Rock The Boat Launches Using Shopify Ecommerce

We are delighted to announce the re-launch of Rock The Boat’s website using the ecommerce platform Shopify. Rock the Boat is an established retailer, providing creatively designed clothing, accessories and gifts to rowers for 25 years. Digital Six designed the original ecommerce website 7 years ago and this stood the test of time, however the old website lacked some of the latest functionality to drive more sales and the overall product and order administration needed to be streamlined. The design was starting to appear dated, however customers liked the simple and straightforward design and Rock the Boat was keen to maintain the overall look and feel in a new website.

Digital Six discussed Rock the Boat’s requirements in detail, in order to identify the best platform – balancing new features and functionality within a budget. We identified the following deliverables for the project:

• Roll out an improved design to provide information about Rock the Boat and their product range
• Develop the website on a new platform that allows Rock the Boat to upload informative and engaging content including video and links with appropriate social networking channels
• Implement the ability for customers to buy products through a best practice ecommerce system

It was clear that the platform Shopify would be ideal their needs going forward. Shopify includes the following ecommerce features as standard:

• Out of the box templates which can be fully customised to create a unique design
• Integration with Google Analytics and in depth reports as part of the Shopify Admin panel
• Some international elements, including currency conversion
• Weight based shipping calculations
• An excellent library of plugins that allows new features to be added quickly and easily
• The ability to offer a streamlined checkout process through an integrated checkout

Shopify is a simple platform for those who are looking to improve their current ecommerce website or looking to test the waters with a starter ecommerce website.

The first stage of the project was to narrow down the responsive themes that we liked best and were complementary to Rock the Boat’s branding. Thereafter, Digital Six’s design team worked With Rock The Boat on content structuring to ensure that products were classified into the most relevant areas of the site. The design of the theme was also tweaked to include branding elements together with assisting in styling and formatting new content.

The new website is fully responsive, which means it looks great on every screen size from mobile to wide screen.  The drop down navigation provides a great customer experience and the site also has a simple but effective ecommerce checkout process.

The Shopify ecommerce platform has been an immediate success already, with positive feedback from Rock The Boat on how simple and quick it is to manage their product categories and payments in the admin panel.  They reckon they will save a great deal of time administering their orders and products.

We have found Shopify to be a perfect ecommerce platform for those online retailers who are looking for a simple ecommerce site on a budget.  The platform does have limitations, but it delivers a great ecommerce site for online retailers who are not ready or do not require a Magento Community set-up for their online store.

With the demise of Magento Go in the offing, we feel that Shopify is the perfect ecommerce solution for those retailers looking for a simple solution.  If you do have Magento Go website, we recommend considering the move to Shopify, as it just might be the perfect solution for you.