2022 / E-Commerce

Haverhill

Revolutionizing a Jewelry E-commerce for Customization and Scalability

  • Services:
  • E-Commerce
  • Shopify
  • Web Development
  • Design & User Experience
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Overview

Haverhill, a growing e-commerce jewelry store, specializes in offering unique, personalized jewelry. Despite their success, they faced a challenge — their current Shopify-based platform could not fully support the level of customization their customers were looking for. This gap in their service led to them being unable to meet customer demands for highly personalized jewelry.

The goal was clear — develop a sophisticated, user-friendly online platform that could support extensive customization options, from simple product variations to intricate designs with multiple components affecting both aesthetics and pricing.

Apart from solving technical challenges, we were also dealing with strategic business moves. Scoring a tenfold increase in sales within the first year was not just an aspiring goal but a carefully calculated target. This strategic move was crucial for the client’s growth, allowing them to expand product variety without raising overhead costs.

 

Our solution had to support revolutionizing the customer experience, drastically reduce reliance on customer support by automating personalization, and significantly scale up the business.

The Challenge

The primary obstacle was the Shopify platform itself, which was not originally designed for such a high level of customization. With products requiring more than 12 options and over 1000 variants, we had to innovate beyond the existing limit of 3 options and 99 variants.

When it comes to custom jewelry, it is an ever-expanding universe of options. That means our approach had to be dynamic, scalable, and capable of handling complex data structures for a large number of product categories such as rings, necklaces, and earrings, each coming with its unique set of options.

Time to Strategize

Working closely together with the client’s business team, we pooled in our knowledge of business, design and engineering to come up with an all-round solution. Working in agile bi-weekly sprints, we were able to adapt quickly to evolving requirements and client feedback.

Leading the way in designing and building the product, we were in charge of the architectural design of the application, making sure it was seamlessly integrated with Shopify, and created an easy-to-use interface that made personalizing items intuitive and fun!

A Complete Technological Innovation

We developed a self-hosted ReactJS-based application, integrating it with Shopify. The core technologies included:

  • NextJS: A ReactJS-based framework, selected for its server-side rendering capabilities and enhancing performance.
  • CANVAS Technology: Used for customer-side personalization, allowing for real-time visual representation of custom jewelry.
  • Redux: Implemented as the central data store, ensuring efficient management of UI states across the application.
  • PostgreSQL Database: Chosen for its robustness and ability to handle complex data structures.
  • AWS Hosting: Ensuring scalability, reliability, and security of the application.
  • Django & Python Frameworks: Utilized for generating detailed reports and predictive analytics, crucial for inventory management and business forecasting.

Impact on Business Goals

Launching just before Black Friday, with sales going up by 450% compared to the previous year, we can easily say it was a big success! The system was highly reliable — functioning smoothly 99.99% of the time. This meant customers could browse through products and make purchases without worrying about issues in the buying process.

The integration of Django and Python for analytics transformed the client’s approach to inventory management and customer insights, enabling them to make informed decisions based on real-time data.

This project highlighted how technology can change the game for traditional business models — in this case using Canvas, and ReactJS to tackle integration issues with Shopify. Apart from leaving us with valuable insights it also set a benchmark for future projects in the e-commerce space.