Equipment is a Canadian woodworking machinery and tools retailer with over 5,000 website visitors per month. The project involved optimising the site to improve conversion rates

Challenges

The website had healthy visitor levels but low conversion rates at around 0.6%, meaning only 6 out of every 1,000 visitors actually purchased. Analysis of the site identified several issues:

• There were no actual products on the homepage so there wasn't much to "draw people in"
• The home page was bland and lacking in colour. Everything was blue and white
• Menus and products were poorly organised, making it hard for customers to find what they wanted
• Products were tucked away under a "Shop" mega-menu with an overwhelming number of menu items
• It was hard to find products by searching. Search results showed low-value parts/accessories first and customers had to browse several pages of results to see the main products
• Product pages lacked information about warranties and shipping costs
• Marson Equipment offered free shipping on many products but this wasn't obvious reaching the checkout

Project Features

The project was divided into 3 phases to make sure conversion rates were gradually improving as each phase was implemented. The changes included:

Phase 1: Product Visibility

• Splitting the "Shop" mega-menu out into different top-level categories so that main product categories were immediately visible on every page
• Moving parts and accessories into different collections to keep them separate from the main products
• Adding the Shopify Search & Discovery app to show higher-value products first in search results
• Adding products to the homepage including On-Sale products, Best-sellers and New Products
• Adding related products to product pages using Shopify's Search & Discovery app

Phase 2: Decision Confidence

• Adding detailed specifications info to higher-value products
• Adding warranty info to product pages by creating warranty content for each product brand, and dynamically inserting the right content based on the product vendor
• Adding shipping cost info to product pages that changed dynamically based on product weights/prices to show "Free Shipping" for those products that qualified

Phase 3: First Impressions

• Improving the homepage layout, changing the featured collections to show the most popular categories, and adding more attractive images
• Adding bright-coloured icons for Marson Equipment's key selling points
• Reorganising the order of homepage sections so customers saw products and featured collections first

The End Result

Conversion rates improved with each phase. By the end of the project:

• Conversion rates increased by 45%
• Average order values increased by 50%
• Online orders increased by 120%