Case Study
Funky Chunky Furniture sells real wood furniture, made by real people. Their audience doesn’t want to sacrifice style over substance, prioritising quality items that are built to last. As most of Funky Chunky’s products are made-to-order, the website had to facilitate the process of choosing the right product as seamlessly as possible as it’s the only point of contact between the customer and the merchant.
Our developers and marketing team worked closely with Funky Chunky Furniture’s team to design and launch a website that delivered both style and functionality.
Scalable growth: Funky Chunky’s previous website was on the EKM platform. The business had experienced rapid growth and was set to turn over record-breaking profits by the end of 2021, and so it became apparent that a new website was needed to keep up with higher demand. We decided to design and build the new website on Shopify Plus in order to provide the flexibility, ease of administration and scalable growth needed to meet their business goals.
Increase mobile sales: In 2021, 70% of Funky Chunky’s website traffic came from mobile, yet the number of transactions was equal across mobile and desktop. As we were dealing with a younger, digital-savvy audience, a mobile-first approach to the new website was vital.
Improve SEO performance: The site’s current structure, from the navigation to key landing pages and the blog, were hindering organic performance and therefore failing to attract new customers/keep up with competitors.
Increase revenue year-on-year: By improving UX, targeting buyers on their preferred devices, attracting more organic traffic to the site and increasing the average order value, we aimed to increase total revenue post-launch.
We approached the build from the ground up. We began by embarking on a full technical, front end and user experience audit with Funky Chunky to pinpoint their problems, goals and what was currently working for them. The client’s priorities were simpler inventory management, a sleek design aesthetic, and personalisation.
Our development team created a custom Shopify theme using Shopify CLI, Tailwind and Webpack to make the build process as fast and as efficient as possible.
We designed a series of key user journeys for every area of the website that we knew would not only deliver visually appealing results but also significantly impact the client’s ability to sell their key product ranges and showcase them to potential customers. This process involved referencing historical data, rapid design prototyping, workshops and iterative feedback with the client, with regular visits to Funky Chunky HQ. Product page templates were created that allowed us to boost conversions through copy, imagery, customer reviews and related products.
A robust migration plan was designed and implemented to limit any negative impact on organic rankings post-launch. Using Matrixify, we were able to successfully bulk migrate data from EKM to Shopify Plus, and upload all 301s/redirects. A slickplan was created based on the existing site structure, using competitor analysis and keyword gap analysis to determine additional pages and collections to be included.
We created various opportunities for upselling across the website, using Nostro to integrate intuitive product recommendations based on product viewing history and related products.
More intelligent inventory management and order tracking were integral to the success of this build – We knew we needed to implement a solution so the business could continue to grow further. Many of the client’s products, particularly the wooden shelves, have a lot of variations (length, width, finish, etc) so we knew we would have to come up with an innovative way to manage inventory. Linnworks was integrated to automate much of the process, to make sure every part of the ecommerce process was seamlessly integrated within the new website.
The blog section of the website was previously under-utilised, ranking for only three keywords in 2021. We carried out extensive keyword research and competitor analysis and found that there was potential to turn the blog into a hub of inspiration to boost sales. We split the blog into several sections, which include ‘How To’ guides, styling tips and interviews. This would allow the site to rank for more specific, long-tail keywords, thus increasing organic search visibility.
The new Funky Chunky website launched in March 2022.
*Feb 2022 vs Feb 2023