Syster P sells globally, with a focus on growth in the Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, and German markets. Reliance on developers for small changes and the need to create separate stores for each market hindered their growth ambitions. With development time and costs mounting, the team knew they needed a new front-end solution to improve the usability and performance of their ecommerce solution while supporting their international growth ambitions.
Key achievements since migrating to Shopify:
- 100% increase in international sales compared to the previous year
- Reduced website development time by 50%
- Migration took just 3 months, half the time initially planned
Challenge
Syster P's previous setup was built primarily on Wordpress and Centra—a combination that provided a solid solution for what they needed in the first years after founding the business. As the business grew, they needed the ability to make quick updates and adapt to market demands. Website changes, for example adding modules, required the support of external developers, costing them up to 30 hours per month.
Our cost for developers was quite high whenever we wanted to make changes on our website. Shopify allows us to do that ourselves and it’s easy.
Before migrating to Shopify, each market had a separate website, resulting in duplicated efforts across four sites. The team needed a more centralised solution to provide a localised shopping experience, including local payment methods, and relevant shipping options–without extensive development time.
Solution
After exploring different options, Syster P chose Shopify for its user-friendly interface, allowing the team to manage their online presence with minimal coding experience. The migration process, initially projected to take six months, was completed in just three months. Working with a local Swedish ecommerce partner, Grebban, together with Shopify on-hand for support, the migration also included a major design overhaul and content refresh during this time.
With Shopify, we really only had to build one page and then we could work with markets from there. Shopify is a very easy tool to learn. It's very user friendly, no need for a lot of coding – it's straightforward.
Shopify Markets enabled Syster P to streamline international operations significantly, allowing the team to create one core website that can be adapted quickly for each localised storefront. As the company grows internationally, being able to add local payment methods is a game changer for the jewelry brand. With Shopify, Syster P was able to simply add readily available payment options in each market without additional development needs or having to go through contract conversations with individual payment providers. Local shipping methods can be easily managed too, drastically reducing the time spent on updates.
Being able to easily add local payment methods is a big fix. Before, it would have cost us a lot of development hours. So, we’re very happy with the solution we have today with Shopify. We just switch it on, and everything works.
The ease of app integration allowed the team to extend their tech stack to suit their growing footprint across Europe. While launching a sale through Shopify Campaigns, the team turned to the Shopify app ecosystem for support. In just 30 minutes, they seamlessly integrated Fantastic Market Discounts, an app that enabled them to create bulk discounts by setting rules and tags, helping to display the right sale prices across their sites.
The Shopify App Store has proven invaluable for the team on multiple occasions. Now they can test new features and add functionality as they need it. For example, they use a shipping selector app to simplify international shipping options, and recently they’ve introduced a countdown timer on the site to create a sense of urgency before a campaign.
With thousands of plug-and-play apps to choose from, the marketing team also leveraged Yotpo for managing customer reviews and product information, and Yayloh for offering quick and easy localised returns and exchanges.
With Shopify we can add features and functionality ourselves, which previously would have cost us 40 hours or more with Wordpress. That’s one of the things I appreciate about Shopify the most.
Result
Syster P experienced a remarkable 100% increase in international sales across their key international markets; Norway, Finland and Germany.
In particular, the quality of the product images on site have majorly improved. Now website visitors instantly recognise the sparkle and shine of the jewelry in the images. The clarity enables visitors to see the stunning details of each piece, greatly enriching the online shopping experience and driving sales. As Hanna points out, “Shopify took our brand to the next level. Our image quality has really done wonders for our site. Customers can see the difference, and the shopping experience online is much closer to what it’s like in store now.”
The ability to cater to diverse customer needs improved international conversion rates significantly, which the Syster P team attributed to displaying shipping options and payment methods early in the customer journey.
The marketing team was spending valuable time on manual tasks, taking too much time from other projects. With the time they’ve reclaimed by using Shopify, the team can concentrate on crafting exceptional content, innovating the website and building a global brand.
I have a team that is so much happier now than before. Working with Shopify, we can truly focus on building the brand and creating the best content.
Syster P has their sights firmly set on the future. With their D2C website fully optimised, the company now plans to move their B2B operations to Shopify, keeping all of their ecommerce operations under one roof. With this approach, they can continue using just one site and apply adaptations for local shopfronts. They’ve added some extra functionality necessary for B2B orders, but otherwise the setup is the same as D2C, keeping the entire operation efficient and straightforward.
We're moving B2B over to Shopify as well and will set it up together with our D2C. It's a big advantage for us to be able to stay within one solution.
