Powering up My Tool Shed

My Tool Shed provides customers across the UK with a vast array of hand tools, power tools and trade accessories. From drills and sanders to nuts, bolts and washers – they stock almost anything a tradesperson could ever need.

After over 4 years of trading through ecommerce platform osCommerce, the team at My Tool Shed decided it was time for a change.

While their existing site was attracting a reasonable amount of traffic, it wasn’t converting anywhere near enough of it. Why? Firstly, the user journey was convoluted and confusing. Visitors couldn’t find specific brands or products. Secondly, there was a range of issues with mobile browsing and speed.

We were definitely up to the challenge…

The job at hand

The client came to us for a full revamp of their site. Like all projects, we started with the fundamentals like user data and analytics. By implementing our own tracking tools, we were able to mine the site’s data from the last 4 years. Using this, we built a comprehensive plan of how to regenerate the site and the user journey.

Our role

• Website UX & UI Review Report
• UX & UI Design
• SEO & Conversion Rate Optimisation
• Magento 2 Website Design and Development

Starting with user experience

Using high-fidelity user experience (UX) mock ups, we were able to kickstart the project by building out a mobile-first user journey. We wanted to give My Tool Shed a solid brand presence online. With fierce competition from the likes of Screwfix and ITS, they need to be identifiable and stick out from the crowd. Within this, both new and existing customers should feel the security of a large, established brand.

To achieve the best user experience, the front-end design was focussed around two user journeys:

• Brand-led – For people who know the brands they want to buy from
• Product-led – For those who don’t know the brand, but have an understanding of a problem that they need to solve with a specific product

Our research showed that visitors typically started their journey on mobile, as they researched and compared products. They then finish the purchase on either mobile or desktop, making it crucial that the journey is consistent across devices.

With this in mind, the new site was designed with both user journeys in mind, making sure it was equally accessible on both desktop and mobile.

Branding and bundling

We optimised the site for brands across the board – speed, products and SEO. Brand experience pages make users feel at home with a given brand, displaying all the relevant products on sale at My Tool Shed.

Product pages took a big step forward too, with a lot more details on battery life, included parts and product specification – along with video guides and additional downloadable information about the product.

On top of this, we made sure products were bundled, so customers don’t have to go searching for related items or up-sales. We have created an easier interface at product level, so customers have everything they need in one place.

The result? An impressive upturn in average order value.

ese products are kept at the forefront of each customer’s mind, resulting in improved conversion results.

Streamlined checkout

Checkout can be difficult for trade customers, as the seller often needs lots of different information to deliver these types of items, with different delivery and billing addresses among the common complications. Unfortunately, the standard framework checkout doesn’t always deliver on this – especially when customers want to complete the purchase on their mobile.

That’s no problem for us. We designed and built a completely bespoke checkout journey. Users no longer feel like they’re filling out endless forms with quicker route to payment. We’ve also introduced quick buy features like Apple Pay, Amazon Pay and PayPal so users can choose the best payment method for them.

The result? Checkout can now be completed in under 60 seconds – a huge boost for My Tool Shed.

Making things easier

With the designs approved and delivered, we built the system on Magento 2. Importantly, we imported all historic orders, products and trading history, so the store has no gaps in data. With over 50,000 multi-variant products it was no mean feat, but the site is now packed with invaluable product information that the old store was lacking in.

Transferring this data was a micro project in itself. But it was one we were pleased to deliver, because it meant that My Tool Shed didn’t have any loss. They didn’t need to do countless hours of data input and, importantly, customers didn’t lose sight of their historic orders with the business.

To make things even easier for the company, we also modified the Magento 2 framework to work with third party stock providers and multiple warehouse fulfillment systems like Braintree and PCA predict.

Marketing the new and improved site

On top of the development side, we’ve also worked hard with My Tool Shed to deliver a robust marketing strategy through PPC, Google product feeds and SEO.

Having optimised the site for speed and SEO, one of the big winners is that brand pages are now beating their own brand sites for some specific product search terms. My Tool Shed is now also competing with the likes of Screwfix, who have a more considerable budget for site development and marketing.