E-Commerce

Lake Oswego-based boutique Meringue (http://meringueboutique.com) is a high-end online store that caters to trendy moms and moms to be, plus infants, kids, teenagers, and singles. The products are edgy, cool, and hip, but the online store was anything but. The e-commerce technology was aging and the content management system was rigid and unable to expand as quickly as the company needed. Plus, Meringue’s owners wanted more content control as they expanded into men’s, home, and gift merchandise.

Shepherd-Interactive recommended a from-the-ground-up proposal: replace the old e-commerce engine with a flexible, controllable CMS and redesign the website to support more robust analytics integration. With a complete structural overhaul and a more flexible content strategy, Meringue would be able to set new goals for traffic and sales and, more importantly, measure them.

The Results

Less than six months after launching the new website, Meringue has enjoyed a significant lift in ROI. By month five, the company was achieving its monthly online sales numbers. Included in the redesign project was an intensive search engine optimization effort. It, too, yielded impressive results, including a consistent top-10 placement for Meringue on Google. What’s remarkable is these results were achieved without using paid search techniques, a significant cost savings for this business.

How’d They Do That?

Shepherd Interactive migrated Meringue’s e-commerce platform to X-Cart, a flexible open-source platform that includes proven functionality for credit card processing, cart totals, and shipping. Shepherd Interactive also implemented custom solutions like batch photo uploads, plus the ability to automatically zoom in on a product to see details. The site uses detection techniques to provide discounts on Meringue products that match a user’s search terms. These innovative strategies helped Meringue boost conversion rates by 500%.

The Shepherd Interactive Difference

Flexible and technically advanced, our creative teams are adept at aligning the right technology mix with your business objectives. And we make it easy for you to understand the pros and cons of each technical decision. For example, while some websites require only a few simple pages of marketing materials, others require content management or complex e-commerce systems.

We Can Help

Regardless of where your web development needs fall, we can help. Contact us for more information at info@shepherd-interactive.com.