Case Study: Why this Health & Fitness Brand Moved from Magento 2 to Shopify Plus

In this case study:

• About the client
• The challenge
• Why did Innermost decide to migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus?
• The solution
• The results
• What does the client think?
• What’s next for Innermost?

About the client

Innermost are an award-winning nutritional supplements brand, specialising in ‘smart nutrition for enhanced living’. With a leading team of clinical nutritionists at the forefront, Innermost has created a range of proteins, boosters and capsules that leverage the power of superfoods and other natural, nutrient-rich ingredients. Each product has been carefully tailored to help achieve different performance goals, including weight loss, fitness, strength and wellbeing.

Innermost recently scooped its second coveted Men’s Health Award!

Innermost have a very clear sense of what they stand for as a brand. They are on a mission to build bolder, brighter, more balanced lives. This inspirational lifestyle brand champions diversity and creativity, encouraging people to challenge convention and stand out from the crowd.

Having only launched in 2017, Innermost has seen rapid growth in both the UK and international markets. The brand has been busy building momentum over the past two years, with a primary focus on offline B2B sales. Thanks to their efforts, several fitness studios, gyms and even retail giant Selfridges now stock the Innermost range on their shelves.

Innermost’s new ecommerce site represents a change in focus to B2C growth.

The challenge

An ambitious enterprise feeling thwarted by Magento

When Innermost reached out to us, they were feeling frustrated by their recently-launched Magento 2 Commerce site. Updates and customisations were devouring a huge amount of time, money, effort and management. This was limiting the brand’s growth potential and draining resources.

In the words of Shivraj Bassi, CEO and Founder of Innermost:

“As a start-up, as a business, you really want to focus your time on growing your business and less on managing the technical minutia of your website. I found that this balance wasn’t being addressed with the website that we had.”

Why did Innermost decide to migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus?

Despite investing significant time and funds into a Magento build, the Innermost team made a bold call. They decided to move their ecommerce store to a platform better able to cater for their evolving ecommerce needs. They wanted an ecommerce solution that would allow them to help accelerate growth further.

Enter, Shopify Plus.

One of the world’s leading enterprise ecommerce platforms, Shopify Plus is a perfect fit for high growth businesses with big dreams. It provides all the key components of an enterprise-level ecommerce solution, without the need for development teams in day-to-day operations.

Crucially, the time and money that you can save as a Shopify Plus merchant can be invested into growing your business – perfect for ambitious enterprises like Innermost who are looking to stand out in a crowded online marketplace.

Speaking about Innermost’s decision to migrate from Magento 2 to Shopify Plus, Shiv said:

“It was a tough decision to launch a Shopify site because of the time, money and effort invested into the original platform. But we spoke with Swanky about Shopify functionality and decided to make the switch.

It’s got a huge ecosystem of applications that you can use to increase average order value, frequency of client purchases, and to incorporate really interesting things into your website.”

How Swanky helped

As experts in ecommerce migration and design, we couldn’t wait to get stuck into this exciting project!

With a comprehensive analysis of the client’s needs under their belts, our skilled team of web design specialists began designing concepts for key site elements.

Innermost’s unique brand personality lies at the heart of every campaign and product they create. Our focus was therefore on communicating their vision through carefully considered design elements.

Sharp, minimalist design

For the client, a sharp, minimalist design was key. We therefore selected a Shopify theme with a borderless design that puts products at the forefront.

The editorial-style layout allows for content panels that are predominantly either full or half-width, creating a modern look to appeal to target users. It also allows for big, impactful imagery to instantly draw attention and make a statement.

The site as a whole is simple and refined – perfect for reflecting Innermost’s open and honest approach and their ‘nasties-free’ products.

Reflecting key brand values

Just like the Innermost brand, this ecommerce store challenges convention and pushes back on tired stereotypes associated with traditional supplement brands.

The site stands out amongst its competitors with a design that reflects the brand’s fresh, innovative approach. There’s a compelling edge to the imagery and copy that appeals directly to Innermost’s target demographic.

This is a brand passionate about embracing culture, equality and diversity. These core values are reflected across the site, through the models featured in product images and the general tone of voice.

Meanwhile, the lively colours used across the site reflect Innermost’s ‘Be bold. Be bright. Be different.’ campaign.

Product focus

The products really take the spotlight on this ecommerce site. Images are bold and colourful, making an impact against the white and grey of the background and various text elements. A similar technique is used on the product pages too. The light grey backgrounds allow the product colours to ‘pop’, immediately focusing attention on the product.

The product images are clear and crisp, alluding to the high quality of the products on offer.

Building a sense of community

Our client was eager to use their shiny new site as a tool to expand the Innermost community. Sharing news, workout tips and wellbeing advice is important to this inclusive brand, so we were careful to prioritise this in our design.

For instance, we focused on making the blog a key part of the site. It is one of only four items in the header menu, and the blog layout itself allows intuitive item discovery. Furthermore, categories are clearly communicated at the top of the page, complete with neat, on-brand icons. The blog’s layout is similar to that of an Instagram feed, appealing to the modern target consumer.

Another way the site builds a sense of community is by featuring people on landing pages. We know from our experience in the industry that including people in your website photos is a key tactic for increasing engagement and conversions.

It is a clever way of connecting with consumers’ emotions, conveying your unique brand personality and creating a sense of desire.

Authority proof

To reflect Innermost’s position as a respected, established supplements brand, we prioritised authority proof throughout our design as well. The homepage features a carousel with logotypes and quotes from reputable media outlets aligned with the target audience, such as Forbes, Men’s Health and Vogue. These logos are also featured on individual product pages.

Validation from these authority figures can boost brand reputation and therefore increase buyers’ confidence.

Designing with conversions in mind

This project wasn’t just about creating a beautiful aesthetic though. Our design team understand the importance of marrying form with function, so prioritised user-friendliness throughout the entire website migration and design process.

The result? A speedy, compelling, easy-to-navigate site that makes the journey to checkout as seamless as possible. The intuitive product categorisation helps customers find what they want quickly and easily, whilst the bold calls to action clearly breadcrumb the route-to-purchase.

By streamlining the route-to-purchase and making the user journey as simple as possible, users are given less to process at any one time. This reduces cognitive load, meaning users are more likely to convert their interest into a purchase.

Results that speak for themselves

It wasn’t long before the positive impact of Innermost’s slick new Shopify Plus store became apparent.

In the three months post-launch, key metrics increased encouragingly. The site saw a 10% increase in organic sessions, along with a 17% increase in site-wide revenue.

The most impressive result was the improvement in average order value, which increased by a staggering 300%!

As well as boosting key metrics, migrating from Magento to Shopify Plus has gifted the Innermost team the time and resources they need to focus on growing the revenue-generating aspects of their budding business.

With a scalable, reliable ecommerce site in place, Shiv and his team can now concentrate their efforts on exciting marketing initiatives to spread the word about Innermost and continue driving growth.

What does the client think?

Indeed, since migrating from Magento to Shopify Plus, the Innermost team haven’t looked back.

Talking about the benefits of their new Shopify store, CEO Shiv said:

“It’s been a breath of fresh air for us. On Magento, our biggest frustration was that it was very difficult to make changes to the website, to upgrade the website, add additional functionality, but with Shopify Plus a lot of that just comes out of the box.

It’s really been a way for us to empower ourselves and have a website that really help us grow our business.”

And what about working with Swanky?

“Working with Swanky allows us to have confidence in our ecommerce platform and allows us to focus our time on other areas which will help propel our business forward.”

What’s next for Innermost?

With some encouraging post-launch figures behind them, 2019 is set to be an exciting year for this aspiring enterprise.

After a successful migration and design project, Innermost are eager to consolidate their success in the UK and continue to grow on their success internationally. This is something that Swanky are super excited to be involved in.

We look forward to seeing what the future holds for this forward-thinking health and fitness brand!

Looking to migrate?

Our Shopify migration experts have successfully replatformed several health and wellness websites to Shopify Plus, including Innermost, Symprove, Daysoft, Revital and Silk Oil of Morocco.

If, like these brands, you are looking to migrate your ecommerce store to Shopify Plus, check out our detailed migration resources, including an exclusive webinar recording with Shopify Plus and our shiny new migration eBook.