Case Study: How Swanky Supported daysoft® With Its Ecommerce Digital Transformation

TL;DR

• As part of daysoft®’s ecommerce digital transformation, Swanky migrated the brand from a custom-built site to Shopify Plus, giving the team increased reliability, flexibility and automation.
• We elevated daysoft®’s branding, providing an aesthetic upgrade whilst remaining faithful to the core USPs.
• Our technical specialists implemented bespoke development across the site, including custom subscription functionality and fulfilment solutions.
• Swanky’s digital marketing experts provided consultation and implementation around email marketing, PPC and content marketing.
• The new site has produced some exceptional results for daysoft®, accelerating subscriptions, sales and overall growth.
• daysoft®’s Shopify Plus store won the Subscription Website/Service of the Year award at the 2023 UK Ecommerce Awards.

About daysoft®

An innovator in the daily disposable contact lens industry, UK brand daysoft® is the only company in the world that designs, manufactures and sells lenses directly to end consumers. In fact, the company’s founder, Dr Ron Hamilton CBE, invented daily disposable contact lenses!

Passionate about providing affordable vision solutions, the company combines patented designs with environmentally-conscious technology to create high-quality contact lenses that are kinder to the planet and customers’ wallets.

daysoft®’s contact lenses are available to buy as one time purchases or on a flexible subscription basis, offering the ultimate in convenience.

The challenge: An ecommerce platform not fit to scale

Before engaging Swanky, the daysoft® team were using a custom-built site that was struggling to cope with the volume of orders being processed. They also had to complete a number of tasks manually, meaning team members were regularly tied up with repetitive admin tasks.

With this in mind, they were searching for an ecommerce solution that could easily handle a high number of transactions and automate a lot of back-end functions.

They also wanted to move to a platform that would allow them to more easily launch the daysoft® brand into other locations, whilst avoiding complex maintenance down the line.

Alan Ralph, daysoft® CEO, provides further insight into the challenges the brand was facing:

“Although our custom-built sites had served the business exceptionally well for many years, significant growth in demand for our products in both domestic and worldwide markets created pressures from transaction volumes on our sites with no easy options to scale up. In addition, restricted means to access and adopt available analytics, to easily integrate apps to generate a seamless order flow and checkout sequence combined to create a less than optimal site experience for our customers.”

Why was Shopify Plus a good fit for daysoft®?

With its speed and reliability (99.9% uptime and close to 11,000 checkouts per minute), Shopify Plus is a fantastic option for high-volume businesses.

Not only does the platform reduce the need for intricate and costly maintenance, it will empower the daysoft® team to create automated workflows that enable the business to run smoothly.

What’s more, Shopify Plus is built for scaling internationally, providing merchants with a sophisticated, yet straightforward, approach to global selling. We dive into Shopify’s internationalisation capabilities in our comprehensive guide to cross-border ecommerce.

Discussing the compelling benefits of the Shopify Plus platform, Alan commented:

“daysoft® is an established international brand, selling into more than 100 countries worldwide. The ability to design our ecommerce store with unlimited scalability, flexibility in language, multi-currency selling, customisable checkouts and ready access to advanced analytics all played a significant part in our decision to choose Shopify Plus as our new ecommerce platform.”

How Swanky helped: A full ecommerce digital transformation

With our support, the daysoft® brand has undergone an exciting ecommerce digital transformation, elements of which we explore in more detail below.

“We’re proud to be providing a 360-degree digital strategy for daysoft® as the brand’s full-service ecommerce agency,” explains Stef Gross, Head of New Builds at Swanky.

“The Swanky team members involved in the project have become an extension of the daysoft® team, supporting everything from branding and subscription to packaging and photography.”

Shopify Plus website development

At the heart of this project lies a beautifully slick Shopify Plus site that serves to educate users, build trust and streamline the path to purchase.

The daysoft® team put their customers at the heart of their business. As such, they wanted their website to be as user-friendly as possible, making it easier for customers to purchase and repurchase lenses. This meant creating a frictionless on-site experience that would convert demand from new and existing customers.

To help create this fluid experience, we created a combined product page where users can easily toggle between daysoft®’s two different products, SILK and CLASSIC lenses.

Establishing and maintaining trust is fundamental for brands like daysoft® who are selling medical devices, especially those offering subscriptions. In order to build confidence amongst potential consumers and allow them to make an informed purchase decision, the website leverages written and visual content to clearly communicate key details about the lenses, how they’re made and what their benefits are.

Furthermore, the FAQ section anticipates and provides answers to common questions, whilst the verified buyer reviews serve to validate the credibility of the daysoft® brand and their products. 

You can learn more about how to build trust with your customers in our guide to a successful health and wellness subscription website.

Branding and design

Through our initial discovery process – heuristic reviews, competitor analysis, UX and customer interviews – we identified a significant opportunity to elevate the daysoft® brand; modernising it and aligning it with an upgraded UX and CX, but also making it more harmonious with perceived USPs.

To do this, we would:

• explore the why behind the daysoft® brand;
• introduce the human factor (with lifestyle imagery, authentic reviews etc.); and
• take a softer, broadened approach (through changes in colour, font, illustrations etc.).

Far more than just an aesthetic upgrade, we wanted to reinvigorate the brand strategy through a more structured story and improved customer-interaction.

“Essentially, the brand story elements were all there,” explains Matt Giles, Chief Creative Officer at Swanky. “A hugely innovative company with an unbeatable price point, which cares about the product it produces being the best, listens to its customers, and pursues sustainability as far as possible within its immediate vertical (and trounces its competitors). Those ingredients needed reprioritising and re-visualising.

“Where could each of those elements of brand value progress upwards? Could we move the brand from being purely functional in approach (unmatched value for money and excellent product quality) to having a more emotional, even life-changing, impact? Further still, what about impacting on a social level where customers are able to be self-transcendent in their interaction with the brand – enabling others and making a more environmentally conscious purchase?

“For many, a contact lens is a lifestyle product, but the existing brand didn’t cater fully to that vibe. The impact of having easier sight (without glasses) can be remarkable. How could we communicate this to create customer empathy?” 

We decided it was essential to create more human touch points, largely through the use of lifestyle imagery, shape and colour. With this in mind, we broadened the colour palette, introducing some softer tones to create more warmth and move away from a purely functional and value-based colour UI and UX. We also used more rounded edges, created more fun by using offset and tilted content and imagery, and produced a more distinct but softer and more approachable type stack.

Our design team sought to strike a balance with the daysoft® brand refresh – elevating the brand and its online presence and touch points, without alienating or discouraging more value-oriented existing customers. This is still the same brand that they’ve known and loved for years – it’s simply reordered its messaging to assure customers that they’re making the right choice and to create more ongoing perceived value than just an appealing price point.

Distinctiveness and appeal were fundamental in the redesign. We achieved this with a more approachable brand identity, along with an impactful logo and motif designed to be instantly recognisable, but not too divergent from the original. Soft and boundless intersecting circles are used as a symbol throughout the brand, alluding to sight, eyes and contact lenses, as well as a sense of enlightenment and renewed focus.

These before and after homepage snapshots demonstrate the elevation of the daysoft® brand, showcasing the design elements identified above:

A snippet of the daysoft® homepage before the brand engaged Swanky’s services.

Vs. the daysoft® homepage after Swanky’s branding and design expertise had been leveraged.

Reflecting on the new daysoft® branding, CEO Alan said:

“We believe the team at Swanky have created slick, modern, statement branding for us that has longevity and translates easily across our websites, packaging and promotional materials; a much softer colour palette but importantly still with an unmistakable nod to our heritage colours and brand origins.”

Custom subscription functionality utilising Shopify Plus and Recharge

We leveraged Shopify Plus’ integration with Recharge to implement complex behind the scenes subscription functionality on the daysoft® site, namely the use of bundling to combine a right lens and a left lens into one subscription.

Not only can two lenses be purchased on a recurring basis as part of one subscription, but customers can switch seamlessly between subscription and pay-as-you-go options all without intervention from the daysoft® Customer Care team.

The intuitive subscription flow guides users through the process of picking a lens type, selecting a lens power (with the option for different powers for right and left), and then choosing their subscription terms.

We also implemented one-click reordering functionality for logged-in users – speaking directly to the brand’s desire for a customer-centric purchasing experience.

Speaking of this advanced subscription functionality and the benefits for customers, Alan commented:

“Our products are highly predictable repeat purchases for all of our customers over a lifetime of contact lens wear. Our subscription offering has been a runaway success – not simply because it is now available, but because our customers see within it the value of the absence of complexity and their ability to customise their subscription to their needs without any intervention from our Customer Care team.”

You can learn about other subscription solutions we’ve delivered for DTC brands, as well as access subscription resources from our experts, by visiting our subscription ecommerce hub.

Streamlining fulfilment

Behind the scenes are several features that our team developed specifically for this project, including the mapping of data between Shopify and NAV (a Microsoft ERP tool), as well as the complex and bespoke setup of Loqate (an address verification solution) to match delivery requirements.

Retention-focused email strategy

Our email marketing specialists have transformed daysoft®’s post-purchase customer communication, turning what once was ad hoc manual emails into a Klaviyo-powered automated replenishment campaign.

“The team have really showcased their expertise and creative thinking on this project,” describes our Head of New Builds, Stef.

“They’re using out-of-the-box Klaviyo functionality to achieve an innovative end result. One example of this is their use of the Klaviyo birthday functionality to schedule and send reminder emails.”

For one-time purchases, we incorporated a custom HTML form within order confirmation emails, which allows customers to select a date to be sent a reordering reminder email.

Meg Fellows, Email Executive at Swanky, discusses the mechanics of this in more detail:

“The form itself lives on a hosted page within Klaviyo and generates a populated custom property with the customer’s chosen reminder date. 

“Within Klaviyo, we were then able to repurpose the birthday flow to create a set of automated emails that send on the date specified in each customer’s reminder date property.” 

Data and analytics

Our dedicated data team implemented Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for daysoft®, which provides a complete view of the customer journey with visibility and understanding across touchpoints.

We set the business up with a Swanky Dashboard, which aggregates its ecommerce data from multiple sources to give a single customer view – key for improving the overall customer experience, as well as business operations. Data is pulled from Shopify Plus, Recharge, Google Analytics, Facebook, Klaviyo and other platforms, then presented in a clear and intuitive way.

In addition to GA4, we implemented additional tracking into Universal Analytics that captures valuable post-purchase information from the customer. This has already provided useful insights into the products and brands customers were using before switching to daysoft®.

To find out more about the Swanky Dashboard and register for your free trial, visit our dedicated ecommerce data and analytics page.

Implementing a marketing strategy

daysoft® invited Swanky to create and implement a scalable digital marketing strategy from the ground up. This was a great chance for our digital marketing specialists to apply their expertise and experience, consulting on a brand new marketing approach.

Below, we explore two key aspects of the strategy in more detail.

PPC

For daysoft® UK, we implemented a full-funnel PPC strategy. The funnel is a multi-stage process that customers go through, from the very first moment they discover the brand through to purchase and then repurchase.

“A key part of our PPC campaign for launch was uncovering audiences that were most likely to be interested in purchasing daysoft®’s lenses,” describes Ellie Jordan, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Swanky.

“We ran an in-depth audience audit to identify three key audiences. Additionally, we identified the main factors which influence a customer’s decision to purchase. This helped inform our ad copy and creative assets.

“It’s becoming more important than ever to ensure we build a solid understanding of the audiences we want to target and what motivates those audiences. Online users are becoming more concerned with privacy and reduction in cookie-based targeting. Understanding your audience will always remain critical to any PPC strategy, even with targeting options changing in a new cookie-less world.”

Content marketing

Our content team has been planning, writing and publishing a series of keyword optimised blog articles designed to drive organic traffic to the daysoft® site, establish brand credibility and build meaningful relationships with consumers.

Many of these articles have focused on building awareness around the daysoft® brand – exploring the unique technology they use, sharing information about the factory where every lens is made, and telling the story of the company’s founder.

Swanky’s Digital Content Manager, Anna Giles, comments:

“Good blog content lies at the intersection of customer search intent and brand expertise. Through in depth keyword research we ascertained what current and potential customers were searching for and then married that with daysoft®’s expertise and ability to solve pain points and answer questions. And so, we pulled together an editorial content calendar for ongoing blog articles on contact lenses and eye health.”

We talk more about the value this type of blogging strategy can bring in our article on the benefits of content marketing.

As well as blog articles, the Swanky content team also crafted compelling keyword-optimised website content, with a particular focus on helping customers journey through the new subscription process. When writing this copy, we were careful to clearly communicate daysoft®’s USPs to ensure the brand stands out amongst its competitors.

The impact: A scalable solution to facilitate business growth

Our multidisciplinary team has created a solid foundation on which daysoft® can begin scaling its subscription model, unlocking future growth into the US, EU and RoW markets.

Speaking of the impact that the new daysoft® website has had so far, CEO Alan Ralph shared this reflection:

“Our new website has been transformational; it represents the successful culmination of challenging and unrelenting collaborative work by so many people all focused on the needs of our business for the benefit of our customers, current and soon to be. 

“The ‘wouldn’t it be great if…’ aspirations of our staff and customers have all been realised in the site and we are immensely proud of what has been created, not just for the here and now, but for the future and for growth.”

The success of the new website not only demonstrates the popularity of daysoft® lenses, but speaks to the effectiveness of the on-site subscription messaging along with the ease of the subscription flow.

What’s next for daysoft® and Swanky?

We are excited to be continuing our work with daysoft® in a full-service capacity, further supporting the brand’s ecommerce digital transformation.

Whilst our New Builds team progress to phase two of the project – migrating the daysoft® RoW store over to Shopify Plus – our Growth Accelerator team continues to provide commercially-guided, data-led optimisation and marketing support.

Kickstart your ecommerce digital transformation with Swanky

Could you benefit from the consultancy of a full-service Shopify Plus agency? Are you looking for end-to-end ecommerce support to help unlock your brand’s full potential?

Get in touch with one of our Shopify Plus Experts today to find out how Swanky can accelerate your ecommerce digital transformation.