Whiskers N Paws

Platform

Shopify Plus

SERVICES

Creative, Marketing, Search, Strategy, Technology

"We believe that animals make us better people."
They teach us mindfulness. Remind us to be compassionate. Show us the importance of having fun. They open our hearts and more importantly, animals connect us, humans, to one another without barriers.

The team behind Whiskers N Paws feel blessed to be part of the lives of so many furry friends and they take their jobs seriously! They study every product to make sure they are free from harmful ingredients, safe to play with and wholesome to nibble. By partnering with like-minded suppliers, they make sure products are made with love, handled with care and stored properly en route to you.

As the Pandemic took hold of Hong Kong, Whiskers N Paws wanted to consolidate its presence online and have its eCommerce business running at peak performance, especially since its retail stores were closed. They wanted to increase their visibility and saw a rise in competition as other retailers faced the same restrictions on bricks and mortar operations.

OD's Client Success team worked in concert with the Whiskers N Paws in-house team to orchestrate a complete eCommerce approach, covering SEO, SEM, website management and customer experience, all driven by data and OD's proprietary best practice.

Following solid improvements in SEO performance and customer acquisition via digital and email marketing, attention turned to the bottom of the funnel and Whiskers N Paws online store. Based on the first and zero-party data at hand, the decision was made to proceed with a new Shopify Plus Online Store, to be built on the new Dawn theme, leveraging all of Shopify 2.0’s newly available features.

Integrations

Yotpo :
Product reviews drive conversions and OD saw an opportunity for Whiskers N Paws to take this to the next level. Yopto’s integrated reviews, referrals and loyalty solutions were perfect for engaging WnPs passionate customer community.

OD endorsed a basic loyalty programme that revolved around their customers being able to redeem coupons based on their online spend. A referral mechanic was also introduced to entice existing customers to bring in their friends into the Whiskers N Paws community.

Different memberships provide different levels of access to Whiskers N Paws' other in-store services such as their grooming services and dog parties along with various tiers of discounts.

Whiskers N Paws is built on the support of a loyal community of customers and Yotpo’s native integration with Klaviyo’s email marketing suite aids continuous customer engagement.

Boost Commerce (Product Filter and Search) :
With its huge range of products, Whiskers N Paws is a one-stop shop for all of your furry friends’ needs. OD’s meticulous keyword research was fundamental to the site's information architecture but we needed to go one step further in terms of helping customers find what they are looking for. Boost Commerce’s Product Filter & Search app was the perfect tool to drive on-site search and merchandising.

Filter functionality was defined based on ‘Categories’ AND ‘Brand’ AND ‘Breedsize’, Lifestage, Special Diet and Health Feature. PFS was configured to display visual hierarchy and provide bite-sized information to the consumer.

Klaviyo :
OD completed an audit and strategy review of Whiskers N Paws' Klaviyo marketing automation account in Q1 2021. The audit focused on email acquisition, flow automation, list segmentation and platform integration. Once audit findings were shared, OD worked through a strategy for each of these CRM pillars to work towards expanding email-generated revenue for the Whiskers N Paws online store. OD then provided ongoing implementation support for key eCommerce email workflows, expanding email capture techniques, and template design best practices. OD developed an integrated Google Datastudio reporting dashboard to align email performance with overall site growth, as part of an ongoing marketing strategy throughout 2021 and 2022.

During the site re-theme, Klaviyo (CRM) also played a part in the decisions that were made on the site such as integrating with Klaviyo workflows to capture new customer email addresses and push them through to Welcome Series. When products are sold out, the "Notify Me" button appears for email data capture for new customers and to bring existing customers back to the site. This helped to tighten their messaging to the consumer and make it a more personable journey by driving higher relevance through CRM segmentation from touchpoints on the website.

Wishlist Plus :
OD configured the site with Wishlist Plus. The Wishlist is one of the key integrations that would aid the shopping behaviour of Whiskers N Paws' "Pawrents"; with such a broad catalogue of products, we wanted to make sure that customers were able to "bookmark" their favourite items and be able to buy them later (if they were not ready to buy immediately).

Implementing Wishlist Plus encouraged customers to create an account. This helped to grow Whiskers N Paws' customer database and ability to provide segmented and relevant messaging to their customers, keeping them coming back for more.

NetSuite ERP :
Following the selection of NetSuite as ERP partner, OD put together and developed a product data structure that helped Whiskers N Paws to 1) manage their extensive inventory easily and 2) ensure that the URL structure of the products would be SEO friendly and help with recognition of products to gain SEO authority.

Accentuate Custom Fields :
The successful integration of Accentuate Custom Fields into the theme code completed the product data mapping exercise and provided WnP with the level of flexibility need to manage its highly varied product data.

CRO introduced new and unique iconography into the designs to provide visual, bite-sized information on the qualities and benefits of products. ACF allowed for the ease of updating these benefits through boolean fields which allowed for bulk editing, reducing the time spent manually editing product data onsite.

challenges

CHALLENGE #001

Limited capabilities for content management on the previous theme

Whiskers N Paws require frequent content updates such as showcasing certain product categories during specific periods (e.g. outdoor products during the summer season). On the previous site, making these updates required developer/HTML knowledge.

SOLUTION

Upgrading to Dawn Theme allowed WnP to make content customisations across the site (and not just the Homepage, following Shopify 2.0’s ‘sections everywhere’ update) easily and anyone on the team could make updates where relevant/necessary.

CHALLENGE #002

Promote and cross-sell merchandise to increase AOV

Historically, Whiskers N Paws’ customers would make repeat but small purchases, resulting in a low Average Order Value.

SOLUTION

In conjunction with the revised Information Architecture, OD utilised Shopify's Product Recommendations to highlight relevant and complimentary products that "Pet Lovers Also Bought" to improve AOV.

CHALLENGE #003

Provide an intuitive product discovery experience

Whiskers N Paws has a large array of products and customers were often faced with a daunting browsing experience. When OD studied the onsite data, this confirmed our fears that a significant number of sessions were not ending in conversion and ultimately customers were unable to find what they were looking for.

SOLUTION

Detailed SEO keyword research and analytics enabled OD to redefine the information architecture to match the needs of Whiskers N Paws’ customers. From the Main Navigation, through to Collections, Product Tags/Product Data Structure and configuration of onsite Search and Filters.

CHALLENGE #004

Omni-channel Customer retention

Whiskers N Paws wanted to increase customer retention, a sense of community and ensure that clients were coming back, again and again, to fulfil their pet's needs, through both online purchases and physical services only available in-store.

SOLUTION

We needed to architect a loyalty programme that encouraged repeat customers, on and offline, across products and services. Yotpo’s all-in-one reviews, referrals and loyalty solution allowed us to tackle both the needs of different customer segments, upsell complimentary products and services and foster a sense of community

"We like to thank everyone in Overdose. for the quality of service provided by the team. We sincerely appreciate your efficient service, the level of detail and the accountability you have demonstrated on each project."

Hades Kong, Ecommerce, IT Manager
- Whiskers N Paws

Insights

Mar 1, 2021 - Feb 28, 2022 Time Spent on the site has remained consistent, however, the number of pages per session has decreased, resulting in the customer journey improving, as customers are finding what they want quicker.

Increased Sessions

+104%

Increased Transactions

+89%

Increased Revenue

+86%

UX/UI

We worked closely with the Whiskers N Paws team to solve customer challenges.

#1 Improve Customer Journey

Reduced friction by simplifying the customer journey on the site through header and navigation improvements

Redesign and organise menu and navigation to be more guided with tiers
Redesign search to have more prominence
To adopt a sequential menu approach

Provided a clear product data structure that was conducive and easy for the customer to explore the various products and their variants.

Clear product data e.g. utilising product variants to reduce duplications and simplifying the user journey (e.g. previously product A blue/small and Product A blue/medium would have different pages. OD recommended to ensure that 1 product and its variants were showcased on 1 page)

Introduced breadcrumbs to reduce bounce rate and allow customers to trace their steps to previous pages easily. Also helped with SEO.

To improve the customer experience and to amplify SEO, we recommend including a “Questions and Answers” / “Reviews” feature to allow customers to ask questions about the product and for future customers to read the answers.

#2 Implement Opportunities for up-sell and cross-sell

Product recommendations
The solution is to offer shoppers a choice to Subscribe to products. Offering a convenient, personalized, and often lower-cost way to buy what they want and need
Utilise mega menu dropdown for cross-selling/events/promos
Provide product bundling to provide offers for multiple products, which are typically sold separately, for a combined, reduced price and helps move top-selling products more quickly while also creating an opportunity to boost the sales of lower-demand products
created more opportunities for CRM segmentation to boost relevance to existing customers and drive them back to the site
Utilise mega menu dropdown for cross-selling/events/promos

#3 Stickiness to the site; bringing customers back to Whiskers N Paws

Recommended to have a Wishlist and customer login to bring customers back to the site
Solution and recommended Yotpo loyalty programme (reviews and loyalty)
Solutions for other services such as Booking Grooming, Self Dog Wash (to help highlight WnP’s other services)
Present incentives eg: Free global shipping or brand reviews eg: 4.7/5 stars and 25,000 reviews will give customers the confidence to convert.