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CLIENT OVERVIEW

  • UX Design Customization
  • BigCommerce Development
 

Northern Reflections is a Canadian women’s fashion retailer with over 133 locations. It combines a rich heritage in physical retail with a growing eCommerce presence. The brand sought to enhance its digital platform to offer a seamless shopping experience across its online and offline channels.

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Objective

Northern Reflections partnered with us to revamp their BigCommerce website, aligning it with evolving customer expectations and supporting ambitious growth targets. This transformation focused on three key objectives:

  1. Create a High-Performance, Mobile-First BigCommerce Website: Deliver a seamless, accessible shopping experience across all devices, fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 standards.
  2. Enhance the Digital Customer Experience: Implement strategic features such as advanced product discovery, custom checkout integration, and personalized shopping capabilities to optimize the user journey and encourage higher engagement.
  3. Build a Scalable, Omnichannel-Ready Platform: Establish a robust technical foundation that seamlessly bridges Northern Reflections’ 133 physical stores with its digital ecosystem, setting the stage for future omnichannel growth.

Design approach

Northern Reflections provided initial desktop screens for their Home page, Product Listing Pages (PLP), and Product Detail Pages (PDP). Our role involved refining these designs and expanding them to optimize responsiveness, usability, and accessibility across devices. Key design refinements included:

  • UI, Mobile Usability, and Accessibility Consulting: We advised the client on best practices for UI, mobile optimization, and WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards. This included focusing on intuitive navigation, screen reader compatibility, high-contrast text for visually impaired users, and clear calls to action, ensuring a user-friendly experience across all devices while maintaining full compliance with accessibility guidelines.
  • Responsive Design: We extended the desktop designs across various viewport sizes, ensuring seamless adaptation for mobile, tablet, and desktop users. This improved the overall usability and conversion rates across all touchpoints by providing a consistent, accessible experience regardless of device.
  • Collaborative Design Refinement: After suggesting initial design enhancements, we worked closely with the client’s internal team, offering ongoing guidance on design challenges. We focused on balancing aesthetic appeal with functional needs, ensuring the final output adhered to both usability best practices and Northern Reflections’ brand vision.

DEVELOPMENT EXECUTION

The development phase involved a complete overhaul of the BigCommerce theme to address existing pain points and implement new functionalities. Key highlights included:

  • Custom BigCommerce Theme: We built a custom theme tailored to Northern Reflections' specific requirements, addressing numerous bugs in the previous theme and significantly enhancing both performance and user experience. Developed in compliance with WCAG 2.1 standards, the new theme ensures an accessible browsing experience for all users, including those with disabilities. Key features include keyboard navigability, text-to-speech compatibility, and optimized image alt text for improved accessibility.
  • "Save for Later" Feature: We introduced a new "Save for Later" feature that allowed both logged-in and guest users to save items for future purchase. This critical addition gave users flexibility in their shopping journey, boosting the likelihood of return visits and conversions.
  • Searchspring Integration: We partnered with Searchspring to dynamically enhance the search and category pages. By streamlining product discovery, we improved user engagement and made it easier for customers to find what they were looking for, leading to increased conversions.
  • Rewards Program Integration: Northern Reflections’ loyalty program was seamlessly integrated into the new website. Customers could easily view and apply their rewards balance, simplifying the checkout process and encouraging repeat purchases.
  • Custom App Development | Checkout Stores Manager: Fahrenheit developed the Checkout Stores Manager app specifically for Northern Reflections to support in-store pickup. This custom tool enables the brand to register multiple store locations and dynamically display the nearest available stores based on the customer’s zip code, enhancing the convenience of in-store pick-up options.
  • Seamless Custom Checkout Integration with BigCommerce: The Checkout Stores Manager app was fully adopted into Northern Reflections' custom theme, integrating seamlessly with their BigCommerce checkout. This custom checkout implementation not only allows customers to select a nearby pick-up location but also fully incorporates in-store gift cards for use online, creating a unified and convenient shopping experience across all channels.

challenges overcome

  • Theme Bugs and Performance Issues: The previous theme was plagued by bugs and performance bottlenecks. We conducted extensive testing to identify and resolve these issues, ensuring smooth functionality and improved load times without disrupting the user experience.
  • Complex Integration with Searchspring: Integrating Searchspring within BigCommerce presented several technical challenges due to the platform's limitations. We navigated these complexities, ensuring seamless integration while maintaining optimal performance and fast load times.
  • Optimization for Performance: With the added features, we needed to ensure that site performance was not compromised. By optimizing images, scripts, and other resources, we maintained fast load times across all devices, despite BigCommerce’s restrictions on resource control.

Conclusion

Our partnership with Northern Reflections showcases the power of combining technical expertise, design consulting, and WCAG 2.1 compliance to create a user-centric, conversion-optimized eCommerce platform. Through close collaboration, we delivered a responsive and feature-rich website that aligned with Northern Reflections’ goals of providing a seamless online shopping experience while driving conversions.

Key Results:

  • Improved Mobile Usability and Accessibility: The site is fully responsive and optimized for all device types, enhancing customer engagement and ensuring accessibility for all users across platforms, compliant with WCAG 2.1 standards.
  • Optimized Search & Category Pages: The Searchspring integration significantly improved product discoverability, leading to better user experience and higher engagement.
  • New Customer Features: The addition of the "Save for Later" feature and rewards integration helped boost conversion rates, giving users more reasons to return and complete their purchases.

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