![\"Retail](\"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/RETAIL-ONLINE-TRAINING-728-X-90.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Consumers today expect immersive, content-rich ecommerce sites, yet if a site takes longer than four seconds<\/strong> to load, 63% <\/strong>of shoppers will abandon it altogether. It\u2019s an ever-present internal conflict for many ecommerce and marketing teams that are striving to maximize both<\/em> time-on-site and conversion rate metrics \u2014 and it\u2019s one that standing desk and office furniture manufacturer Uplift Desk<\/strong> has evidently addressed since implementing BigCommerce<\/strong>\u2019s Catalyst storefront technology.<\/p>\n In fact, since migrating to this composable commerce architecture, the Uplift team has been able to accelerate time to market and seen a significant improvement in its Google Lighthouse score, which measures sites based on different web performance metrics \u2014 including Largest Contentful Paint, which is based on how quickly the largest image or text block appears on a site<\/strong>. As a result, the team has seen overall bounce rates drop, especially on high-impact pages like its Desk Configurator tool.<\/p>\n As a brand with both a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales model, Uplift Desk has had to focus equally on the speed and performance of the site, as well as the quality of the site design and content. However, the team was struggling to design, iterate and improve the website at a much faster speed. \u201cWe also wanted our overall architecture and web systems to load and process at a much faster rate, but at the same time, our development team was slowly becoming obsessed with Next.js as their framework for development, and they knew they wanted to work within that code base because it would allow them to make much more reactive, responsive and faster content working within that framework,\u201d explained Daniel Burrow, VP of Sales and Marketing at Uplift in an interview with Retail TouchPoints<\/em>.<\/p>\n The convergence of all these factors affirmed that it was time for Uplift to move to a headless architecture. By decoupling the front and back ends of the website, the manufacturer could serve its code base to customers when they came to the website, but it didn\u2019t need to rely on any additional scripting on the back end to serve key features and content, Burrow explained. As a result, \u201cit\u2019s exactly what we want the customer to see when they arrive,\u201d he said. Its modular architecture uses composable standards, so Uplift, along with other brands and retailers, have more freedom to test, learn and adapt their commerce experiences without risking that they\u2019ll outgrow the platform.<\/p>\n Uplift started the transition to Catalyst in August and spent approximately 10<\/strong> weeks of development time. Catalyst\u2019s plug-and-play design has helped streamline essential tasks, like cart-to-checkout integration and customer account management, which reduced development efforts.<\/p>\n Although the new site was ready to go right before Black Friday, Burrow and his team made the executive decision to pause the launch until December 10 at 3 a.m., a moment he still recalls. \u201cThe site was offline for approximately 45 minutes <\/strong>to do the full migration with the new architecture,\u201d he noted. \u201cBut everything was smooth, and we had a brand-new website.\u201d<\/p>\n And Burrow was able to track immediate benefits. \u201cWhat was really fun for us at that point was tracking all the metrics and seeing how fast it was running. It was startingly fast by comparison,\u201d he said. For example, the Google Lighthouse score for Uplift\u2019s main pages had been in the 20% to 40%<\/strong> range, but now its main homepage is in the upper 90%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Even Uplift\u2019s Desk Configurator page, which Burrow describes as \u201ca massive page with tens of thousands of assets,\u201d scores in the lower 80%<\/strong> range, which he describes as \u201ca huge pivot point\u201d for the business. Previously, even though the Desk Configurator represents a highly valuable asset, the team had to stop advertising that page directly to consumers because it took up to 14 seconds <\/strong>to load.<\/p>\n \u201cIf that was consumers\u2019 first interaction with Uplift Desk, we knew they were not going to have a great interaction and they were going to bounce and go somewhere else,\u201d Burrow said. \u201cWe strategically decided that we were going to serve other components of our website that, honestly, were less impressive, in order to get them into the funnel and hopefully get them to the Desk Configurator page.\u201d Now, the Desk Configurator page loads within three seconds<\/strong>, which gives the brand a high-value, high-impact tool to promote to potential customers.\u201d<\/p>\n While Uplift Desk has seen immediate, short-term gains, moving to Catalyst\u2019s \u201cwell-engineered foundation\u201d gives the team a powerful vehicle for developing and working within the platform so they can continually push creative limits, according to Burrow.<\/p>\n \u201cWe previously had stringent rules in regard to our file sizes because we knew that every file we added was going to cause our load times to increase,\u201d he explained. \u201cNow, because of the way the architecture is built, it\u2019s a lot easier for us to be flexible on what those files are and put pixel-perfect, beautiful images on our website and trust that they\u2019re going to look correct [and load] in a timely manner.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n And with 60% <\/strong>of consumers working from a home office, Uplift Desk has to ensure its site always includes high-quality imagery, videos and rich information to help these shoppers make informed decisions. \u201cThe headless migration and overall move to Catalyst is definitely more positioned towards the home office user, because that has been our bread-and-butter,\u201d said Burrow. \u201cAnd historically, there was a really large divide between what our creative team has wanted to do on the site and what our development team can actually execute on. Now, they\u2019re able to create beautiful, responsive designs.\u201d<\/p>\n Burrow went so far as to say that the migration supported a \u201chuge cultural change\u201d within the company by supporting groundbreaking creativity and richer collaboration between creative and development teams. \u201cWe spend all day in [collaborative design tool] Figma now and take those to the dev team, and the dev team is just able to knock it out for us.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n Marketing and design teams can even tap into Catalyst\u2019s visual editor, Makeswift, which can empower any userto add new site content, features and capabilities. \u201cIt makes our teams feel empowered,\u201d Burrow said. \u201cThey\u2019re no longer quite as constrained in what they\u2019re able to do and they can have these richer conversations with the dev team.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nEnhancing Site Speed and Reliability<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Unlocking New Creative Opportunities<\/strong><\/h3>\n