Sea to Summit
Shopify Plus eCommerce, UX Design & Conversion Rate Optimization for Outdoor Brand Sea to Summit
SERVICES
- E-commerce Audit & Strategy
- Creative Direction
- Site Architecture & User Flows
- UX/UI Design
- Shopify Plus Development
- Conversion Rate Optimization
THE ASK
Having the passion and talent for creating cutting-edge outdoor equipment, Sea to Summit founders quickly took their brand from their childhood bedrooms into the hands of customers worldwide. Over the years, the brand’s catalog grew considerably and needed a digital experience that elevates its identity, reflects the details and craft the team puts into its products, acts as a digital home for its brand community, and maps out its legacy content to shoppers seamlessly.
In stages of rapid growth, it’s undoubtedly easy for high-growth brands to focus on their offering and lose sight of their core brand. It’s times like these that a brand would need a clear-sighted agency like Avex to create a digital shopping experience that echoes its identity wherever its customers are.
SAAS INTEGRATIONS
- Jotform
- Product Filter & Search
- Elevar
- Yotpo
- Klavyio
- Dynamic Yield
- Returnly
THE APPROACH
Sea to Summit approaches life with directness, candor and integrity, doing what they know is right to build products and relationships that last - so does Avex. The alignment in brand and agency missions set the foundation for the team at Avex to kick off the project with a clear sight of the end product. Subsequently, Avex completely reimagined Sea to Summit’s Shopify Plus storefront to serve as a brand hub for content and shared passion for the outdoors. By implementing a cohesive creative direction and UX principles and narrating the brand’s story across multiple touchpoints, our team set out to build a digital experience that is both functional and formative.
Grounded By The Roots - Brand Strategy
The foresighted balance between passion and product veritably came to life throughout our overall brand strategy for the strategic redesign of the Sea to Summit’s outdated Shopify Plus storefront. The project called for a wholly refreshed system that is both functional in development and elevated in creativity and aesthetics. Designers, developers and UX strategists at Avex aligned the content and branding strategies to build an on-brand, centralized digital experience that converts through inspiration, guidance and storytelling.
Navigation & Site Architecture
Sea to Summit approached Avex with a vast catalog of +1000 SKUs where key offerings were lost and diluted. The UX Strategists at Avex advised on a transformative navigation system that accounts for the whole consumer journey - from the consumer's first interaction with the brand to conversion. We logically hierarchized the site, clearly mapped out the content to enable easy sitewide navigation by gear or by activity, and gave context to the PLPs and PDPs by injecting the brand voice across every touchpoint.
Throughout the development process, it was crucial that no disruptions would happen to the live site and that existing content is recycled on the new pages and sections without requiring content upload from scratch.
Tight Timelines Not Taken Lightly - Project Management
The team at Sea to Summit was working with a tight timeline which Avex had to roll out a project plan around. Being no stranger to continuous learning, the project management team at Avex tested new project management processes and frameworks aimed at improving the internal and external communication of progress updates and augmenting the velocity of development. Not only did this allow us to develop and design the new Sea to Summit store in a record time, launching almost all post-launch pages and sections on the MVP date, but the new project management processes were also implemented across all other projects at Avex
Bridging the Gap Between Culture and Commerce
In efforts to bridge the gap between culture and commerce, Avex built a digital experience that revolves around a community that shares a common interest - passion for the outdoors and longing for adventure. By integrating the Pro Membership Program as well as an ambassador program on their site, Sea to Summit unlocked several digital brand and revenue-building opportunities; turning shoppers into brand loyalists. Avex further complemented the brand’s digital experience and boosted shoppers’ engagement by riding the trend of digital gamification and featuring a “Sleeping Bag Finder” Page on Sea to Summit's new website.
Summit-high Relationship
The Sea to Summit online rehaul project called for a deeply collaborative process; one that demanded an exceptional agency-client partnership. The project managers of both sides of this partnership were equally committed to the achievement of the desired outcomes and had to work in tandem from the project kick-off to the project's go-live.
This established the ground for a longstanding relationship that sets a definitive example of what a successful agency-client relationship should look like. Avex will continue to support the growth of Sea to Summit on Managed Service and Growth-X CRO retainer.
Let’s work together
Tell us your business goals and we’ll see how we can create something amazing together.