Shopify
Scaled MVP online store enhanced business operations
Business growth is the ultimate goal for each company that comes to us with a project. Frequently, it means that they need to create another brand to introduce the new product or service to the world. That’s what happened with this client of ours.
They still wanted to do what they were passionate about, selling exclusive furniture, but they needed a modern approach. Introducing an eCommerce store was their next step towards digitalization and expansion.
Technology
Shopify
Vue Storefront
Scope
Product design
(Storefront UI)
Architecture planning
Development
Vertical
Home & living
Einrichtungspartnerring VME is a modern furniture distributor founded in 1964 in Germany that collaborates with a broad network of partners to provide the highest quality products.
Their approach to business is truly unique and based on customer-centered values. They came to us wanting to create a new brand called Trendhopper. The product was already launched in the Netherlands, and the future goal is to introduce it in the company’s homeland.
Recognized objectives
At first, we were asked to prepare a minimum viable product (MVP) that would function as a “window shopping” device. It wasn’t supposed to have a cart feature. Instead, it would display available products for the client to check out, and if they were interested,
they would get directions to the nearest shop where the furniture
could be purchased.
Challenges of this project
We had a few challenges to conquer during the project. One of them was short time to market. Since we had to create the product’s whole design and tech concept, we had to move quickly and bet
on proven methodologies and best practices to achieve the
client’s goals.
Also, we had to coordinate the opening of offline furniture stores and the launch of the website at the same time. Such a task requires excellent organization and planning.
The slogan Einrichtungspartnerring VME decided to pick for their
new brand is simple yet revealing: “Homemade happiness.” They
wanted Trendhopper to be an easily recognizable, reliable, curiously
creative, convincing, and communicative brand. We had to keep all
that in mind while building their solution.
Product design
We started with user journey workshops to understand which requirements were needed. After this, high-fidelity mockups were prepared to make the process of development smoother and less expensive.
Minimum viable product
Then we proceeded with the MVP documentation, user journey, and user experience design. We needed to agree on the pages that would be done in the first place so that they could be a part of the MVP launch. The timeline was short, so we decided to bet on the lean design approach based on Storefront UI.
Tech
For the development phase, we had two choices. We had to decide between either going full headless or again choosing the lean approach. Since we had limited time, we decided to align the code with the design and make the lean version of the shop window product.
The team was considering the future plans to turn the shop window website into a full-on eCommerce platform. That’s why we didn’t want to use a setup that wouldn’t be reusable at the later stage of development.
At this point, it was easy for us to decide that we had to decouple the back end and front end as well as use Vue Storefront (VSF) as a front-end solution so we could utilize Storefront UI for design.
The client needed a content management system (CMS) because the main purpose of their window shop website was to display the furniture content. We picked Contentful as a flexible CMS that can scale with the final solution.
Additionally, we picked Shopify to build the back end because it’s quick and easy to set up. Moreover, VSF recently launched an integration
with Shopify that allowed us to expand the platform as the
project progressed.
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