When you’re an ecommerce business, you’re either evolving and growing, or dying. So in the spirit of evolution, the Ashop team decided we need a revamp.

Our website is stage one and then we'll start to undergo the giant task of your admin panel look and feel.

The Ashop websites are divided into three main countries; US, UK and AU. We’ve already started with the release of our Aussie website www.ashop.com.au with a NEW LOGO, NEW DESIGN and NEW MASCOT (Ash).
   

Why the change

Typically every two years, website design trends make a noticeable change. Not only the button styles but the way content is delivered. These new developments usually all aim toward easier and clearer understanding by visitors.

Ashop’s new colour palette was user tested three times over before the final one was selected. The logo now looks like an actual cart; where previously people kept asking what that symbol was. Ash the robot was introduced to keep a continuous design flow through both our website but also all marketing aspects and community channels.

Why Ash the Robot

When you’re an online business, it’s often a challenge to portray your company’s true personality and the benefits it has for your customers. We decided a bunch of pictures like peoples smiling faces was boring and kitsch, so we designed our own mascot. Ash gives each page a personality and gives us the opportunity to show readers the fun and innovative side of Ashop.

How did all this help

Well, just making a design and mascot doesn’t help, it’s what you do afterward that makes the difference. Our engineers have integrated a reporting system to analyse traffic data and develop metrics that tell us where a visitor comes from, goes to and maybe when they drop off. We then provide simple surveys on pages they generally leave from to ask what they might be looking for or dislike.

This feedback and traffic analysis helps us identify the pages needing work most and ways we can improve them to help conversions. Admitingly, this is only the tip of the iceburg, but it's the most relavent to ecommerce stores like yours.

On top of this we use a usability testing company where anonymous visitors are given simple tasks to follow on your website. It’s all captured on real-time screen casting with audio so the tester can explain their thoughts and suggestions as they browse through your site.

These testers are your only source of true feedback and provide visual understanding of what’s going wrong and generally how you can fix it.

Ashop made approximately 25 changes and 15 add ons or improvements to the site. In the end, the last group of testers were very impressed. Especially when compared to our competition. Naturally it’s not all 100% your way, but you simply can’t and shouldn’t be everything to everyone.

Trial conversions are now up by 15% within one week and we're currently waiting on sale conversion results.

We’d love to hear your feedback below.