Case Study: How a Custom-Made App Transformed this Business’ Sales

When Time + Space initially contacted our design team at Swanky, they had 3 key issues that they were looking to address.

Firstly, their old website had been online for the best part of 10 years and was, in the words of Time + Space’s Head of Sales and Marketing, “severely in need of an overhaul”.

Time + Space’s previous and outdated website design.

Secondly, the brand had decided to approach our team of Shopify Plus Experts as, after their 2-year website design project with Magento had failed to launch, they were looking for a more flexible ecommerce platform which would allow for more customisation and adaptability and so would cater to their brand’s unique needs.

For example, as Time + Space sell predominantly music and software-based products, it was very important for the company to sell their products on a platform that was able to meet the technological requirements of how modern music is traded today – via instant downloads and digital delivery in real time.

Lastly, as Time + Space are a global company, it was a complete prerequisite for their team to integrate a multi-currency solution into their new store in order to enhance the user experience of customers browsing from outside of the UK. With this in mind, learning that Swanky could provide custom multinational workarounds within a single Shopify storefront was what really sealed the deal for our friends at Time + Space.

How did we help?

To begin this highly intricate project, our web design team built Time + Space a more attractive, up-to-date and user-friendly Shopify website which looks wonderful and works seamlessly on all devices, resulting in higher levels of customer engagement and ultimately more sales for the company.

Time + Space’s seamless new Shopify website design.

At Swanky, we firmly believe that the design of every company’s website should be uniquely tailored to their business goals and should also perfectly reflect and complement their brand. For this reason, our web design team have built numerous custom-made apps for Time + Space over the past year and a half in order to cater to the brand’s specific ecommerce needs.

For example, in order to address the company’s specific requirement to sell a primarily non-physical range of products, our design team built Time + Space a custom serial app that would make managing this process more efficient and handle the company’s infinite stock of downloadable goods automatically.

Described by Time + Space’s Head of Sales Marketing Joel Heatley as “the cornerstone on which the whole site is built”, this completely bespoke app allows customers to purchase products in a single product page in both download and physical form, rather than having to purchase different forms of a product on different product pages as they would have to with normal Shopify functionality.

Crucially, we also built Time + Space a bespoke multi-currency app to address their needs as a global music provider. Although Shopify has plans to introduce more internationalisation options later this year, there is currently no quick-fix solution to allow customers to browse in their native currency without creating multiple website domains for each one of their international customer bases.

However, the multinational function we built essentially merged three Shopify stores into one single store-front. This allows customers from around the world to choose one of three major currencies (GBP, USD and EUR) and subsequently browse and make purchases in that currency without being put off by any extra VAT charges at checkout.

Moreover, we created a Loyalty Lion customer loyalty program implementation which Time + Space’s customers have reportedly responded well to since the launch of the new website, as well as an effective wholesale bulk ordering solution, a multi-warehouse feature and a bespoke trade discount function.

Of course, creating and integrating this high number of intricately designed features into one website involved an extremely high level of attention to detail from our team. Both the tailor-made multi-cart and serial apps, for example, needed to tie seamlessly into the website’s purchase flow and core functionality, and had to remain stable and faultless in order for customers to be able to purchase Time + Space’s products at all.

Our design team therefore optimised all of these features to work as seamlessly as possible, taking the time to make sure the build was not simply functioning satisfactorily but was fine-tuned to perfection.

And what did all of this hard work lead to?

In short, Time + Space now have a beautiful and fully functional new online digital marketplace which is very strong from a UX (user experience) perspective and continues to serve its purpose of attracting more potential customers and increasing company sales.

According to Joel Heatley, Head of Sales and Marketing at Time + Space, the brand have also experienced an increase in their overall conversion rate and their sales into the US as a result of their website’s new multi-currency features.

The Time + Space team have also been extremely impressed by Shopify’s scalability as an ecommerce platform, with Joel stating that “as we’ve now automated a lot of the processes that used to be manual, we now feel that we can double, treble and even quadruple our orders with very little additional HR needed.”

With their compelling new website now launched, refined and already delivering impressive results, Time + Space are currently busy preparing for their peak trading period later in the year around Black Friday and November.

With their stand-out new ecommerce store pushing the brand ahead of the competition in today’s ever-growing and evolving music industry, we are excited to see Time + Space’s business continue to grow and thrive.

If, like Time + Space, you are looking for a website revamp or a new store build that will ensure your business is headed for instant ecommerce success, Swanky are here to help. Our expert team are passionate about designing and optimising unique, beautiful, high-quality websites to help you unlock your full ecommerce potential and reap all of the exciting benefits of owning an exquisite Shopify store. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you are interested in finding out more.