Limesharp

Case study

Me+em

Intelligent style for intelligent women, now and forever.

Timeless styles with a modern sensibility. ME+EM commits to trends that have long-lasting appeal, for pieces that are covetable now and forever, for style that lasts.

Problem

The Challenge

Re-platforming from Magento 1 to Magento 2 created an opportunity to overhaul the customer journey and look at ways to bring the in-store experience online. Performance, scalability and most importantly brand identity hindered growth on Magento 1.

Thinking

Our Strategy & Approach

During an extensive discovery period, we evaluated customer feedback, carried out store visits and met with the customer service teams to see what key questions were missing from the online experience. Working alongside their in-house design team we mapped out the optimal UX whilst we re-designed the new, entirely bespoke purchase flow.

Result

The Final Experience

Since we launched the site in 2019 the growth of the brand and the online sales have been breathtaking. 130% increase in Revenue & 30% increase in Average Order Value has exceeded expectations and allowed for re-investment in the platform. Awwwards.com winner of “mobile excellence”and an “honorable mention”, the site has received many plaudits for being one of the first premium fashion brands to embrace a headless build on Magento. We are very proud of the site not only for its beautiful design but also the advanced technology used to create it.

Limesharp Work

  • UX Design
  • UI Design
  • Development
  • Hosting
  • Support
  • Technical Consultancy

Mobile Performance

ME+EM’s product photography is all shot directly on the model. When considering mobile devices we wanted to ensure these assets were maximised. On the product listing pages each product shot is full bleed with the ability to scroll a multitude of detailed shots, a major challenge was configuring how the images would load on demand to ensure optimal performance.

Innovation

As all retailers faced during the pandemic ME+EM had to close their physical stores putting even more importance on the online offering. A large number of the customers love heading down to the store for style advice and to try on the array of clothes.

When Covid-19 hit the UK we partnered and integrated with Harper Concierge, a service dedicated to offering a luxury last mile customer experience. Harper works by delivering online orders to customers' doors. The customer can try on the clothes they ordered, pair them with styles they own and try different sizing options. The Harper Style Concierge will then take payment at the door for the items the customer wishes to keep.

Headless API integrations with third parties such as Klevu allowed us to use these tools without restriction on UX and UI. This has led to an innovative, bespoke search experience.

Replacing the native Magento 2 checkout with our headless checkout allowed for full customisation of the user experience without the associated constraints.

Integrations

At ME+EM’s scale there are third party services that are integral to the business. We integrated with over 12 key services including a bespoke, top-down ERP connector that facilitates an Omnichannel customer experience. We supported the brand whilst they were still using Magento 1, using this 6 months we mapped out data journeys and built a prototype which went live on Magento 1. Learnings from the prototype were fed into the spec for Magento 2 leading to a smoother migration process.

Technical Consultancy

ME+EM’s site traffic has doubled year on year since the launch of the website. Scalability, stability and performance is critical to the business. As with many of the brands we work with Sale periods present a huge challenge not only to handle the increase in traffic but order placement, increased admin usage and refreshing stock levels can all pose complexities at this volume.

We continue to support through their sustained growth, consulting on the eCommerce infrastructure including the application and server hardware. The frontend of the website is decoupled from Magento Commerce calling the GraphQL API only for data. This has meant the architecture has been setup to give all the processing power to the API with added caching strategies in place to improve stability and performance.