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Ecommerce: 10 mini case studies of successful marketing for online shopping

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

While ecommerce has been growing rapidly, it still only comprised a small percentage of overall retail sales. For example, in the U.S., on an adjusted basis, ecommerce accounted for 11.8% of all retail sales in the first quarter of 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

That was for Q1. Then in Q2, the number jumped to 16.1% – a 44.5% change from the same quarter a year ago. To put that number in perspective, Q2 2019 grew “only” 13.8% over Q2 2018.

What changed? The COVID-19 pandemic, of course. Even with ecommerce’s double-digit growth over the years, brick-and-mortar retail still had many advantages over ecommerce. Some products (like groceries) are hard to ship and easier and less expensive to buy in person. Brick-and-mortar retail has an experiential draw that ecommerce can’t match – from trying on a shirt to being wowed by an in-store (and Instagram-worthy) display. The ability to make a human connection and learn about a product or service.

Suddenly everything changed. That human connection became a detriment. And a no-touch version of goods and even services was preferable if not essential.

And that’s where we are in 2020 folks. A sad statement on human existence, yes. But as marketers, we must answer a practical question. How do we ensure our companies can continue to create value for customers in this changed world? Ecommerce can play a critical role. To help spark ideas for improving your company’s ecommerce efforts, here are specific examples from your peers in a wide range of industries.

Mini Case Study #1: Adding credibility generates a 46% increase in conversion for mattress company

A mid-sized furniture company selling organic latex mattresses engaged with MECLABS Institute to increase the overall number of mattress purchases (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa). It is one of only a few mattresses that is GreenGuard Gold certified.

The team conducted an experiment to determine which credibility approach would produce the highest rate of mattress purchases and ran an A/B split test.

The control landing page mentioned the certification, but it was de-emphasized.

Creative Sample #1: Control landing page for organic latex mattress

The treatment landing page added a section entitled “What is the GreenGuard Gold Seal?”

Creative Sample #2: Treatment landing page for organic latex mattress

The treatment landing page generated a 46% increase in conversion in the A/B test. The tangible value created by the additional copy helped the customer determine that the mattress was worth purchasing.

You can learn more about this experiment, and see other ecommerce experiments, in Optimizing Ecommerce Experiences: 25 valid ecommerce experiments to ideate your next A/B test from MarketingExperiments (MarketingSherpa’s sister publication).

Mini Case Study #2: Dunkin’ increases gift card sales 300% by quickly tapping into changing customer motivations

The way customers perceive your products and service can change over time. The COVID-19 pandemic is a great example. For most companies, if they just treated customers the same way they did before the pandemic, they would have overlooked customers’ changing motivations. And those changing motivations affect how potential customers perceive your offer.

Dunkin’ is an example of a company that moved swiftly to tap into new customer motivations. “As COVID-19 struck, Americans wanted to find ways to help and to show support for the frontline heroes. Dunkin’ wanted to give people a way to do so, even without being able to leave home,” said Justin Unger, Director, Strategic Partnerships, Dunkin'.

Created in just days, the DunkinCoffeeBreak.com ecommerce site gave customers a way to show appreciation by sending a virtual coffee break in the form of a Dunkin’ e-gift card. Dunkin’ donated $1 (up to $100,000) for every card purchased at this site to the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation emergency funds, specifically for non-profits helping families affected by COVID-19.

“Since the initial launch, Dunkin’ has used the site for multiple moments that matter to people, such as Teacher Appreciation Week, National Nurses Week, and Mother’s Day,” Unger said.

The site is driving incremental digital gift card sales and has generated a 300% increase in year-over-year gift card sales for certain events.

“ I think ecommerce, especially in the gift card space, is a key [you can use to] unlock growth. We saw a tremendous lift in online gift card sales with the addition of DunkinCoffeeBreak.com without any cannibalization to our existing online gift card program. It allowed us to reach new guests and tap into the wealth of information and targeting in the digital world, which you just cannot do with plastic gift cards hanging on pegs ,” Unger said.

“Online and mobile shopping surged when social distancing was introduced…based on Blackhawk Network’s partners’ sales data, gift cards sales made directly from a restaurant’s or merchant’s website since mid-March are up 92% from last year,” said Brett Narlinger, Head of Global Commerce, Blackhawk Network , Dunkin’s gift card program partner.

Mini Case Study #3: Home décor company generates $734.40 in sales from “penny campaigns”

“Throughout my ecommerce career I have successfully implemented what I call ‘penny campaigns’ within numerous Google Ad accounts for a large number of different businesses,” said Patrick Connelly, co-founder, Stellar Villa .

Most businesses focus their ad spend on a select few products or services that account for the majority of the company’s revenue, he says. The idea with a penny campaign is to go deeper into your product set and offer very low bids for the ads.

“Penny campaigns can work with both text ads and Google Product Shopping ads, although I prefer Product ads,” Connelly said. Once you have the products added to a campaign, simply set a very low bid. While this can vary by industry, Connelly typically sets bids between five and twenty cents and uses broad match for a larger reach if targeting keywords.

For example, from May through July the wall art company ran a Shopping campaign with Product Listing Ads) for its “Nursery Wall Art” collection. The team set a maximum cost-per-click of $0.20 with a daily budget of $100. “We knew we wouldn't spend close to that, but I like to let Google know we're willing to pay for as many clicks at $0.20 or less as they can give us,” Connelly said.

Over the course of three months the ad produced 354 clicks at a cost of $60.18. The ad generated $743.40 in sales.

“The penny campaign strategy can be implemented on more platforms than just Google Ads. It also works great with Amazon Advertising,” Connelly said.

Mini Case Study #4: Vegan blog grows traffic to 50,000 monthly visits with more diverse SEO outreach strategy

Thrive Cuisine had more than 25,000 backlinks but was plateauing at about 30,000 monthly unique visits.

The team was building links and publishing content on the same schedule as before and wasn’t sure why they weren’t seeing more traffic and conversions.

George Pitchkhadze, CMO, Thrive Cuisine tried a new approach. Instead of focusing on getting more backlinks he decided the site need a bigger variety of backlinks. Pitchkhadze stopped outreach efforts that were targeting the same kind of website over and over again and spent two months creating a completely new link-building and outreach strategy. This time, the team specifically focused on websites in adjacent niches instead of the vegan blog’s own niche. They started the outreach effort in May after spending two months creating more diverse content to link back to.

The new out outreach targeting more diverse websites increased the number of referring domains by more than 50%. This resulted in traffic going from about 30,000 to more than 50,000 monthly visits from unique visitors and increased “traffic value” by more than $10,000.

“If you’re looking to get ecommerce traffic, focus on backlink variety and quality; not only quantity. This will massively improve your results. Where possible, create new content on your own website to really showcase your own expertise across diverse subjects,” Pitchkhadze said.

Mini Case Study #5: Footwear store increases conversion 21.5% with clearer communication on website

KURU Footwear places a high emphasis on customer service and ease of experience by offering free shipping, free exchanges, and free returns. While this messaging did exist on the footwear brand’s website in various places, the team launched a test exploring four options that inserted those value messages higher in the customer experience.

Creative Sample #3: Control homepage for footwear brand

The top-performing treatment had a black bar with simple white text at the top of nearly all pages outside of the checkout funnel. It increased conversion 21.5%.

Creative Sample #4: Top-performing treatment for footwear website

Other treatments that included the customer service message but added in a message to reassure customers that Kuru was open and operating during COVID-19 did not perform as well. “We found simplicity performed best,” said Kelly Stanze, Manager, Marketing & Communications, Kuru.

Creative Sample #5: Lower-performing treatment for footwear website

“Making sure potential new customers know just how much we prioritize customer satisfaction can be difficult. While the proof is in the shoes, we're constantly seeking ways to elevate just how passionate about our customers we are as a company. This was just one step in that never-ending effort,” Stanze said.

Mini Case Study #6: Facebook Live show quadruples online orders for gourmet deli and marketplace

Big Bottom Market is a gourmet deli and marketplace in the heart of Sonoma Wine Country. In addition to its retail presence, the team also manages an Etsy Shop where they sell Big Bottom Market-branded products and the work of local artisans.

“We've been in the e-commerce game since 2016 when we were designated one of Oprah's Favorite Things and had to use the Amazon platform for national sales,” said Michael Volpatt, owner, Big Bottom Market. “From orders and shipping to returns and everything in between, Amazon was a great partner at the time. That changed when our sales volume slowed down so we crunched the numbers and realized that Etsy would be a better partner as we ramped up our growing product line with items that we created or partnered with someone to create for us…My point in this is that being flexible at all points in your e-commerce journey is important.”

Volpatt would be forced to be flexible once again. On March 18 th , the county of Sonoma locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the in-person retail market closed. All of a sudden, ecommerce became a much more important component of Big Bottom Market’s sales

“As a chef and cookbook author, I decided to continue engaging with our customers and launched a Facebook Live cooking show called Cooking In Place,” Volpatt said.

Volpatt cooked and showcased local wines for fans along with other products that the market sells, encouraging viewers to buy them online.

In addition, after each show he posted the video replay across all of its social media channels and shared recipes and details about the food he cooked and wine he tasted on the show.” I would broadcast on Facebook Live and save the video feed. Then I would repost a link to the video on my personal page, on Instagram TV, and then also on YouTube,” he said.

Creative Sample #6: Facebook Live cooking show from gourmet deli and marketplace

In addition to customer engagement and increasing social media followers, the goal was to drive ecommerce sales as a way to augment lost revenue from in-store foot traffic.

“We used to see three to five orders per month in our Etsy shop. In the first week of doing the show we saw three to five per week and that increased to five to ten orders per week. To some, those numbers may seem low, but for a small business located in a tourist town, these numbers were great. Our sales ended up paying for our monthly fixed expenses, which was very helpful for a business that relies on foot traffic,” Volpatt said.

Mini Case Study #7: Retail company increases revenue 311% with website redesign

The Barbecues Galore website had a low conversion rate due to technical, usability and value communication issues. For example, when a product was added in different product categories the URL slug of the product itself would change. “This presented us with issues we needed to address immediately, as a product that constantly changes in URL is not SEO friendly and would present with unwanted 301 redirects and in some cases 404s,” said Andres Aguero, Senior SEO Specialist, Barbecues Galore.

The new site fixed those technical issues, and also did a better job of communicating value to the customer. For example, the product listing page on the old website had very few pictures and did not prominently feature reviews.

Creative sample #7: Previous product listing page on retailer’s original website

“We ended up figuring out that when people are making a large purchase online they want to feel safe and secure that their money is being well spent,” Aguero said.

The team invested in adding additional photos to the product listing and reached out to previous customers from both the online and brick-and-mortar locations to request a product review.

Creative sample #8: Product listing page on retailer’s new website

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the team had to push the live date of the website to April 2020. “This was a big risk at the time as we were at the peak of COVID-19 and all of our brick-and-mortar locations had been closed. Our only source of income at that time was our online revenue,” Aguero said.

The redesign paid off. Revenue from April to August 2020 increased 311% compared to the same time frame in the previous year and revenue from organic traffic increased 172%. (Much of that increase likely has to do with the site improvements, however this reporter questions if increased demand for backyard products due to COVID-19 lockdowns may have also played a role in the revenue increase.)

“My advice for other marketers would be to focus on your website’s existing traffic first before you make any other investments. Our PPC specialist was spending a crazy amount of money on a monthly basis only to see low conversion rates. If your conversion rate is low then try to figure out why. Take a look at your competitors and see what they are doing. After you’ve done that, then you can start making investments into PPC or SEO,” Aguero advised.

Mini Case Study #8: 3D models platform increases clickthrough 12% with A/B testing

Sketchfab operate a 3D content marketplace where people can buy and sell 3D models. It features some of these designs on its landing pages. The team decided to test the effect of different background designs for the header block, which contains a search bar and other navigation menus.

The background of the landing pages consisted of colorful, contrasted 3D models of animals and characters.

Creative Sample #9: Control landing page for 3D content models platform

The team tested less prominent backgrounds to provide more emphasis to the search bar and rest of the page’s user interface. Here is the highest-performing treatment, which produced a 5.3% increase in page engagement and 12.4% increase in clickthrough rates when compared to the original version.

Creative Sample #10: Treatment landing page for 3D content models platform

“Backgrounds [with] a low contrast image that blends with the rest of the page tend to perform much better than vivid, more contrasted ones. In our case, rather than wowing customers with a spectacular image or video, having a more modest graphic allowed them to take action and flow to other internal pages,” said Guillermo Sainz, Digital Marketing, Sketchfab.

Mini Case Study #9: Automating organic Pinterest postings generates $56,000 per month for women’s clothing store

This next example may not work for every company, but it was successful for a niche brand with a very visual product.

“We used to post manually on Pinterest every now and then and didn't attract any customers/visitors to our ecommerce portal. A few months ago, we installed a Shopify plugin to automatically push product images to Pinterest,” said Akram Tariq Khan, CTO, YourLibaas .

Creative Sample #11: Automated Pinterest post from women’s clothing store

“The results were unexpected,” Khan said.

The women’s clothing store now has about 930,000 monthly Pinterest viewers with 26,000 followers and average monthly sales directly attributable to Pinterest of $56,000 within the last quarter without spending a penny on Pinterest.

YourLibaas is based in India and offers international shipping. Most of the Pinterest customers are located internationally, primarily within the US, UK and Canada with a sizeable number in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

“The majority of our international orders are customers who discovered our brand through Pinterest. We have a significant presence on Instagram and Facebook too, but the user base at these platforms is primarily located domestically within India,” Khan said.

Mini Case Study #10: Female wellness product overcomes ad ban with SEO-focused content creation and attracts 9,248 organic visitors in latest month

As digital advertising platforms work to improve their image by banning industries and products deemed harmful, some less nefarious brands are getting caught as well.

For example, Chiavaye sells an all-natural, vegan personal moisturizer. Kaylyn Easton started the company because she has endometriosis.

The company was making approximately $14,000 per month in revenue by promoting the product with paid ads. However, about two years ago its ad account was shut down for “adult content.”

“Paid ads was a strategy that worked well for us until it didn’t. Meaning, the moment we got shut down, we lost more than 90% of our monthly revenue,” said Kaylyn Easton, CEO & Founder, Chiavaye.

At the time, organic traffic from Google was only about 20 visitors per month, and 98% of its was branded searches like “Chiavaye lube.”

The company decided to pursue a strategy of SEO-focused content creation. “We wanted to implement a strategy that would build our brand long-term so that after we turn off the investment, it could still bring in value. If we were to stop writing SEO articles today, we’d still get the benefits from what we’ve done for years to come. Versus, if we turn off a paid ads strategy, we immediately see a huge negative impact,” Easton said.

The primary focus of the content is not the promotion of the product, but instead helping the target audience overcome key pain points.

“We've been creating four SEO-focused pieces of content per month targeting endometriosis-related queries. Things like ‘endometriosis diet grocery list.’ We found that women with endo are craving any type of information to help them. And, if the info is good, they'll trust that person – and even buy their products,” said Joey Randazzo, Founder and CEO, Portland SEO Growth .

After 18 months of creating four pieces of content per month, the site went from about 20 visitors per month to, in the most recent month, 9,248 organic visitors.

Every piece of content has two CTAs (calls to action). The first is to buy the product. The second CTA is for a free e-book, which is generating 250 downloads per month – building the email list.

Creative Sample #12: Email signup form for e-book from female wellness product company

“We discovered that [competitors] have salesy email campaigns – every other email is a 30% off coupon. [Chiavaye's] is designed around adding value more than anything,” Randazzo said.

The team discovered the top burning questions the target audience is asking around endometriosis, like “is dairy okay to eat with endo?” Easton answers these questions in text and video in a clear, straightforward way. The email body is succinct in answering the question linking to articles on the company’s website for more information.

“Figure out who your target audience is and then create content that adds value to them and their lives. We’ve discovered that 95% of the content we create should be adding value to the reader. The final 5% should pitch us as a solution. It builds trust and entices them to opt in for our free e-book, which consequently builds a super valuable email list for us,” Easton said.

Related resources

Research-based Ecommerce Swipe File

Ecommerce Marketing Research: To be truly successful, you must step out of the ecommerce bubble

Ecommerce Research Chart: What makes customers more likely to buy online?

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19 Ecommerce Case Studies You Need To Steal From

You’ve heard it before - always be testing.

But if you’re running an eCommerce business then the tasks of analyzing your site data and identifying leaks in the funnel usually get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list. Let's face it, you’ve got 97 other things you SHOULD be doing today. 

So with that in mind, we've pulled together the following 19 real-world eCommerce lessons to help you cut straight to the chase in implementing some simple solutions to increase your online sales.

The ultimate growth marketing playbook

The exact 41 strategies we used to grow from 4-figure to 6-figure traffic in one year.

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In a hurry? Here are some eCommerce studies you need to steal from:

• How to improve Conversion: Envelopes.com achieve 40%
• How to improve Communication: Budapester increased mobile conversion by 29%
• Make small changes: Edible Arrangements increases same-day sales by 8%
• Make product benefits clear: Amerisleep increased checkouts by 13.9%
• Reduce website friction: Company Folders increase conversion by 68%
• Try cross selling products: Furniture retailer increased its AOV by 4.6% in 41 days
• Reduce clutter and distractions: Taloon.com ditched social buttons
• Use influencers to reach customers: Gwynnie Bee saw 5.85% CTR from Youtube influencer
• Reduce risk of purchase: Express Watches provides authenticity stamp
• Use events to drive sales: eCommerce companies saw a 27% spike during football world cup
• Remove distractions: Underwater Audio bump sales by 41%
• Get customers to take the next step: Kettlebell Kings’s takes advantage of user generated content to drive sales
• Use comparison data: Paperstone took out their competition with data
• Test and measure results: MVMT generated $90M in revenue in five years
• Find alternate channels: ECCO Shoes decreased customer acquisition costs by 14%
• Move past the product: Away generated $125M by standing out
• Drive inbound through content marketing: Bavarian Clockworks reached $1m in sales
• Build loyal engaged followers: Frank Body hit $20M in annual sales
• Be relevant to your customers: Society Socks improved survey response rate by 200%

Save this guide:  19 eCommerce case studies 

Learn from these 19 eCommerce case studies to see what problems they identified and how they implemented simple solutions to increase sales.

Send me the guide 

[eCommerce case study #1] How to improve Conversion: Envelopes.com achieve 40%

A common eCommerce problem is prospects exiting the page before completing their order. As consumers, we've all done it before. So the team at Envelopes.com wanted to see if they could “rekindle the flame” and land some sales from hot leads using target followups. These are visitors who created an account and put an item in their shopping cart, so we can see some real intent to purchase at some stage down the track.

The Envelopes.com team were confident that sending targeted follow-up emails generally resulted in sales but weren’t sure of the best timeframe to send them. So they tested out email sends at two alternate time lapses post cart abandonment; the first group sent the following morning at 11 a.m. and the second group 48 hours post cart abandonment.

The emails sent at 11 a.m. the following day delivered:

• an open rate of 38.63%
• a click-through rate of 19.54% and
• a conversion rate to a sale of 27.66%

The emails sent after 48 hours delivered:

• an open rate of 38.01%
• a click-through rate of 24.71% and
• a conversion rate of 40.00%

Although sending these emails on the following day post cart abandonment had a slightly higher open rate, the most important figure, conversion to sale was significantly lower. 

Take home message

Send a follow-up email to people who abandon their carts, if you’re not already doing it. Though Envelopes.com found that 48hrs later was the best performing time, a different cadence and time lag may work better with your customer base, so test out multiple alternatives. If you're looking for some assistance on the creative messaging front, we have included the exact email creative used by Envelopes.com here:

(Envelopes.com Reminder Email 1)

(Envelopes.com Reminder Email 2)

(Envelopes.com Reminder Email 3)

[eCommerce case study #2] How to improve Communication: Budapester increased mobile conversion by 29%

As anyone in the eCommerce realm can attest to, it can be pretty disheartening when a major influx in traffic doesn’t lead to an equally major spike in sales.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to German luxury fashion retailer Budapester a few years back.

Astoundingly, the brand’s website had been seeing hundreds of thousands of visitors each month—but its conversion rates were absolutely abysmal. The problem was even worse on mobile, where Budapester’s conversion rate was less than half that of its desktop alternative.

Upon realizing something needed to be done, the company’s first order of business was to communicate its unique selling propositions and other offers and policies more clearly to its visitors. This meant displaying information regarding free delivery, shipping options , and product availability prominently within its individual product pages:

(Budapester website | Source )

Along with this, Budapester also tweaked its site’s header—specifically, decreasing the logo’s size, and adding the above-mentioned info at the very top of the page. Again, this made it much easier for visitors to learn about these policies and offers right away.

Finally, the team also tweaked the appearance of its shopping cart page. From this...

( Source | Budapester shopping cart – Before)

( Source | Budapester shopping cart - After)

Once more, the above information is now prominently displayed to the consumer—this time in two ways. In addition to the change to the header, the website now displays the company’s offer for free shipping in a green font that stands out at the bottom of the screen.

The end result of Budapester’s efforts, as Growcode explains :

“Its overall conversion rate increased by 12.5%, with its mobile conversion rate going up by nearly 30%. All in all, this equated to an additional 120,000€.”

There are three main lessons to take away, here:

Firstly, it’s essential that you communicate your value to your potential customers in a clear and concise manner. If you offer something of value—say, free shipping on orders over $100—but you don’t tell your visitors about it...how are they supposed to know?

On the other side of this, you want to avoid including redundant or unnecessary information anywhere on your eCommerce website. Not only might this be distracting to your visitors, but it also takes up physical space on your site that could have been put to better use.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that optimizing your site might not mean you need to do a complete overhaul. As was the case with Budapester, a few tiny, seemingly insignificant tweaks can be all your site needs to start generating a massive amount of conversions.

[eCommerce case study#3] Make small changes: Edible Arrangements increases same-day sales by 8% 

Edible Arrangements had a fairly typical marketing challenge . They offer customers a same-day delivery option (and have done so for years) but people weren’t taking advantage of the offer because they didn’t know about it.

To educate customers about this option they significantly increased visibility with a large banner in an extremely prominent position on the homepage, just below the navigation bar. This created urgency around the offer by featuring a countdown timer to the deadline for same day delivery. It was impossible to miss or misunderstand.

(Edible Arrangements website)

The result of this simple countdown feature? An increase in same-day sales by 8% !

You don’t need a new product to promote something. People might not know about a product or service you already have in play, so by increasing visibility to your existing audience, you may be able to snap up some quick wins. As a side note on this particular example, creating some urgency is always a good sales strategy. Encourage your audience to act now, instead of later (or never). 

[eCommerce case study #4] Make product benefits clear: Amerisleep increased checkouts by 13.9%

Online mattress retailer Amerisleep had a problem that was quite similar to Budapester’s:

The company was seeing a ton of traffic on its website, but its conversion rates were nowhere near where the team would have liked them to be.

However, with the help of Growth Rock , Amerisleep decided to take a different approach to improving its website:

Rather than adding or deleting certain information, the team decided to focus on improving the messaging of the site’s copy—in a few ways.

First, the team dug deeper into the true benefits their products provide their customers. In Amerisleep’s case, this meant going beyond promising “a good night’s sleep,” and instead focusing on how getting a good night’s sleep every night can be absolutely life-changing.

(What would you do with more energy and less pain? | Source )

Secondly, the team aimed to reduce hesitation among its visitors by addressing the importance of immediate action. Rather than discussing the above benefits in a more hypothetical manner, the site’s copy was adjusted to address the idea that every night spent tossing and turning is another night visitors will never get back.

Lastly, the team tweaked some rather ambiguous copy comparing Amerisleep’s products to its competitors’ and made it more clear.

Originally, the website had made claims such as “No mattress is more carefully engineered.” The problem, here, is that this could be interpreted as “No mattress is more carefully engineered—but many are engineered equally as carefully as ours.”

The new copy read:

“Our innovative and proprietary materials let us build one of the most comfortable mattresses ever”

Much stronger, no?

Again, these relatively minor tweaks had major implications for Amerisleep: That 13.9% increase in conversion rate we mentioned equated to millions of dollars in added revenue over the course of the next year .

The overarching takeaway here is to write your copy with your audience in mind at all times.

This means:

• Ensuring they understand the true value your product will bring to their lives, and what it will enable them to do or accomplish
• Instilling a sense of urgency in your visitors, so they not only understand what they have to gain from using your product, but also what they have to lose by not using it
• Double- (triple-, and quadruple-) checking your copy to be absolutely certain it means what you want it to mean—and that your visitors will interpret it in the same way

[eCommerce case study #5] Reduce website friction: Company Folders increase conversion by 68%

Company Folders is an established business but had a website that their CEO admitted was “obviously last year”, which is putting it gently.

The main problem they wanted to remedy was their online quote function. This is a vital step in their marketing funnel, so making the process as smooth as possible was essential to  ultimately driving more sales for the business.

This sounds a simple task but with over 15 million product combinations, the current quoting system was highly complex. Further to this, there was a very high rate of prospects dropping out of the form partially completed.

Intuitively they assumed that getting the form onto a single page would help get prospects through the process, but after surveying their best customers, they realized that a redesign was necessary. 

They took a cumbersome single step process with lots of options and broke it up into a multi-step bite size process (pictured below). Doing this resulted in a whopping 67.68% increase in total quotes .

(Company folders website)

Take home message #3

Breaking down a complicated system into manageable smaller steps can help keep people focused and increase conversion . Though additional clicks can often be seen as new opportunities to lose customers, the Company Folders experience tells us that streamlining to shorter stepped forms is the way to go right now.

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[eCommerce case study #6] Try cross selling products: Furniture retailer increased its AOV by 4.6% in 41 days

(Note: For this study, the company did not wish to be named, so we will, of course, respect their privacy)

Perhaps the only thing better than getting potential customers to convert in the first place is getting them to add even more items to their cart before converting.

Our anonymous furniture company knows this—which is why they had been aiming to cross-sell a conditioning kit to customers purchasing leather furniture from their online store.

While sales of the company’s “main” products (i.e., furniture) were pretty decent, sales of these smaller complementary items weren’t all that great. The main problem was that most customers simply weren’t even aware the company offered the conditioning kit in the first place. Basically, the only way they would be exposed to the product is if they were to actively browse for it on the company’s website.

(We should also note that the price of the item being cross-sold costs only about 6% of the company’s average order value, while still adding a ton of value to the main product. In other words, making the additional purchase should have been a no-brainer.)

Knowing they needed to do a better job promoting such smaller-ticket items, the company decided to include a call-to-action directly within the shopping cart page when customers added an applicable big-ticket item to their cart.

So, the page went from looking like this:

(Your Shopping Cart | Source )

...to looking like this:

( Your Shopping Cart | Source )

Customers were then able to add the supplementary item to their cart with a single click (by clicking the plus sign), and could also visit the smaller item’s product page by clicking anywhere else within the pink bar.

The results were nothing short of amazing: As per Growth Rock’s data , the company’s average order value had increased by $55 (4.6%) in only 41 days . This equates to an additional $180,000 in monthly revenu e!

The first takeaway, here, is that successfully cross-selling relevant items that add value to your bigger-ticket items (and that add value to your customer experience ) can have a major impact on your overall revenues.

But simply offering such supplementary products isn’t enough on its own. You also need to promote these items specifically as supplementary to the more valuable and expensive items you offer.

(For example, it’s more likely that consumers visiting a furniture eCommerce site will purchase leather cleaner if they’re in the market for leather furniture. That being the case, you’d want to focus on promoting the product specifically to these individuals.)

Going along with this, you also need to present your cross-sell offer at just the right time to get your customers to bite. Here, the company did so as visitors showed a high probability of making a large purchase — a prime moment to add extra value to their overall experience with the brand.

[eCommerce case study #7] Reduce clutter and distractions: Taloon.com ditched social buttons

Taloon.com got caught up in the trend towards social proof, with "Like” and "Share“ icons on their product pages. However, they noticed unusually low conversions on pages with those social sharing buttons. 

To test what was going on they created two variants of the same page with and without the social share icons.

(Taloon.com website)

They assumed that by de-cluttering the page, it would keep customers focused on the task at hand - checking out.

The results?

“Pages without social share icons saw an improved “add to cart” click-through by 12% ”

Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right. Always put yourself in the mindset of your customer, and keep them focused on the main task you want them to complete. Declutter pages with unnecessary actions to focus on making the sale.

[Ecommerce case study #8] Use influencers to reach customers: Gwynnie Bee saw 5.85% CTR from Youtube influencer

By now, you’re probably well aware of how effective influencer marketing can be in spreading brand awareness and social proof, and increasing engagement among your target audience members.

A few years ago, rental clothing e-retailer Gwynnie Bee realized this exact same thing. While the team had experienced a decent amount of success using a number of other marketing strategies (such as Facebook Ads), they knew they could be generating a lot more business than they were.

So, the company partnered with Reelio to get the ball rolling.

Working with Reelio, Gwynnie Bee began digging through YouTube’s massive database of influencers in search of those who aligned with the clothing company’s target market.

(Search results for "plus size" on Youtube)

The team’s first order of business was to create a list of potential candidates who fit the “surface-level” characteristics of their target market. This meant finding influencers who were female, aged 18 or older, and who typically wore clothing of sizes 10-32.

Now, here’s where Gwynnie Bee diverged from the “typical” path most brands take. Rather than looking specifically for individuals who often worked with other fashion companies, GB also considered those whose audience overlapped with their own. This meant looking at influencers who create content related to more tangential topics, such as lifestyle, accessories, food, and more.

The team then developed guidelines for their chosen influencers, which enabled them to create content that was authentic and non-scripted—but that also aligns with Gwynnie Bee’s overall marketing goals, as well. In addition to creating content to be presented on the influencer’s channel, GB’s influencers also created a virtual “closet” on the brand’s website to showcase the specific items they loved most.

The results of Gwynnie Bee’s influencer campaigns were...well...pretty darn good. While the average click-through rate of all influencer campaigns hovers around the 2% mark, GB’s campaigns saw a CTR of 5.85% — nearly three times the average .

If you’re just getting started with influencer marketing, the main thing to focus on is finding content creators with an engaged audience full of consumers who align in some way with your own target market. They don’t have to overlap entirely, but you, of course, want to be sure that the people who end up seeing your products will have a genuine appreciation for, and interest in, your brand.

As far as content creation goes , you’ll want to provide your influencer’s with almost completely free rein in order to ensure authenticity. This will communicate to your influencer’s audience the idea that the influencer actually uses your products, and aren’t simply promoting them because they’re getting paid for it.

Finally, you might also consider inviting your influencers to create content on your channels as well as their own platforms. Again, this will prove to their audience that they truly are superfans of your brand who actively engage with everything your company has to offer.

[eCommerce case study #9] Reduce risk of purchase: Express Watches provides authenticity stamp

This is a classic problem for online stores; Do you boast the lowest price or the most authentic products ?

The team at Express Watches were debating whether to communicate a ‘lowest price guarantee’ versus a stamp of authenticity on their website. They tested variants with both, each telling a different story about the clientele: bargain hunters vs aficionados. The results were pretty surprising.

(Lowest prices vs highest authenticity)

By labeling the site with a badge of authenticity, Express Watches saw an increase in online sales of 107% . A huge differential from the price based messaging, simply from a little seal of authenticity.

 You may think you know what your audience wants, but testing out some alternate value proposition could surprise you.

[eCommerce case study #10] Use events to drive sales: eCommerce companies saw a 27% spike during football world cup

The Soccer/Football World Cup is not only the most-watched sporting event on television of the 21 st century – it is the most-watched event of any kind, period.

Needless to say, such an enormous audience makes for some major opportunities for eCommerce companies all over the world.

Of course, it also made for heft competition for brands operating in niches like sporting goods, clothing, and memorabilia.

As SEMRush explains, the brands that came out on top were the ones who:

• Increased their presence on the right channels (specifically, social media),
• Adjusted their ad copy to target soccer fans from specific nations (e.g. whose teams were making a run for the World Cup)
• Developed relevant and valuable offers to address time-sensitivity (e.g. fast and free shipping to ensure orders were received before the Wolrd Cup had ended)

The opportunistic initiatives led to some MASSIVE revenues for eCommerce companies. In Brazil, eCommerce purchases spiked by $16.6 BILLION, or 27% above the average . After Germany ended up winning, German-based eCommerce activity increased by a whopping 75%!

First and foremost – and this goes any business, online or brick-and-mortar – you need to recognize an opportunity when it comes up and strike when the iron’s hot.

With this in mind, it’s worth noting that Brazillian-based eCommerce activity dropped by 17% immediately once the national team was eliminated from the tournament.

As far as recognizing these opportunities, you’ll want to keep an eye on upcoming events – be it a sports tournament, music festival, fashion show, etc. – that relate, in some way, to your brand’s offerings.

The goal is to “piggyback” off of the hype created by these events and market your products to those who are attending or engaged with the event in some way or another.

There are two main ways to go about this:

You might simply do as the brands mentioned above did, and ramp up your marketing initiatives throughout the timespan of the event, or, if possible, reach out to the host of the event to see if they’d be interested in partnering up in some way. This might mean sponsoring the event (in lieu of upping your ad spend) or even setting up a pop-up shop at the actual event

[eCommerce case study #11] Remove distractions: Underwater Audio bump sales by 41%

Underwater Audio had a problem with visitors who were in the middle of their sales funnel, researching specific products but then dropping off at the comparison page. When they noticed this leak they decided to get to the bottom of it. 

Here are the old and new versions of the page. At first glance, they don’t look too different, but the devil is in the detail.

(Underwater Audio website page comparison)

The original one was a bit more cluttered with the table formatting breaking up the flow of information. To test what the problem was, they redesigned the comparison page to make it simpler and more streamlined.

As their CEO said:

“The (rather) unattractive table had information in terse phrases organized in no particular fashion (activity, seal, size, features, warranty, depth). The paragraphs continued below the fold and essentially repeated the table, with only a few unique additions hidden in the text. In short, it was not the most engaging page!”

The new version did away with the data tables, streamlined the text, and put everything above the fold. 

The result? The redesigned page had an increase in online sales of 40.81% .

To quote Occam's Razor, “the simplest solution is often the best” and the simpler flow worked wonders for Underwater Audio. Find pages in your pipeline where users are dropping off and see how you can simplify them to focus your customers.

[eCommerce case study #12] Get customers to take the next step: Kettlebell Kings’s takes advantage of user generated content to drive sales

In yet another case of “x isn’t working as well as we thought, let’s try something else,” the owners of fitness equipment startup Kettlebell Kings switched to a more organic approach after realizing their Google Ads campaigns were costing the company way too much money.

The team’s main focus: Instagram.

Their initiative started simply enough, creating instructional content focused on teaching their audience how to get the most out of their workout sessions. 

As engagement began to soar, the team also noticed that its customers had also begun creating their own content featuring Kettlebell Kings’ products—which led the company to begin using this UGC to their advantage.

(#kettlebellkings on Instagram | Source )

In addition to the more audience-controlled content featured in the image above (that is, content featuring Kettlebell King’s products but not published directly on the brand’s Instagram page), the team also began re-posting certain UGC on their own page. As Gwynnie Bee did with its influencers, the Kettlebell Kings team developed a list of criteria such content should follow in order to be featured—but also allowed for some creative freedom on the customer’s part, as well.

While the content being created (by both the team and their customers) did lead to an increase in brand awareness and engagement , the team took things a step further by adding calls-to-action to many of their posts. For example, many posts that featured specific products were made shoppable, while others included an option to “swipe up” to learn more, download additional content, or sign up for the company’s mailing list.

(Ketttlebell's Instagram shoppable story | Source )

While the brand’s Instagram presence has directly led to “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in revenue, Buffer reports that Kettlebell King’s social media initiatives have played a major role in the company’s rise well into the 7-figure mark .

There are a few lessons to learn here:

Success on social media requires an intensely strategic approach to content creation and presentation. It’s all about presenting your products in a way that showcases their true value to your customers, and how your customers can get this value from your products in the first place.

While user-generated content is always appreciated, that doesn’t mean you need to feature every piece of UGC that comes your way. Again, you only want to showcase content that paints your product in the best light possible, and that provides value of some kind to your audience.

Finally, while using content to enhance engagement is great and all, your main goal should be to get your audience to take “the next step.” Whether it be signing up for your newsletter, reaching out to your company for more info, or going through with an initial purchase, make sure your content prompts your potential customers to engage further with your brand.

The ultimate guide to growing & scaling an eCommerce business

Everything we've learned throughout our 18+ years journey in a 30,000-word PDF guide.

[eCommerce case study #13] Use comparison data: Paperstone took out their competition with data

Paperstone is a small paper company that competes with large brand big box stores like Staples and Viking. With most people defaulting to the brands they know best, Paperstone needed to find a way to leverage their strengths against the competition; lower prices. 

Rather than paying top dollar to compete for advertising attention, they simply included a comparison table on their homepage showing their pricing against that of their competitors.

(Paperstone website)

This simple table increased online sales by 10.67%! Just think about how much revenue that would mean for your business, without running any new promotion or campaign .

Assess your competition and identify your strengths. Then showcase these against your competitors’ weaknesses to make your business look like the obvious choice when compared.

[eCommerce case study #14]  Test and measure results: MVMT generated $90M in revenue in five years

As a brand new company looking to disrupt the rather saturated luxury watch market, MVMT certainly had its work cut out for them in terms of generating visibility and brand awareness.

So, the team turned to advertising via Facebook.

As far as creating content, MVMT’s approach was similar to Kettlebell Kings’: They worked within specifically-defined guidelines to ensure consistency, created a variety of content, and included clear CTAs within each post.

However, they didn’t simply begin creating brand new content for these ads. Rather, they took a look at the content that had already seen organic success, and routed ad spend directly to promoting these specific posts .

(Take a guess which one MVMT decided to promote...)

Though they had clearly figured out a way to ensure their ads would generate even more engagement (based on these previous engagement metrics), they also took things a step further by A/B testing various aspects of their ad content, from the images used to the copy of the ad.

While there are a number of lessons to take away from MVMT’s approach, here, the main thing to realize is that creating ads on any platform should never be a gamble.

MVMT could have easily created new ad content targeting its potential customers and simply hoped for the best. Instead, they used data they had already collected to inform their approach to creating Facebook Ads targeting specific audience segments. In turn, these ads were all but 

[eCommerce case study #15] Find alternate channels: ECCO Shoes decreased customer acquisition costs by 14%

While creating paid ads is more expensive than going the organic route, some paid options can end up being more (or less) costly than others.

Which is exactly why ECCO Shoes decided to partner with Digital Gearbox while switching from using text-based Google Ads to using image-based Google Shopping Ads. 

The first step of the process was to determine which specific products to focus their ad budget on, as well as which audience(s) to target. While the team would end up creating ad campaigns for all of the brand’s products, the initial focus was on getting top-sellers in front of the right potential customers.

The team then developed and optimized their product feed to ensure that any and all necessary information was included within their ads and product pages. This information includes product specs, product images, and any other additional info (such as shipping charges and return policies).

After the ad campaigns went live, the team then shifted into “experimental mode,” where they assessed the performance of each ad and ad campaign, making ongoing adjustments as necessary. In addition to continuous optimization of the product feed and ad content, this also meant adjusting bidding and targeting definitions, as well.

Overall, ECCO’s Google Shopping initiatives proved to be much more cost-effective than text-based ads, as the company’s cost of customer acquisition dropped by an amazing 14% . 

The main lesson here is that eCommerce companies with physical products should absolutely look into advertising via Google Shopping.

Google Shopping allows you to showcase much more information in one place than most other forms of advertising (especially text-based Google Ads). In addition to being able to include product specs and service-related info, the inclusion of product imagery alone is enough for Shopping ads to be considered more effective than their text-based relative.

[eCommerce case study #16] Move past the product: Away generated $125M by standing out

As we’ve discussed at length before , Away is the essentially the byproduct of co-founder Jen Rubio’s frustrating experience with an overly-expensive and not-so-durable piece of luggage.

While it would be easy enough for her and partner Steph Korey to simply develop a more sturdy and affordable alternative product to base their new company around, they realized this alone wouldn’t be enough to get their foot in the door in an already saturated market.

Instead, they positioned Away not as just a luggage company, but as a brand focused on all things travel. 

Essentially, their reasoning came down to the fact that luggage is more of a means to an end than an end in itself. 

As Rubio explains,

"Even before we were like 'let's choose luggage,' we were talking about editorial content and all we can do in the travel space. We see the long-term potential for Away to be much, much more than just selling luggage."

This outlook led to a number of content-related opportunities for the team at Away. Instead of creating content centered around luggage (which, let’s be serious, probably wouldn’t be all that engaging), they created blog posts, podcasts, and even a physical magazine focused on the lifestyle behind luggage and travel.

This enabled the company to stand out in a crowded market, and provide value to their target audience in a way no other luggage brand does. This, in turn, led to massive engagement—and absolutely massive growth for the company, as well.

The take home message here touches on the point we mentioned earlier when discussing Amerisleep’s shift in copywriting strategies:

It’s not about what your product is, so much as what it allows your customers to do, that makes them value your brand.

Rubio and Korey took this idea and ran with it, creating a variety of content to help their audience get more value out of their travel experiences across the board. For them, it’s more important to promote the lifestyle their product is a part of—not just promoting the product itself.

Do you want your target consumers to purchase your products? Of course. But, as Away proves, this can be done in a way so that your promotional materials actually provide value to your audience—and don’t come off as “salesy.”

[eCommerce case study #17] Drive inbound through content marketing: Bavarian Clockworks reached $1m in sales

If you read that headline and your jaw dropped, get ready for another shocker:

With the help of CanIRank’s services , the team at Bavarian Clockworks reached this mark as a brand new company with essentially zero initial following and a very limited marketing budget.

First things first, the team needed to create some high-quality, valuable content for its intended audience. While they, of course, focused on creating instructional and informational content on topics like clock care and repair, they also created content on more tangential topics such as German culture and European travel, as well.

Having a limited marketing budget, they then aimed to promote their content and brand via organic means, such as guest posting and giving interviews to be published on related sites. This enabled the brand to gain some much-needed visibility on established websites with an engaged and relevant following.

The final piece of the puzzle came in the form of technical, on-site SEO. This involved optimizing the organizational structure of the site’s content, creating interlinks between blog posts, and enhancing site loading time.

(Bavarian Clockworks progress graph)

The results speak for themselves: Bavarian Clockworks ended up hitting the 7-figure mark a mere three years from their humble beginnings .

Perhaps the main thing to take away from Bavarian Clockworks’ success story is that generating an enormous following via organic means is absolutely still possible.

While it’s not exactly easy to do so—and definitely won’t happen overnight—startups on a strict budget might want to consider focusing on building an organic following before diving into the world of paid advertising. Not only is it more cost-effective, but it also inherently allows you to build connections with more established brands that can help you grow well into the future.

That being the case, growing an audience via organic means isn’t an “if you build it, they will come” type deal. You’ll need to do a bit of legwork in order to gain traction.

As the team at Bavarian Clockworks did, this means:

• Creating interesting, engaging, and evergreen content that your target audience will find incredibly valuable
• Partnering with established companies and organizations to help promote your content to relevant audiences
• Providing your new audience with numerous opportunities to engage further with your brand

[eCommerce case study #18] Build loyal engaged followers: Frank Body hit $20M in annual sales 

We’ve talked about Frank Body’s meteoric rise to success before —and with good reason.

After all, the beauty industry is already saturated as it is. So it’s pretty crazy to think that a newcomer to the niche would be able to crack $20 million in annual revenue in less than four years.

While (as we mention in our full-length case study) the brand has done a number of things to make this happen, it’s worth pointing out that all of their efforts circle around one main premise:

Creating a community of individuals who feel free to let their guard down, have some fun, and just be themselves.

Even their influencers get in on the action:

(Aviva's Instagram promoting Frank Body)

Now, this might not sound like that big of a deal; a lot of companies are falling back on the “be yourself” motif nowadays. 

But, remember: Frank Body is a beauty retailer. In that industry, the message behind most brands’ marketing campaigns is “use our product to look like a Hollywood star instead of plain ol’ you.”

Frank Body is all about allowing their customers to look how they want to look—not how they think they’re “supposed” to look. 

It’s this fundamental position that has allowed the brand to grow a following of over 600,000 people, and to reach well into the seven-figure mark in a mere four years

The main message to take away from Frank Body’s strategy, here, is to truly understand who your target customers really are before you build your brand around them.

While this piece of advice isn’t exactly some carefully-guarded secret or anything, the reality is that most brands think they’re marketing to their target audience, when really, they’re marketing to a caricature of them . 

In many cases, this is because brands simply follow the same path others in their niche have before them. While there’s nothing wrong with doing so if it works for your brand, there are other times where you’d be better off bucking the trend and going your own way. 

For Frank Body, this meant building a brand around a community of people who use beauty products to show off their natural selves, not hide them. While there’s no way of knowing for sure, it’s rather safe to say the company probably wouldn’t have experienced the same amount of success had it gone the typical marketing route most beauty companies typically do.  

While this piece isn’t exactly some carefully-guarded secret or anything, the reality is that most brands think they’re marketing to their target audience, when really they’re marketing to a caricature of them . 

[eCommerce case study #19] Be relevant to your customers: Society Socks improved survey response rate by 200%

We’ve mentioned a few times now the importance of engaging with your audience to gather feedback and make improvements to your products and services.

But the fact is, there’s no guarantee your customers will take it upon themselves to provide this feedback in the first place. Even if you actively reach out to them, the odds of them not responding are still greater than the chances of them getting back to you.

Knowing this, the team at Society Socks worked to develop a collection of user-friendly surveys targeting consumers at various stages of the sales funnel and buyer’s journey. Their goal was to ensure that each recipient received a survey that was 100% relevant to their experiences with the brand, and also that each survey was incredibly easy to complete.

(Society Soda feedback)

As co-founder Filip Pejic explains:

"Our current campaigns are set up at various stages including Post-Purchase, Mid Subscription and at Cancellation. We’ve integrated the solution into our email system to send automated flows depending on our customers’ stage in the buying process. This allows us to gain a ton of feedback at every point in a customer’s journey and control the number of surveys they receive."

Society Socks also took a look at the more logistical aspects of survey delivery, such as delivery method and timing. This ensured that their audience would receive the surveys on the optimal channel (in this case, email) at a time in which they were most likely to respond.

The most obvious takeaway here, of course, is that you need to learn as much as you can about your customers’ expectations and experiences with your brand. 

As Feedier explains, this means defining or determining:

• Your various customer personas and segments
• The aspects of your products (and overall service) each persona values most
• The aspects each persona wishes could be improved

As we’ve said before, gleaning this information (and more) from your audience will allow you to make improvements to your products and services that actually matter to the people who keep your company in business.

Schedule a Free Demo Today! 

Here’s what you can expect:

• Walkthrough: An introduction to the Core dna platform. 
• Access to a free trial: Free trial access to the platform to test all the features.  

Hailing from Ireland, Paul is a fan of good food and coffee. For Core dna he’s responsible for Partnerships both with agencies and 3 rd  party integrators.  

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17 Ecommerce Case Studies to Inspire You

• May 16, 2024

Table of Contents

We’ve spent hundreds of hours analyzing the world’s most successful DTC companies and ecommerce brands, including Sephora, Dollar Shave Club, Casper, Warby Parker, and Allbirds, to create ecommerce case studies you can use as inspiration for your own online store.

Today, we’ll share with you the 17 best ecommerce case studies that you can use to help drive more visitors to your website and convert more customers.

Let’s get right into it!

1. The Farmer’s Dog marketing strategy: 6 tactics that you can apply in your own business

The Farmer’s Dog was founded in 2014 by two dog lovers. 6 years later, they’re delivering millions of meals monthly. 

How did they do it?

We analyzed their sales funnel and boiled it down to 6 lessons you can apply in your own business to generate more sales.

Read the full The Farmer’s Dog case study .

2. The secret behind the Care/of marketing strategy

Every small ecommerce site owner dreams about a success story like Care/of’s. They achieved a $225 million valuation and were acquired by Bayer in just 6 years.

In this case study, we analyze the marketing strategies that Care/of used, including:

• Quiz funnel
• Content marketing
• Social media
• Paid advertising

Get inspired by these strategies to grow your own online sales. 

Read the full Care/of case study .

3. Dollar Shave Club marketing success

Dollar Shave Club is one of the most talked-about DTC brands, and with good reason. Their famous “our blades are f***ing great” video went viral in just a few days. The video went on to collect 4.75 million views in the first 3 months and has over 27 million views today.

This launch video gave them a killer head start, and their witty brand voice, strong content marketing campaigns, and direct-to-consumer business model enabled them to grow further. They were so successful that Unilever bought the company in a billion-dollar cash acquisition in 2016.

In this case study, we cover everything you need to know about Dollar Shave Club’s marketing game plan to build your own billion-dollar empire.

Read the full Dollar Shave Club case study .

4. How Casper took the mattress industry by storm and reached a $1.1 billion valuation

In this case study, you’ll get a sneak peek into how Casper was able to build unprecedented trust and convince people to purchase mattresses online.

We look at their well-rounded content marketing strategy, which covers  topics of interest  for visitors at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

We also discuss how they utilize social proof to build trust, their unbeatable guarantee, and their referral marketing strategies . Don’t miss this one!

Read the full Casper case study .

5. How Glossier became a $1.2 billion company

Glossier is one of our favorite ecommerce case studies. If you have a beauty brand, you’ll want to read it.

We’ve studied Glossier’s entire customer experience to find 5 lessons you can use for your own brand:

• Know your target audience and build relationships with them
• Use (micro-) influencer marketing
• Focus on branding
• Publish engaging content
• Provide an amazing user experience

Click the link below for all the juicy details.

Read the full Glossier case study .

6. How Happy Box 10x-ed their online store revenue during Covid

Happy Box is not as well-known as some of the other ecommerce stores on this list, but its growth is bound to inspire you. 

The company started as a side project and grew into a full-time ecommerce business during the Covid pandemic. In fact, they were able to achieve a 10x growth rate in 2021!

In this case study, we look at the marketing blueprint behind their astounding success.

Read the full Happy Box case study .

7. How Warby Parker reached a $3 billion valuation and became an ecommerce giant

The idea of buying eyeglasses online was uncharted territory for consumers a decade ago. But Warby Parker’s phenomenal marketing helped to overcome that challenge.

Their website crashed just after its official launch, their top 15 most popular styles sold out within 4 weeks, and they collected a waitlist of 20,000 customers during that time.

In this post, we share the key strategy Warby Parker used to reach its target audience so quickly and went on to become the $3-billion giant everyone knows.

Read the full Warby Parker case study .

8. 4 steps for growing your brand organically using ColourPop’s marketing strategy

In this case study, we share 4 key takeaways from ColourPop’s winning social media strategy:

• Give freebies in exchange for authentic reviews
• Build meaningful relationships with your influencers
• Get your hashtag trending
• Host Instagram giveaways

Check out the tips that you can easily copy for your own ecommerce company.

Read the full ColourPop case study .

9. Replicate Urban Outfitters’ marketing strategy with these 4 tips

Urban Outfitters is different from a lot of the ecommerce brands on this list because they didn’t start online and grow into a global retail giant… instead, they started as a brick-and-mortar business (back in 1970) and managed to make the successful transition to online sales.

It’s worth talking about them because they’re fantastic at keeping in touch with their target audience (Millennials and Gen Z). They also succeed in strengthening customer loyalty with a rewards program.

Check out this case study to learn how you can do the same with your business to drive sales.

Read the full Urban Outfitters case study .

10. How Gymshark bulked up into a $1 billion+ brand

Gymshark is well known for its influencer marketing strategy. In fact, the company was one of the early adopters of influencer marketing.

In this case study, we cover how Gymshark managed to build its fan base, and we spill the beans on what they’re still doing today to delight customers. Check out our 6 key takeaways below!

Read the full Gymshark case study .

11. How Allbirds went from a small startup to a billion-dollar sneaker brand in 4 years

Allbirds is among the most popular ecommerce businesses, especially among circles of professionals in Silicon Valley, including Google co-founder Larry Page. The company differentiates itself from competitors by focusing on three important principles: 

• Simple design
• Sustainable shoes, made from nature

Check out this case study to learn how they fight with their competitors, how they use PR campaigns and word-of-mouth marketing to get people talking about the brand, and more.

Read the full Allbirds case study .

12. How Lunya achieved $25M revenue

Lunya was able to disrupt the women’s sleepwear industry quickly by creating products that bridge the gap between style and sensibility. According to Lunya co-founder Ashley Merrill, the brand was able to grow by putting customers first and never losing sight of the customer’s perspective.

We analyzed the steps Lunya took to build their brand and create a successful customer-centric strategy.

Read the full Lunya case study .

13. 6+1 tips from Rituals to create meaningful moments online

Rituals, founded in 2000, has an impressive product line including skincare, body care, makeup, and scented candles.

They really care about their customers and focus on creating an engaging customer experience online. We wanted to find out how they do it, so in this case study, we explore 6+1 tips from the marketing masters at Rituals.

Read the full Rituals case study .

14. 13 solid tips for mastering the art of personalization like Sephora

Sephora is a cosmetic behemoth that we can all learn from. What’s the secret behind their worldwide success?

In this case study, we share 13 tips they use to delight customers and create loyalty, including:

• Driving sales through personalization
• Helping customers make informed purchasing decisions
• Using YouTube to drive conversions
• Nurturing long-term customer relationships

Read the full Sephora case study .

15. How Alo Yoga scaled to $247M in revenue

Alo Yoga is an athleisure brand known for its “studio-to-street” clothing, making it perfect for both yoga sessions and everyday wear. Founded in 2007 in Los Angeles, Alo Yoga has grown steadily, now boasting an annual revenue of $247.1M and 3 million Instagram followers.

In this ecommerce case study, we’ll share the key marketing strategies that have fueled Alo Yoga’s success.

You can discover their community-building tactics, how they leveraged user-generated content, created personalized experiences for visitors, and more.

Read the full Alo Yoga case study.

16. Bloom & Wild’s marketing strategy to become the 2nd fastest-growing startup

Bloom & Wild, an online florist operating in the UK, Austria, France, Germany, and Ireland, has become one of the fastest-growing online stores in its category. In 2021, the company raised $102 million in investment capital.

Bloom & Wild achieved this impressive business growth by focusing on:

• Caring about their customers
• Increasing on brand awareness with TV campaigns and dominating search results
• Customizing content for each social media channel
• Encouraging referrals
• Building loyalty with a subscription model

Read the full Bloom & Wild case study.

17. How SNOW® Teeth Whitening achieved $100M in online sales

SNOW® Teeth Whitening is a DTC oral care brand focused on delivering professional-level whitening with an at-home kit.

Founded by Josh Elizetxe (a.k.a. Josh Snow) in 2017, SNOW® has quickly gained millions of fans. Over 13 million people shopped SNOW® products in 2021 alone, and by 2020, the company hit $100 million in sales after just three years online.

So, how did SNOW® achieve such significant growth?

In this ecommerce case study, you’ll learn how:

• They focus on creating and continually improving a product that meets customer needs.
• Each ad SNOW® puts out highlights the pain points that their product solves.
• They diversify channels.
• They leverage owned media for customer engagement.
• They collaborate with A-list celebrities to build brand awareness and credibility.

Read the full SNOW® case study.

Final thoughts

Well, that’s it—these are the best ecommerce case studies we’ve found during our extensive research! Hopefully you’ve found plenty of inspiration on this list.

No matter how big (or small) your company is or what industry you’re in, you can use tips and strategies from these ecommerce case studies in your own store.

Which ecommerce case study is your favorite?

What should you do next?

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Myer launches enticing online marketplace for discerning retail customers

In 2017, Myer partnered with Marketplacer to create a curated lifestyle destination: the Myer Market.The e-commerce website is designed to broaden the direction of the traditional business, whilst retaining and supporting the retailers loyal, fashion-oriented, Myer One members.

Myer Market customers have access to 75 retailers through a single website.

A range of 60,000 products is available for purchase and home delivery.

The website is attracting more than four million visitors each month

How to win with a marketplace strategy

The challenges

When the project was first envisaged, a decision had to be made on whether to initially create a new, separate marketplace or enlarge the company’s existing online presence at myer.com.au. It was soon recognised that the former approach would be easier, more cost-effective, and provide a lower-risk solution.

• The Marketplacer platform provides frictionless integration with a variety of other platforms most commonly used by the third-party sellers, including Shopify, Magento and Woo Commerce. These APIs do not exist within myer.com.au.
• The platform provides an opportunity to create no-risk, endless aisles across a number of product categories.
• Marketplacer was mandated to deliver demonstrable customer service and new business growth, which was achieved.

The Marketplacer solution

The Marketplacer and Myer teams began preparation for the migration early in 2017. The plan was to separate the Marketplacer back-end and integrate it over to Myer’s primary platform in a process commonly referred to as ‘headless’ operation.

• The plug-and-play functionality offered by Marketplacer offered a sizable saving in both time and cost.
• The platform provided a complete offering from product development through to ongoing back-end management.
• Additional retailers can be readily added to the site, expanding the number of offerings for customers.
• Customers enjoy a seamless experience which provides access to a diverse range of products from leading providers across a diverse range of categories.

The website migration has enabled Myer to maintain all the benefits of its original marketplace with one very important distinction: everything now appears as a single, seamless offering on myer.com.au.

• The ‘headless’ operation provided a quick and frictionless migration that avoided unnecessary cost, delays, and cumbersome technical issues
• Some 75 retailers and 60,000 products have been simply switched ‘on’, with more expected to join
• Myer’s enhanced digital presence provides an exceptionally lower cost alternative to building new bricks-and-mortar stores
• Overheads are reduced and flexibility is increased. Myer can quickly test new products and categories to meet changes in customer demand and taste
• Customers have access to a huge and growing number of new products and entire new categories not previously seen within the retailer
• A single Myer platform avoids any confusion, and all purchases from marketplace sellers contribute to Myer One points
• Purchases are also all covered by Myer’s refund policy

Related case studies

In the vast landscape of online marketplaces, The DOM, a thriving e-commerce

Everyday Market from Woolworths is meeting Australia’s insatiable appetite for online shopping

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Aligning Pricing Strategy with Delivered Value in Online Marketplace

Case study: e-commerce.

Increase in Revenue

30 – 60%

Improvement in Product Performance

The Challenge

With an ad-based revenue model in place, the client grew their profitability and market share through their ad description pages and upgrade products. Although the client realized strong pricing growth over the past few years in both revenue and marketplace traffic, attempts to raise price points for their main upgrade products were met with challenges from customers. As a result, the client wanted to:

• Revise geographic segmentation to reflect the value provided to customers
• Revise the pricing model for two main upgrade products
• Train the sales force to better execute their pricing strategies.

Despite the fact that shoppers do at least half of their e-commerce spending through marketplaces, digital platforms still find it challenging to align increasing visitor traffic with profits. Online retailers often find themselves pressured by tough competition from e-commerce giants: Amazon, eBay and Alibaba on one side, and constantly emerging niche competitors on another.

This is the challenging position one of our clients found themselves in. A local division of an international niche e-commerce platform, they sold millions of items through their website and app online marketplace from third-party sellers.

The client believed the value being generated for their targeted customers had grown and shifted in the last two years. They asked us to re-evaluate their geographic segmentation and pricing strategy. The Pricing Solutions team built Revenue Impact Model that identified  a 3% increase in revenue  from targeted price increases.

Building a Solution that Fits

Building a custom solution for this client involved a number of strategies:

• Data Gathering
• Conducted a Business Review Workshop to gain a very deep understanding of the client’s products, customers, competitors and market conditions.
• Gathered two to three years of relevant information from the client including:
• Transactional data
• Customer data
• Product data
• The past year’s geographic segmentation
• Conducted cross-functional interviews
• Geographic Segmentation Revision
• Conducted reassessments of the geographic distribution of value by territory today vs. previous years
• Reviewed and assessed current prices for each territory, in light of new geographic segments
• Quantified customer churn based on transactional data analysis and existing insights gathered by client
• Built a retention model to quantify the impact of foreseen price changes by geographic segments
• Quantified risks and opportunities based on the retention model.
• Pricing Model Revision for Upgrade Products
• Evaluating the value generated for upgrade products for third-party sellers
• Conducting customer research to gain valuable insight into the customers’ perception of value and expected response to changes in the pricing models
• Building a Revenue Impact Model to assess the impact of a price increase on customer retention and revenue realization (i.e. customers shifting revenue between existing products)
• Evaluating risk and opportunities associated with moving one upgrade item from all-or-nothing to ‘a per item’ pricing model.
• Recommendations

Based on our research and analysis, the Pricing Solutions team recommended the client:

• Revise prices for each territory and improve the approach to setting a price for geographic segments;
• Move one upgrade item to a per-item pricing model
• Implement a new package bundling strategy and discount strategy for both upgraded items.

Above: As penetration increases, the upgrade product has clear diminishing returns.

The Result?

Pricing Solutions developed an Impact Model that revealed  a 3% increase in revenue  from the targeted price increases we had recommended. In addition to this revenue increase, the pricing strategies our team identified resulted in  a 30-60 percent improvement in upgraded product performance.  The final workshop we conducted for our client’s sales force used this data to create confidence in executing recommended pricing strategies.

The Pricing Solutions Difference

Pricing Solutions utilizes high-impact proprietary tools and frameworks that are designed for e-commerce businesses.

The Pricing Solutions team then redesigns the pricing strategy and assesses the future impact of price changes to ensure your e-commerce business achieves substantially improved business results.

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Eclipse AI rated #1 in Proactive Customer Retention for SMEs by G2®

Eclipse AI helps an Online Marketplace increased transactions by 13%

Our client achieved.

Address issues 80% faster and connect the dots on both sides of our marketplace

Provided real-time actionable insights to prioritize product enhancements and customer service improvements

Increase transactions by 13%, boosting revenue and driving growth

Client Overview

Online marketplaces have become essential to the modern digital economy, enabling buyers and sellers to connect and transact seamlessly across borders and platforms. However, with increased competition and changing consumer preferences, it can be challenging for online marketplaces to maintain transaction volumes and grow their customer base.

To address this challenge, businesses are turning to AI-powered platforms like Eclipse AI to help them collect and analyze customer feedback from both sides of the marketplace, identify opportunities for improvement, and drive growth through targeted product enhancements and customer service improvements. In this case study, we’ll explore how Eclipse AI helped an online marketplace increase transactions by 13%, boosting revenue and driving growth.  

Problem Statement

Our client, a leading online marketplace, was facing stagnation in transaction volumes despite multiple attempts to identify the root cause. The increased competition had stalled transactions, and the client was struggling to understand and address its customers’ needs and pain points in real time. The client needed a solution that could unify customer feedback from different channels and provide real-time insights to help identify and prioritize product enhancements and customer service improvements.

Eclipse AI’s purpose-built generative AI platform was the desired solution to unify fragmented multichannel customer feedback data and analyse customer sentiments in real time.

Eclipse AI’s helped provide real-time insights into customer needs and pain points, enabling the client to identify and proactively address areas for improvement. With Eclipse AI, our client was able to increase transaction volume by 13% year on year, boosting revenue and driving growth. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how Eclipse AI can help your online marketplace increase transactions and revenue, don’t hesitate to  book a demo  with us today. Our team would be happy to walk you through our platform and answer any questions you may have. Let’s work together to drive growth and success for your business!

The client Reached Out to Eclipse AI

The client reached out to Eclipse AI for a solution that could help them better understand the needs of its customers on both sides of the marketplace and increase transaction volume.

We demonstrated how Eclipse AI, a Generative AI platform could help unify omnichannel voice-of-customer data and provide real-time actionable insights to prioritize product enhancements and customer service improvements.

How Eclipse AI Helped

Eclipse AI helped the client consolidate customer feedback from different channels such as phone, chat and ticket logs, enabling real-time analysis of customer pain points on both sides of the marketplace.

The platform’s generative AI helped the client pinpoint and prioritize product and customer service improvements proactively. Furthermore, the platform’s real-time stream of improvement actions ensured that customer needs were efficiently and effectively addressed resulting in higher CSAT and NPS. 

Eclipse AI helped us flag and address issues 80% faster and connect the dots with customers on both sides of our marketplace

Director of business intelligence, turn omnichannel voice-of-customer into insights.

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Case Studies 2 min

One of the World’s Largest Online Marketplaces Increases Trust and Safety in 10 Key Markets

View full PDF

Trust and safety stand as top priorities for an online marketplace that connects customers and merchants around the world. But maintaining that standard across borders can create complex challenges and costly onboarding inefficiencies. 

The marketplace recognized that challenge and partnered with Trulioo to launch an optimization initiative. The goal was to better understand onboarding processes and requirements in different markets, improve onboarding conversion rates, and ensure the marketplace delivers trusted user experiences in countries across the globe.

Control Costs While Increasing Verification Rates

The marketplace has been a long-standing Trulioo partner with a strong track record of continual performance improvement, cost efficiencies and innovation.

In optimizing the marketplace’s onboarding, Trulioo provided an in-depth, custom performance and cost analysis to increase conversion rates in key markets while controlling costs. That effort led to:

• Increased verification rates in 10 markets around the world
• Onboarding an estimated 700,000 new users annually

4% Verification Rate Improvement Across 10 Markets

As a global business, it’s imperative the marketplace provide an onboarding experience that meets user expectations for speed, convenience and security anywhere in the world.

Trulioo helped the organization achieve that goal by conducting transaction batch testing across countries. From there, Trulioo compared multiple data set scenarios and rule configurations to recommend a custom data package that reduced onboarding costs and improved conversions.

Working with Trulioo data science and customer success teams, the marketplace realized an average 4% performance uplift across:

Switzerland

United kingdom, estimated 700,000 new users onboarded annually.

The 4% verification rate improvement can drive millions in additional annual revenue by helping the marketplace onboard an estimated 700,000 new users who would have required additional verification and manual reviews. 

That optimization helped the organization automatically onboard more customers and merchants and ensure a trusted, low-friction experience anywhere in the world.

Related Reading

Identity Platform

Individual Verification (KYC)

Related Posts

Marketplaces

Case Studies  

Marketplaces: Building Trust and Safety Across Borders

Case Study: Grow a trusted global marketplace platform with verified users, buyers and merchants where all parties can safely interact and transact virtually.

Fraud and Risk

Article   |   2 min

How Etsy Navigates the Evolving Fraud Landscape

With the tools, marketplaces can enact best practices to fight fraud while meeting buyer and seller expectations for convenience and speed.

Article   |   3 min

Simplify Marketplace and Social Media Verification

Influencers and power sellers expect secure, convenient experiences when they encounter identity verification requirements.

How to Build a Marketplace Website in 15 Steps: Ultimate Guide

Starting your online marketplace is an exciting experience, but it might feel confusing. Surely, a marketplace website launch can be chaotic, especially when you do not know where to start.

To make things easier, we created a list of steps to take when you consider going into the ecommerce business. From this article, you will know the main stages of building an online marketplace. These are choosing the required features, the development approach, and the software consultancy that will help create your platform. You will also find out how to improve and promote your online marketplace website.

Here's a brief guide on crafting a marketplace website:

• Identify the core functionalities your marketplace needs, catering to both buyers and sellers.
• Decide between building from scratch, using existing platforms, or a hybrid approach based on your unique requirements.
• Prioritize an intuitive and visually appealing design.
• Integrate reliable and secure payment gateways.
• Build a reliable review and rating system.
• Familiarize yourself with and adhere to legal regulations related to ecommerce and online marketplaces in your target regions.
• Develop a comprehensive marketing plan to promote your marketplace and attract a steady stream of buyers and sellers.
• Provide responsive customer support.
• Implement analytics tools to track user behavior, transactions, and overall marketplace performance, enabling data-driven decisions.
• Regularly update and optimize your marketplace based on user feedback, technological advancements, and evolving market trends.

Armed with this thorough guide, you will learn how to create a marketplace website that both your buyers and sellers will love.

Definition and main types of a marketplace

A marketplace is a platform where stores of various sellers are presented. An online marketplace connects sellers and buyers of goods and services and helps them process transactions.

Currently, there is a shift in online sales from individual online stores to marketplaces. It happens because trading on marketplace websites has many advantages over online stores.

There are many types of online marketplaces. In general, these platforms can differ by types of products, interactions, and participants.

We recommend you look at the table below about overall marketplaces’ classification with examples.

Speaking about the types of marketplace platforms based on the participants, these websites are divided into the following varieties:

• B2B (business-to-business). They offer services and products for business. Wholesale dealers also use such online marketplaces.
• B2C (business-to-customer). The classic of global trade. In this case, online sales are calculated for individual buyers. For example, the Amazon marketplace platform works on this system.
• C2C (customer-to-customer). Business is built between private individuals, both for money and through barter. A similar principle is implemented on eBay and Airbnb online marketplaces.

The thorough table below will help you distinguish between the outlined marketplace types. Let’s look closely at each type (B2B, C2C, B2C) to learn more about their sales value, length of the sales process, goal tasks, and more.

Related reading: Key Trends in Digital Marketplace Industry in 2024

Key benefits of building a marketplace website

Creating a marketplace is a great way to create your offline business on the web and make it profitable. Let’s consider the key benefits of building a marketplace platform for all sides: a platform owner, sellers, and buyers.

Benefits for founders

• Revenue options. Marketplace owners can choose revenue models like listing fees, subscriptions, or commissions, offering flexibility and the potential for combining multiple schemes.
• Scalable business. As marketplaces expand, adding more sellers meets growing demand, maintaining a balance between supply and demand for sustained growth.
• User and investor interest. A wide array of offerings attracts user interest, while marketplace investments, exemplified by Uber's success, draw significant attention from investors.

Benefits for buyers

• Extensive product range. Online marketplaces provide buyers access to a broad spectrum of products in one place.
• Trusted platforms. Ratings and reviews enhance buyer trust in marketplaces compared to standalone firms.
• Promotions and convenience. Marketplaces often offer discounts, attracting and retaining users, while the one-click booking process enhances convenience.

Related reading: Top Online Marketplaces in Australia 2024: All You Need to Know About Leaders

Benefits for sellers

• Elimination of self-promotion. Sellers avoid needing independent promotion, saving on development, support, and SEO costs.
• Enhanced search ranking. Marketplace listings consistently rank high in search results, providing better visibility than standalone online stores.
• Increased promotion opportunities. Sellers benefit from increased brand recognition on marketplace platforms, resulting in a higher flow of customers.
• Access to analytics. Sellers gain insights into product views, purchases, and other statistics through their marketplace accounts.

You may also like: How to Create an Online Service Marketplace: Ultimate Guide

Essential features to create a marketplace website

Building a successful marketplace website requires a thoughtful combination of functionality, user experience, and strategic planning. Let's check specific fundamental features that are pivotal to your platform's success.

• User-friendly interface. A positive first impression is vital. Achieve it with intuitive navigation, clear categorization, and an aesthetically pleasing design for seamless interactions. Users must easily find what they need.
• Mobile responsiveness. Optimize your marketplace for mobile devices. A responsive design ensures seamless access and navigation, broadening your user base.
• Community and social integration. Foster a sense of community with social features. Users should follow sellers, leave comments, and share products on social media, enhancing engagement.
• Customer support and dispute resolution. Prioritize prompt customer support and a transparent dispute resolution system for fairness, ensuring a positive user experience.
• Scalability and performance. Design your site for scalability, handling increased traffic without compromising performance. Regularly update and optimize for a smooth user experience.
• Legal compliance and security. Ensure compliance with laws, implementing robust security measures for user data trust and long-term success.
• Analytics and insights. Integrate analytics tools for valuable insights into user behavior, products, and marketplace performance. Make data-driven decisions to refine strategies and optimize functionality.

So, you can create a dynamic online space that attracts users, facilitates transactions, and establishes itself as a trusted platform in the competitive world of ecommerce.

15 essential steps to create a thriving online marketplace

Creating a booming online marketplace involves some crucial steps. Whether you're creating the e-commerce website from scratch or improving an existing platform, it's vital to focus on things like making it easy for users, following the rules, and keeping everything secure.

1. Research and choose your niche

Before building a marketplace, define what products or services will be available on your platform. In simple words, conduct market research.

You have two options to choose from:

• Create a horizontal marketplace.
• Create a vertical marketplace.

The first variant is a horizontal marketplace website launch. Such platforms cover a variety of items. For instance, Amazon spreads over a great number of categories and products, from books to electronic devices.

You may be interested: AliExpress Clone Website: How to Build Similar Ecommerce Platform

The clear benefit of this approach is greater coverage. At the same time, pinballing between several market segments, you lose a chance to become a leader in a specific domain.

Alternatively, you can build a vertical ecommerce platform. It supposes the focus on a specific niche or a particular user category.

Why is the vertical marketplace launch a more sensible choice?

First, the narrow focus allows you to highlight the benefits and specific features of each item you provide. You can attract new potential users with detailed product or service descriptions. It is a good way of making your offerings more useful and valuable for the target audience.

Second, niche marketplaces give users a more personalized customer experience. Buyers can find a specific solution to a particular issue on these websites.

Further reading: How to Create a Multi-Vendor Marketplace Website

2. Learn your target audience

Define your target user category for your marketplace. Understanding your audience is crucial for effective marketing. Tailor your value proposition based on customer needs to address specific problems. When creating an online marketplace, focus on meeting consumer expectations for a positive user experience and emotional satisfaction with your product.

Use Steve Blank's customer development approach to survey user pain points, motivations, and habits at product inception, post-commercial use, and consistently over time. Apply Rob Fitzpatrick's Mom Test principles to create questions revealing genuine thoughts, ensuring accurate and valuable insights into your product.

Recommended reading: C2C Marketplace Development: Why Invest in Your Own Platform

For instance, our Codica team recently developed an Australian online marketplace for boats , Trade A Boat. This is a platform to sell new and used boats and marine equipment. People in Australia are great lovers of the sea. Focused on selling boats and marine equipment, Trade A Boat has become one of the favorites for shoppers and vendors all over the continent.

Our team helped add valuable solutions to the platform, sustaining its successful course. This case study demonstrates that analyzing the local market is of great need.

Finally, the analysis of your target audience and market research helps solve the chicken and egg problem. Also, it helps get the buyers and sellers to use your platform. This analysis allows for choosing the right communication channels, content, and marketing strategies. As a result, you will be able to promote your products and services more effectively.

When defining your target audience, take into account the following factors:

• Occupation;
• Potential pain points.

You may also like: Online B2B Marketplace Development: Step-by-Step Guide

3. Define the required functionality

Let’s start with the basic features any marketplace should have. These functions will make your ecommerce marketplace software solution for both parties.

Product page. Give a comprehensive description of selling items to potential buyers. High-quality photos and videos, detailed descriptions - everything matters.

Shopping cart. As you are developing an ecommerce platform, this option is a priority.

Security options. Make your marketplace website as secure as possible. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, multi-factor authentication, and firewalls will help you protect your product.

Payment methods. Enable users to choose amongst a variety of payment options . The most popular payment gateways are PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and WePay.

Search feature. The chances are that your multi-vendor platform will offer a great number of products. So, it would be reasonable to add a search box when creating a marketplace website. By the way, this is a must-have for the marketplace, and now, the platforms use semantic search with AI for personalized needs.

Place the search bar where users expect to find it. According to Able , the most suitable place for the search box is in the top right or top left of the pages on your site.

Admin panel. Simply put, an admin dashboard helps manage everything related to your ecommerce website. For example, this functionality allows you to track orders, payments, and shipping. Moreover, you can view abandoned checkouts and create draft orders.

Source: Tradeaboat case study

Wishlists. With this feature, shoppers can create collections of items they would like to buy later. When users are ready to make a purchase, they quickly find the product needed in the wishlists.

Sign in/sign up form. First, registered users can choose the platform role - a vendor or a buyer. Second, sign-up improves customer experience. It enables customers to track order processes or view previously purchased items. Finally, registration allows customers to get personalized on-site recommendations.

Source: eBay.com

Shipping. With this feature, shoppers can choose the preferred delivery option offered by vendors.

This is functionality you should consider in the first place when building a marketplace. With these features, you will get a convenient and easy-to-use web solution.

4. Select the development platform

When it comes to creating an online marketplace, you have two options. You can buy a ready-made solution or build a marketplace website from scratch. The final choice depends on your budget, time, and plans for further scaling the platform.

Consider buying ready-made software if you aim to save money initially, if off-the-shelf solutions meet your business requirements, or if you seek a quick marketplace development solution that aligns with your startup needs.

By the way, custom software development services take into account your specific business needs.

Education, healthcare, and finance benefit most from this approach due to industry-specific regulations and unique business requirements, including audit trials, automated workflow, and role-based access.

If you wonder how to build a marketplace that will stand out from the competitors, you should consider the option of creating a custom platform.

Let’s take a look at the main advantages of the approach:

• Meeting specific requirements. Bespoke software helps you cover the demands unique to your business. You can be sure that all your fine points and hidden risks will be counted.
• Startup growth. Tailored solutions are famous for their flexibility. It means that you can always add new functionality when needed.
• No needless features. With customized software, you will not have to pay for the extra functionality you will never use. This way, you can reduce the development expenses greatly.

If you choose to build your own custom platform, most likely your development partner will offer you to begin with a product discovery stage. Here’s what you should know about it:

Related reading: Spree Commerce: How to Quickly Build an Ecommerce Website

5. Choose the best tech stack

A technology stack is a toolset used when working on projects. It includes programming languages, database management systems, frameworks, etc. In fact, the chosen tech stack determines the performance and reliability of the online marketplaces.

At Codica, we conduct software development that suits the best client’ project. Our software development approach is to fully understand the customer’s business case and its customer journey. After that, we pick a technology stack to create a marketplace website of the highest quality.

There are some general criteria that all marketplaces shall conform to.

• Scalability. Marketplace websites should be scalable. It is crucial because they need to accommodate increased user loads as your platform becomes more popular. Also, marketplaces should be of high performance.
• Flexibility. Moreover, your technology stack should be flexible to support user flows and provide a great user experience. Adding new features should be easy. Clearly, the impossibility of adding the functions that your users need is a big problem for any online marketplace website.
• Security. Certainly, security is one of the most crucial factors you should consider when you build an online marketplace. Why? Because the marketplace will deal with confidential information about users.

You may also like: Question and Answer Website Development: Functionality and Best Practices

At Codica, we have selected a list of tools assisting us to develop scalable, secure, and high-quality online marketplaces. Now, we will share with you which tech stack we use. Also, you will learn what integrations we recommend for your future successful marketplace.

Front-end tech stack

The frontend of the tech stack is the visual part of your web platform. Visitors see and interact with this part of your solution. So, developing this part for an online marketplace website demands a deep understanding of users’ needs. For the frontend side, we use:

Backend tech stack

The backend of the tech stack is the software part responsible for functioning the internal part of a web solution. Of course, software of high quality should have a solid ‘backbone’ to function smoothly. When creating a marketplace website, for the backend, our experts use:

• Ruby on Rails

DevOps tech stack components

Companies use the DevOps tech stack for continuous integration of operations. DevOps tools automate many recurring tasks. Thus, they improve overall performance. Also, these tools decrease the likelihood of manual faults during the development lifecycle. Our choice of DevOps tech stack when creating a marketplace includes the following tools:

Databases tech stack

Databases are a significant part of the backend ecosystem. In brief, the database is an accumulation of data, specially organized for fast search and removal from a computer. They deal with maintaining and processing a lot of data points. Here are the databases we use for building a marketplace:

• ElasticSearch

Infrastructure software stack

At Codica, we prefer the following application deployment, provisioning, and configuration management tools:

• Digital Ocean

Integrations

In general, integrations enhance the functionality of the existing system. Thanks to their features, it becomes possible for the system to automate and complete a broad range of tasks. In brief, with the following integrations, we will help you create a marketplace website of high quality:

• Google Analytics
• Uptime Robot

The process of picking a tech stack can be quite challenging. It requires careful discussion with stakeholders and thoughtful planning. Also, your development team should have vast practical experience.

Further reading: What Makes Ruby on Rails Perfect for Marketplace Development?

Choosing the right tech stack contributes to your platform's success

At Codica, our experts use a certain tech stack to develop web solutions of the highest quality. For example, we are glad to share with you our work on the first automotive marketplace in Africa. The client wanted us to develop a complex marketplace website.

The project was intended to cover many South American and African regions. Also, it was supposed to connect purchasers with auto dealers and private sellers.

We chose our proven tech stack, with Ruby on Rails as a core technology to build a marketplace, and were right. So, our client got a quality web solution with a fast load, simple workflow, and mobile optimization.

6. Select a business model

Your marketplace website should bring you a stable profit. For this reason, you have to choose a suitable revenue model. Remember that it should offer reasonable conditions for your potential vendors. Also, it needs to help grow your marketplace.

Let’s take a closer look at the best monetization strategies used by the ecommerce giants, such as Amazon, eBay, and others:

• A commission cuts a part of each transaction made through your platform.
• A listing fee is a sum charged from a vendor when they publish their items on the marketplace. The higher the product or service cost, the higher the listing fee.
• A subscription fee is a marketplace business model when a seller pays a charge to get access to your ecommerce platform. It contains monthly or yearly fees for a definite set of benefits.
• An advertising fee is about promoting items on your marketplace by third-party advertisers.
• Lead fees. This revenue model means that users pay for access to detailed information about the desired item.
• Premium membership gives users access to extra features and exclusive content.

Below are examples of monetization strategies and well-known companies that use them.

To wrap up the topic, choosing the right revenue models is crucial for making a profit on your platform. Starting with one monetization strategy, you can progress to complex models. This way, you will also help vendors make the most of your marketplace.

7. Write a business plan for the marketplace launch

Creating a business plan is crucial before starting online marketplace development . It outlines goals, tracks progress as the platform grows, and reduces risks by anticipating issues. Also, it serves as a must-have document when seeking third-party investors, demonstrating the viability of your marketplace idea for long-term success.

These are the main points your multi-vendor marketplace development business plan should include:

• Review of your enterprise as a whole;
• Your marketplace description, including your goals and objectives;
• Description of products and services your vendors provide;
• Information about your target audience, the niche you chose, and competitors;
• The online marketplace strategy and ways of its implementation;
• Your team’s organizational structure;
• Financial plan with a revenue model and projections.

8. Search for compatible investors

If you decide to build a marketplace website, you need money to translate your project into reality.

What if you don’t have enough funds to finance your online marketplace idea? What should you do? In this case, you have to turn to other funding sources and seek outside investors.

In this regard, it would be a good idea to find investors who may be interested in your kind of business. For example, visit events, conferences, and meetings they hold or attend.

Can you find an investor online? Sure, you can visit specialized professional platforms, like Wellfound (former AngelList) or Crunchbase . The latter allows customizing your filters to find the right depositor.

It is worth noting that finding an investor is not only about injecting funds. This person can become a source of advice and strategy.

Find the right funders interested in your marketplace success, and they will speed up the marketplace launch. With their help, the projects of business owners will grow faster.

You may also like: Market Networks: the Future of Service Marketplaces

9. Select the right development team

Partnership with the proper development firm is crucial for a successful marketplace launch. Therefore, you should choose the software developers responsibly.

For instance, PayScale shows that a web developer's average hourly rate in the USA can be about $100 per hour.

So, using the average rate of Eastern European development firms, the approximate cost to develop a website like eBay will be a minimum of $64,600. If you want a rental marketplace like Airbnb, it will cost you about $65,600.

The tips below will help you find a dedicated agency to build an online marketplace that satisfies all your needs.

Visit research and rating platforms like Clutch , GoodFirms , and Appfutura . They will provide you with detailed information about the team needed. You can read reviews of their existing clients on such websites.

Check their clients' references.

Ensure the chosen team knows how to build a marketplace that brings value to both buyers and sellers.

Pay attention to the organization of the development process and the technology applied. At Codica, we use Ruby on Rails to build reliable and fast-loading marketplaces.

Give preference to companies that adopted the agile methodology . This approach helps make alterations at any development stage. Besides, you can respond faster and more effectively to market demands with agile methods. This way, you eliminate the risk of expensive market misses.

Check the software company’s portfolio to make sure they will create user-friendly online marketplaces.

By the way, you can look at the detailed articles on how we deliver marketplaces at Codica:

• How We Delivered Boat Selling Website for Tradeaboat
• How We Delivered MVP for PlanMyKids - Kids Activities Marketplace

Starting a new project is rather a challenging process. To make things easier, choose an established team that knows how to build an online marketplace website of the best quality. Thus, you will receive a fast, scalable, and user-friendly web solution.

10. Develop an MVP first

Building a minimum viable product (MVP) is the easiest way to save money, time, and effort. To build marketplace, we recommend starting with MVP development services .

Let’s look at the main reasons to build a minimum viable product before rolling out a full-featured platform.

• An MVP allows you to release your marketplace idea in the shortest period.
• With this approach, you can significantly save costs. It works the following way: you verify your idea first, then create a product. Thus, you can make sure that you are investing in a project attractive to your potential customers.
• An MVP helps you find early adopters. Their feedback will show how to build marketplace that is attractive to potential customers. Besides, the pioneer users will tell what features should be added, modified, or removed.
• In building an MVP, you focus on the basic features required for a marketplace launch. You can always extend the functionality as your platform scales. Don't worry that your product is not perfect. In the first iPhone project, there was no Wi-Fi at all.

Below you can see the MVP prioritization matrix offered by Clearbridge Mobile . This chart can help you define the features that should be included in the MVP.

To sum up, the idea of building an MVP comes down to testing your business idea first. You find early adopters and meet their demands with one or two key features. After receiving valuable feedback, you can improve your product by adding new features. Gradually, you will learn how to build marketplace that will attract new users.

Codica is a reliable MVP software development company for startups with years of practice. Our team has worked on a broad array of projects. We pride ourselves on our expertise in helping startups launch their products and grow their businesses.

Related reading: How to Build a Marketplace Website MVP and Not Fail

For instance, one of our MVP projects was developed for an online booking platform . Our client, David Watkins, faced the problem of planning his own kid’s activities after school. Like many other parents, he was busy with work, and finding time to look for activities on the web was quite tricky.

We started the development process with MVP building. Our specialists use proven technologies and practices to create a product with minimum features that meets all needs.

Thus, with the help of the minimum viable product, our client could check the business idea with the least effort and investment.

At Codica, we know that the success of your startup idea depends on how well you define what features to include in your MVP. Our development team will assist you to make a considered decision. For this, we provide an in-depth analysis of your project environment.

Related reading: How to Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

11. Acquire users

We have discussed a strategy to build an online marketplace. The next question is how you can promote your brand-new ecommerce platform.

An efficient marketing tactic helps attract vendors and buyers to your online marketplace. Of course, solving the chicken and egg problem can be a bit effortful. Let potential customers know about your startup from the planning stage.

Use the following tips to gain sellers' and buyers' attention:

• Promote your platform via ads on social media, including Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
• Become a part of workshops or educational meetups. Attend these events to connect with your potential vendors and buyers.
• Visit trade fairs to search for sellers. Find a subtle way to get their contact information. Thus, you will be able to reach them afterward.
• Organize live events and collaborate with celebrities.

Further reading: How to Create a Micro-Job Marketplace Like Fiverr

12. Platform promotion

To promote a marketplace platform, you need a team of experienced SEOs and content experts.

The task of SEOs is to find where to grow traffic. The task of content managers is to fill potentially traffic pages with relevant and high-quality content.

To make the work as efficient as possible, adhere to the following algorithm:

• Search and development of potential traffic pages.
• Technical optimization of the marketplace.
• Identification of competitors and refinement of the semantic core.
• Analysis and compilation of metadata.
• Compilation of technical requirements to content.
• Drawing up a link promotion strategy.
• Analysis of promotion results and optimization of the workflow.

You may also like: 6 Top Multivendor Marketplace Features for Sellers

13. Build trust between sellers and buyers

When building an online marketplace, don’t underestimate the importance of UX design . Pretty often, it helps prove to your customers that it is completely safe to buy and sell products and services on your platform.

Do you want to know how to create a marketplace website that your customers will trust? Take into account the following points:

• High-quality photos and videos allow buyers to view items from different sides and angles. So, why not allow sellers to provide as many details as possible?
• A thorough product description gives customers comprehensive information about the desired item.
• Reviews and ratings prove that customers can rely on a specific vendor for the quality of the product they are going to buy.
• A refund policy is a must-have for an ecommerce platform. With this option, customers feel safer when purchasing.

Source: Amazon.com

Focus on building a well-arranged and easy-to-navigate marketplace. Thus, you will offer a seamless user experience to bring new customers to your platform.

Further reading: 5 Main Online Marketplace Features to Make Buyers Happy

14. Find tools to monitor different aspects of your marketplace

Starting a new business is always tough. However, the working process will be well-organized with the right tools, and your enterprise will run smoothly.

So, what are the most widely-used applications and tools:

• Google Analytics is used to analyze your marketplace traffic. This tool helps better understand your audience and more.
• Salesforce is a powerful CRM (customer relationship management) tool. It allows you to connect to your users and organizes your clients' pipeline from the first contact to making a deal.
• Google Drive is the storage for your materials with vast functionality. The system offers collaboration with other people and convenient editing of documents.
• Mention is a great marketplace app for showing mentions of your project on different resources.
• Buffer is a great assistant for scheduling posts on social media. This marketplace app development solution makes your promotion campaign as smooth as possible. All you need is to buffer a blog post, and the service will publish them automatically.

You may also like: Best Examples of PWA for Ecommerce Marketplaces

15. Protect your intellectual property

Now it’s time to protect your business legally. Define if you need to set copyrights, patents, trademarks, or special licenses. Why is it important?

Other people can make a profit from your idea if you do not protect your concept. So you should have the documentation that proves you own the assets mentioned.

Here are the ways which will help you make your product idea safe and sound:

A patent is a set of exclusive rights. It is granted to an inventor for a restricted period in exchange for detailed public disclosure of an invention.

A trademark is used to represent a company or product. It can be a symbol, word, or several legally registered words. For instance, you need it to protect your project name.

A copyright is a collection of exclusive rights granted to an inventor and spread over a literary work, song, movie, or software. For example, you can protect your website content, including articles, descriptions, etc.

A domain name is the part of a network address that identifies it as belonging to a particular domain.

Applying these methods, you can ensure that your marketplace is highly protected. Additionally, your web project will be recognized by the courts and competitors.

Read also: Codica Named a Top Ecommerce Web Development Company

Costs to build a marketplace website

The cost of creating a marketplace totally depends on many aspects. It may significantly vary depending upon the functionality you select. The online marketplace development process requires the coordinated efforts of many specialists. This process includes backend and frontend development. Also, it comprises project management, UX and UI design creation, and quality assurance.

Notably, the location of your development team will also influence their hourly rates. So, you should bring this aspect into focus, when you decide to build a marketplace website.

So, how much does it cost to build a web solution from scratch?

Further reading: How Much Does It Cost to Build an Online Marketplace in 2024

Our extensive expertise in building a marketplace

The Codica team consistently delivers innovative solutions that redefine the ecommerce landscape. With a proven track record of delivering successful and scalable marketplace websites, Codica brings a wealth of experience and expertise.

Tailored solutions for diverse industries

By understanding each client's unique needs, Codica customizes solutions that meet and exceed expectations. Moreover, our team has demonstrated the ability to adapt and thrive in various domains.

Strategic planning

Before diving into development, Codica team collaborates closely with clients to understand their business goals, target audience, and unique selling propositions. This thorough planning ensures that the resulting marketplace aligns with the client's vision and resonates effectively with end-users.

Innovative features and advanced functionality

Codica is at the forefront of integrating cutting-edge features and advanced functionality into marketplace websites. We employ the latest technologies to enhance the overall user experience.

Responsive and cross-platform compatibility

Codica prioritizes responsive solution and cross-platform compatibility when providing UI/UX design services . Whether users are browsing on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone, Codica's marketplace websites offer a consistent and enjoyable experience.

Robust support and maintenance

Codica's commitment to client satisfaction extends beyond the launch of a marketplace website. The company provides ongoing support and maintenance services, addressing any issues promptly and proactively.

In a testament to Codica's prowess in web development, the company launched on a transformative journey with Dan.com, a leading online platform for selling domain names. Codica's mission was clear: to breathe new life into the platform by rebuilding old functionalities and introducing innovative features.

In this online marketplace platform, our specialists successfully implemented several business solutions, including:

• Enhanced domain options editing: Implemented the capability to edit domain options, providing users greater flexibility and control over their domain management.
• Optimized platform performance: Executed comprehensive improvements to enhance the overall optimization of the platform, ensuring a smoother and more efficient user experience.
• Revamped mobile designs: Launched a complete overhaul, prioritizing enhancing user experience on mobile devices. The updated designs contribute to a more user-friendly and visually appealing mobile interface.

As a result, this platform is modern and superfast. For instance, you can download 1000 domain names in less than 2 seconds.

We hope that this thorough guide will answer the main question: how to build marketplace convenient for buyers and sellers.

Define the required functionality. Choose a reliable custom software development company and proper methodology. These are the core points that help marketplaces succeed.

As a Chinese proverb says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Let this article inspire you to create an online marketplace like Airbnb or Etsy.

If you are looking for a reliable ecommerce marketplace development company , we are here to bring your ideas into reality. Contact us to discuss your project idea and get a free quote.

Frequently Asked Questions

Choose an industry for your future online service marketplace, and determine your unique value proposition. Then, decide how to look for service providers and customers. Eventually, find a reliable web development firm and order the platform development from scratch.

An online marketplace is a digital platform that connects multiple third-party purchasers and vendors, and simplifies the purchasing and selling of services or goods between them.

To attract vendors, do marketing of your marketplace platform. You should find vendors and connect with them. Use the email marketing technique to convince vendors to register on your site. Write blogs to attract sellers. You need to know what vendors want and create a perfect offer.

The fastest way to develop a marketplace fast is using a website builder with ready-made templates. Nevertheless, we recommend creating a marketplace from scratch to build quality, scalable, and profitable web solutions.

In a marketplace, sellers offer a variety of goods and services across categories, earning money through a commission on each sale. Then, ecommerce platforms focus on specific product categories, like electronics or fashion, and make money through product sales, subscription fees, or a mix of both.

The cost of creating a marketplace mobile app can vary significantly based on the complexity of features, design requirements, development time, chosen platform, and more. It's advisable to consult with a development team to get a personalized estimate based on your specific business needs.

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Airbnb Uses Amazon EFS to Scale CI/CD Pipeline for Expanding Online Marketplace

Online travel marketplace Airbnb supports hundreds of critical services on its platform, making it essential to maintain a reliable source control infrastructure. The company uses GitHub Enterprise for both source control and management of its continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes. Airbnb has more than 1,000 engineers, who execute more than 100,000 continuous integration jobs on an average working day. GitHub Enterprise provides the engineers with a single source of truth for all code repositories. 

However, source control infrastructure had become an operational headache due to the system’s scaling issues. In the previous system, each mirror instance pulled changes from GitHub Enterprise. This became challenging to maintain because the mirrors could get out of sync with each other. The system did not scale with Airbnb's increasing Git traffic and hindered the team from focusing on higher-level problem solving and implementing new features.

Airbnb sought a solution it could use to re-architect the source code infrastructure with a simpler storage layer. The system needed to update in seconds and read traffic needed to scale

“We had serious conversations about how to engineer and scale our source control infrastructure. Now, using Amazon EFS and Amazon SQS, we no longer worry about that. We know we can scale to match our growth.”

– Daniel Low, Software Engineer, Airbnb

• About Airbnb
• AWS Services Used

The mission of Airbnb is to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. The company’s marketplace offers access to over 7 million unique accommodations worldwide, and its Experiences connect travelers to more than 40,000 unique, handcrafted activities.

• Uses single file system to sync GitHub repositories
• Keeps Git mirrors in sync by using a shared file system that allows scaling of CI/CD processes
• Ensures no repository changes are lost during syncing using event-driven queuing approach
• Allows engineers to focus on building system features instead of worrying about scaling
• Amazon Elastic File System
• Amazon Simple Queue Service

Single File System Simplifies Git Mirror Instances

Airbnb turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help achieve its goals. “We worked with AWS for many months to consider different options that could solve the challenges with our source control infrastructure,” says Joel Snyder, software engineer for Airbnb. “They took time to listen to what we required and gave us advice about how we could best integrate with their services.”

While exploring how to solve its challenges, Airbnb realized it could utilize Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), a simple, scalable system for Linux-based workloads for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. “Through our research, we discovered Amazon EFS, which we could use to share a single file system mounted on all Git mirror instances,” explains Snyder. “When one Git mirror changed, every other Git mirror was guaranteed to have the same update.” In this way, Airbnb used Amazon EFS to back the real-time image of its GitHub repository data. Mirrors were continuously in sync with the production repository at the scale required for the CI automation pipeline.

Queuing Service Helps Sync Repositories

Airbnb then needed a solution that could keep the GitHub Enterprise repository's file system in sync with the mirrored repository's file system. The team chose an event-driven approach, meaning only actual code changes to a repository prompted the repository syncing process. Airbnb turned to Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), a fully managed message queuing service, to avoid malformed or bad-data messages being committed to the production GitHub repository. “We used Amazon SQS as a queuing mechanism to buffer events from the GitHub primary to our syncing service,” says Daniel Low, software engineer for Airbnb.

Most of the time, repositories are automatically synced successfully. However, if a message can’t be handled automatically, Amazon SQS ensures no data is lost by redelivering messages until the repository is successfully synced. Each day, the system processes approximately 10,000 messages about code changes and repository syncing with a 99.5 percent success rate.

“When a bad message enters our system, we don’t constantly retry,” explains Low. “After five attempts, we move messages that can’t be successfully processed into a dead-letter queue.” Airbnb sets alerts for the dead-letter queue, so it can quickly discover the reason for the failed message and find a solution. “Once the issue is fixed, we replay the contents of the dead-letter queue back to Amazon SQS,” he says. “We use that process to verify that the issue was resolved.”

Engineers Focus on Building Features

“Before this migration, we had serious conversations about how to engineer and scale our source control infrastructure,” says Low. “Now, using Amazon EFS and Amazon SQS, we no longer worry about that. We know we can scale to match our growth.”

By using managed services such as Amazon EFS and Amazon SQS, Airbnb has significantly reduced the operational load required to maintain its source control infrastructure as its workload scales to tens of thousands of commits per day. “Our team can now focus on building new features and bringing value to our internal customers, the other engineers at Airbnb,” says Snyder. “Reliable source control is a crucial foundation to support Airbnb’s infrastructure and to enable Airbnb’s engineers to be productive.”

To learn more, visit aws.amazon.com/efs .

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Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A)

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About The Author

Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

Related work.

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Jumia Nigeria PowerPoint Supplement

• Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (B)  By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Namrata Arora
• Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A) and (B)  By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
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Platform Startups: Launching Online Marketplaces

By: R. Daniel Wadhwani, Christina Lubinski, Christoph Viebig

Online marketplaces confront the challenge of the "Penguin Problem," i.e. how to attract their first users and leverage network effects. Susan Spender puzzles over how to get started with her…

• Length: 13 page(s)
• Publication Date: Oct 31, 2020
• Discipline: Entrepreneurship
• Product #: SCG577-PDF-ENG

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Online marketplaces confront the challenge of the "Penguin Problem," i.e. how to attract their first users and leverage network effects. Susan Spender puzzles over how to get started with her platform business connecting pet owners to pet enthusiasts who perform small tasks, such as feeding and dog walking. She and her team explore four popular platform companies - Eventbrite, GrubHub, Instacart, and TaskRabbit - and learn from their startup strategies. By comparing and contrasting the four companies, students explore a series of possible approaches for tackling this crucial issue of platform entrepreneurship and differentiate which strategy works for which company/industry. The "Platform Business Model Canvas" helps them identify the key elements of platform entrepreneurship and see how they are interrelated.

Learning Objectives

The case allows students to:

• Understand the unique challenge of starting a platform business; a company which increases in value with the number of its users.

• Compare and contrast various strategies for tackling the issue of launching a new platform ("Penguin Problem.")

• Familiarize themselves with the "Platform Business Model Canvas" as a tool to describe and analyze platform business models based on their value propositions and the ways they produce and sell goods or services.

Oct 31, 2020

Discipline:

Entrepreneurship

Geographies:

United States

Industries:

Consumer services, Internet service providers, Software development industry

Greif Center for Entrep. Studies-USC Marshall

SCG577-PDF-ENG

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How RubyGarage Built an Online Marketplace for Home Services for Saudi Arabia's Digital Transformation

RubyGarage was tasked by Naxy Nwodo to create CallOnDuty, an online marketplace to connect local service providers with consumers for home tasks. The platform needed to be user-friendly and efficient, saving customers time and effort.

Quality assurance was crucial; CallOnDuty had to ensure reliable services through reviews or vetting processes. The aim was to offer only trustworthy providers to consumers.

Security was a must, especially in handling transactions. The platform must protect user financial data and ensure price transparency for customers to compare providers.

Flexibility in scheduling was essential. The platform had to offer convenient booking options for customers while allowing service providers to manage their availability.

Lastly, excellent customer service was indispensable for resolving issues and ensuring a smooth experience. A straightforward dispute-resolution process was needed to protect both parties.

From initial brainstorming to continuous improvement, the RubyGarage team employed a holistic approach to bring CallOnDuty to life. Leveraging in-depth market research, audience segmentation, and Agile methodologies, we ensured the platform not only met industry needs but also offered a user-centric, secure, and scalable solution for both service providers and consumers.

1. Idea generation

The journey began with brainstorming sessions, where we churned out various ideas to revolutionise the home services sector. The best of these was refined into the concept of CallOnDuty.

2. Market research

Our team delved deep into market analytics and user behaviour to validate the initial idea. This research provided us with valuable insights into the industry's pain points and opportunities.

3. Audience segmentation

We identified and categorised our target audience based on several factors, such as needs, geography, and behaviour. This helped us in tailoring our product to meet specific customer needs.

4. Feasibility analysis

An in-depth feasibility study was conducted to evaluate the practicality and financial viability of the project. This phase ensured that CallOnDuty was not just a great idea but also a feasible one.

5. Product hypothesis

Based on our research and analysis, we formulated a clear product hypothesis outlining what CallOnDuty aimed to achieve and how we would measure its success.

6. MVP (Minimum Viable Product) planning

We outlined the core functionalities and features needed for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This roadmap served as our blueprint for initial development.

A detailed project roadmap was drawn up, complete with milestones and timelines. This plan guided us through development and aligned the team with project goals.

8. Tech stack selection

We chose a modern technology stack, combining Ruby on Rails for the backend and React.js for the frontend, to turn our vision for CallOnDuty into reality.

9. Team formation

Specialised teams were assembled, including frontend and backend developers, UI/UX designers, and quality assurance experts. Each team had a defined role in bringing CallOnDuty to life.

10. UI/UX designing

Our designers crafted an intuitive and visually appealing user interface. They focused on user-centric design to enhance the overall user experience.

11. Agile development

We employed Agile methodologies to facilitate a flexible and collaborative development process. Regular sprints and stand-up meetings ensured the project stayed on track.

12. Quality assurance

Before any code went live, it underwent stringent quality checks. This phase ensured that CallOnDuty met all functional and security benchmarks.

13. Alpha release

The first version of CallOnDuty was rolled out to a select group of users. This alpha release helped us to identify any major issues that needed urgent attention.

14. Beta release

Following tweaks and improvements, a more polished version was released to a wider audience for beta testing. This phase provided broader insights into user interaction and possible improvements.

15. Feedback loop

After each release, we collected user feedback to understand what worked and what didn't. This feedback was invaluable for making data-driven decisions.

16. Continuous improvement

Armed with user feedback and analytics, we entered a cycle of continuous improvement, fine-tuning features, and rolling out updates to meet user expectations better.

CallOnDuty, developed by RubyGarage, is a streamlined online marketplace connecting local service providers and consumers for home-related tasks. It enables users to discover services, review profiles, and securely book suitable providers. For providers, it's an opportunity to highlight their skills, expand their reach, and enhance their business. It epitomises ease, security, and user-friendliness in managing everyday home tasks.

Unfailing project delivery

Following a meticulous project plan, RubyGarage delivered CallOnDuty on schedule, meeting all established milestones.

Tailored features

Distinctive features, including a powerful search engine, user-friendly booking system, and secure payments, were crafted and integrated, amplifying CallOnDuty's uniqueness.

Cohesive brand incorporation

We seamlessly blended CallOnDuty's brand elements, delivering a visually appealing and consistent user experience.

Rigorous quality checks

Through thorough testing, we ensured optimal performance, reliability, and security, enhancing user confidence in the platform.

Smooth deployment

We facilitated a successful launch, offering indispensable support during the setup, data migration, and deployment stages.

Enabling operation

We provided extensive training and documentation, bolstering the CallOnDuty team's ability to manage their platform.

Successful product launch

CallOnDuty was launched successfully, meeting the project timeline and budget constraints, thus affirming RubyGarage's prowess in efficient project management and development.

Broad service provider inclusion

The platform launched with a diversified list of vetted service providers, immediately ensuring a wide range of services available to consumers.

Immediate user adoption

Within the first month of launch, CallOnDuty garnered a significant user base, demonstrating the market demand for a robust, multi-category home services platform.

Secure transactions

From day one, the platform's secure payment gateway has ensured that there are zero incidents of transaction fraud, instilling confidence among the users.

Strong review system

Upon launch, the platform’s review and rating system received active participation, indicating user engagement and the system's ease of use.

Operational efficiency for providers

The platform's easy-to-use scheduling features enabled service providers to manage their availability efficiently, leading to increased bookings and revenue within the first quarter.

Winning user approval

CallOnDuty's positive reception post-launch highlights RubyGarage's successful development efforts, with users praising the platform's intuitive design and robust features.

Positive feedback loop

A feedback loop was successfully established post-launch, providing actionable insights for ongoing platform enhancements.

Accelerated business expansion

RubyGarage's successful execution has propelled CallOnDuty's growth, marking an upswing in registered users, transactions, and overall user engagement.

Key features

CallOnDuty focuses on convenience, trust, and efficiency for both service providers and consumers. From intuitive search and secure payments to robust analytics, every feature is designed to simplify the process of connecting local service providers with consumers, ultimately enhancing the user experience and driving business growth.

Service listing

Providers can enumerate and detail their services with descriptions, images, and pricing. This feature simplifies listing management and updates.

Intuitive search and filtering

We created an efficient search function that allows customers to narrow down services using criteria like cost, location, ratings, or specific types.

Scheduling and booking

Customers can readily book services, specify job requirements, and select a payment method, streamlining the booking process.

Secure payment processing

A top-tier secure payment gateway ensures safe transactions, supporting a range of payment options like cards, online banking, or digital wallets.

Review and rating system

A transparent review system fosters trust and maintains service quality by allowing customers to provide feedback on their service providers.

User registration and profile management

We made it easy for service providers and customers to create, customise, and manage profiles. Providers can share skills, rates, and availability information, while customers can save preferences and manage bookings.

Messaging system

A built-in messaging system lets customers and providers discuss details, make arrangements, or resolve issues without leaving the platform.

Geolocation

This feature matches customers with local providers, provides navigational aid, and lets customers track a service provider's real-time arrival.

Automated reminders

Notifications inform users about important updates like new messages, upcoming appointments, booking alterations, or fresh reviews.

User dashboard

This feature gives users a snapshot of their activity, including booking history, upcoming services, and favourite providers. For providers, it summarises earnings, upcoming jobs, and customer feedback.

Insightful analytics and reports

We incorporated data analytics and reporting features for platform administrators to gain insights into user behaviour, popular services, peak usage periods, and more. These valuable insights help drive platform growth and improvements.

Customer support

The help centre fields common queries and offers assistance via live chat, email, or a phone line for user issues.

Technology stack

We selected a technology stack combining the modern Ruby on Rails framework with Ruby gems and approaches, a powerful frontend, and other supporting technologies.

Ensures a seamless and engaging user experience, increasing customer retention and satisfaction.

Typescript is a statically typed superset of JavaScript that adds optional types, providing a safer and more efficient development experience.

React.js is a JavaScript library with a component-based architecture for building user interfaces, particularly single-page applications.

React Router is a standard routing library for React that manages and navigates between different components based on the browser's URL.

Material-UI is a popular React UI framework with a set of pre-designed components that follow Google's Material Design principles.

Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps that helps you write applications that behave consistently, run in different environments (client, server, and native), and are easy to test.

Redux Saga is a middleware library for Redux that manages side effects, such as asynchronous actions like fetching data.

Facilitates efficient data processing and secure user authentication, streamlining operations and boosting trust.

Ruby on rails is a popular, full-stack web application framework for the Ruby language which emphasises convention over configuration and follows the MVC pattern.

Trailblazer is a new architectural layer for Ruby On Rails and other Ruby frameworks, introducing several high-level abstractions to structure applications.

Sidekiq is a background job processor for Ruby, useful for running tasks asynchronously outside of the main request-response cycle.

ActiveAdmin is a Ruby on Rails plugin for generating administration-style interfaces.

Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails applications with support for features such as password encryption, user registration, and session management.

Puma is a fast, concurrent web server for Ruby and Rack applications that can handle multiple requests simultaneously.

ActiveModelSerializers provides a convention-based approach to serialising Ruby objects based on their model layer, suitable for use in APIs.

Data management

Offers fast and reliable data storage, analytics, and search features, enhancing user experience and operational insights.

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source object-relational database system with a strong emphasis on extensibility and standards compliance.

Redis is an in-memory data structure store used as a database, cache, and message broker.

Elasticsearch is a powerful, distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine capable of addressing many use cases.

Pg_search builds ActiveRecord named scopes that take advantage of PostgreSQL's full-text search.

Searchkick is a Ruby gem that simplifies, optimises, and adds extra functionality to Elasticsearch in Ruby on Rails applications.

Quality assurance and security

Prioritises a secure, bug-free environment through comprehensive testing and real-time monitoring, safeguarding user data and brand reputation.

RSpec is a behaviour-driven development (BDD) testing framework for Ruby.

FactoryBot is a library for setting up Ruby objects as test data.

Capybara is an acceptance test framework for web applications in Ruby.

Omniauth is a flexible authentication system for Rack-based Ruby applications, supporting multiple strategies like OAuth and LDAP.

CanCanCan is an authorisation library for Ruby and Rails applications that restricts what resources a user is allowed to access.

Rack Cors is a middleware for Rack-based applications that supports Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), allowing web applications to specify which domains are allowed to make requests.

Monit is a synchronisation construct that allows methods to be executed atomically, preventing multiple threads from entering a method simultaneously in Ruby.

Sentry provides error tracking that shows you every crash in your stack as it happens, with the details needed to prioritise, identify, reproduce, and fix each issue.

Integrations

Integrates a suite of essential services to streamline payment processing, enhance user experience, facilitate seamless communication, and expand customer support capabilities.

Stripe API enables smooth and secure financial transactions, increasing revenue streams and customer trust.

PayPal provides an additional payment option, enhancing customer convenience and potentially increasing conversion rates.

Google Maps enhances the user experience by offering real-time location tracking and service location-based searches.

Twilio for SMS facilitates immediate communication through automated text message notifications for booking confirmations, updates, and cancellations.

SendGrid for email manages automated email notifications for transactional and promotional purposes, enhancing customer engagement and retention.

Zendesk offers a comprehensive customer support suite, including chat and ticketing systems, to improve customer satisfaction and issue resolution.

Google Translate allows the platform to offer content in multiple languages, broadening its reach and making the service accessible to a diverse user base.

Infrastructure management

Designed for high scalability and reliability, ensuring the business can adapt quickly to market demands and user needs.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive and widely adopted cloud platform that offers a range of cloud computing services, including computing power, storage, and databases, ensuring the platform's scalability, reliability, and security.

Docker is a platform that automates container application deployment, scaling, and management, enabling consistent and efficient application delivery.

Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and managing containerised applications, which helps ensure the high availability and scalability of the platform.

New Relic is a performance monitoring tool that provides real-time insights into the functioning of your web applications, allowing for data-driven decisions.

Testimonial

With the successful deployment of CallOnDuty, RubyGarage has delivered a tangible impact on Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 initiative, a strategic roadmap aimed at steering the country away from oil dependence, diversifying the economy, and uplifting public service sectors. Here's how CallOnDuty became an integral part of this transformation:

Championing digitisation

CallOnDuty, as an online marketplace for home services, has ignited a digital revolution in Saudi Arabia's service sector, perfectly aligned with Vision 2030's goal of capitalising on digital technology to revolutionise business processes and augment service delivery.

Cultivating economic opportunities

By crafting a platform for local service providers, CallOnDuty has generated new employment opportunities, spurred entrepreneurship, and nurtured small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), echoing the economic growth objectives of Vision 2030.

Enriching customer experience

With its user-centric interface, innovative features such as real-time tracking, and a trustworthy review system, CallOnDuty has significantly elevated the customer experience, mirroring Vision 2030's ambition of cultivating a vibrant society with high living standards.

Advocating a cashless economy

CallOnDuty, with its integrated secure payment gateways, is a strong advocate for cashless transactions, a cornerstone of the digital economy.

Empowering non-oil sectors

By fostering growth in the home services sector, CallOnDuty contributes to the diversification of Saudi Arabia's economy, resonating with the central ethos of Vision 2030.

Inspiring technological adoption

The success of CallOnDuty serves as a beacon, encouraging other businesses to take the digital leap and integrate modern technological solutions into their operations.

Project Lead, CallOnDuty

“Working with RubyGarage on the CallOnDuty project has been a phenomenal experience. Their technical proficiency, commitment to our vision, and proactive problem-solving approach significantly contributed to the platform's success. From their expertise in Ruby on Rails and React.js to their excellent project management skills, RubyGarage has exceeded expectations in every aspect. They have been integral in driving digital transformation in Saudi Arabia's home services sector, aligning perfectly with Vision 2030. I highly recommend RubyGarage for their top-notch software development services.”

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Case Study: Consumers are choosing online interviews for faster personal history collection

Clients and consumers are discovering the advantages of choosing online interviews to complete the medical and lifestyle questions process needed for life insurance applications. The option is convenient and comfortable for consumers and allows insurers to more quickly gather the necessary information to assess an applicant’s risk.

As the new workflow is being implemented by more carriers, trends are emerging that highlight the acceptance and success of this form of data collection.

Who is comfortable completing a medical history questionnaire online?

What is the turnaround time for online interviews compared to traditional call center interviews?

What does the online interview process look like for consumers?

Read our PHC-Online Interview case study to find out the answers to these questions and other trends that can help guide your data collection decisions.

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Using Trauma-Informed Teaching to Handle Sensitive Topics in Online Teaching: A Case Study from Divinity

How can Christian faith influence the practice of mental health care? How do we define mental health and mental illness — and what are the limitations of these concepts? How can Christian theology provide us with tools to ethically engage with challenges related to mental health care? When developing their new graduate-level course, Christian Approaches to Mental Health Care , Professors Warren Kinghorn and John Swinton created a course where students could explore these questions.

“Theology provides us with a language, a worldview and a set of practices that are vital for mental health care,” Swinton said. “The intention of this course is to help people to think theologically and provide people with other ideas and tools to help them care more fully and more faithfully.”

A hybrid, nine-week course, Christian Approaches to Mental Health Care is part of a new mental health track in the Divinity School’s Certificate in Theology and Health Care . Students attended an immersive week on Duke’s campus where they were introduced to key concepts; they attended course sessions the following eight weeks via Zoom.

“In the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative, we invite students into deep engagement with the practices of health care in light of Christian theology and practice,” Kinghorn said. “This class is a natural extension of that aim, but now focused specifically on the practices of mental health care.” 

This Divinity course was aimed at both professionals who work in any context related to mental health care (e.g., counselors, social workers) and those who may have a personal interest in the material. First taught in Spring 2024 to over 30 students, the course covered a wide-range of topics that needed to be handled with care, including trauma, anxiety, and dementia. 

Challenges and Affordances of Teaching Online

How does one approach teaching sensitive topics online? Are there challenges unique to this environment? 

Swinton noted that the structure of a course using a web conferencing software like Zoom can present challenges.

“When you are in a standard class situation and difficult issues come up, people have the opportunity to find immediate support either from us as tutors or from classmates,” he said. “When you are doing a course online, that support is often not available. You switch off the camera and you are on your own.”

That being said, knowing this can be an issue without the buffer space at the beginning or end of the class session, Swinton and Kinghorn have worked to ensure their online sessions do offer support. Kinghorn noted that during his first foray into online teaching during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was concerned about engaging with sensitive topics in a virtual class setting.

“But I learned that if the class is structured in a way that leaves time and space for self-care, Zoom-based instruction has advantages,” he said. “Students generally join class from a space where they feel safe. They can titrate their own exposure in class, shifting position or even briefly turning off camera or microphone if necessary. If done well and in a trauma-informed way, I think that even the hardest topics can be addressed well through online pedagogy.”

Strategies to Teach a Trauma-Informed Course

What does it mean to be a trauma-informed instructor? How can Kinghorn and Swinton’s course act as an example for other courses?

“Adopting a trauma-informed approach is not accomplished through any single particular technique or checklist,” the CDC’s 6 Guiding Principles To A Trauma-Informed Approach reminds us, “It requires constant attention, caring awareness, sensitivity, and possibly a cultural change at an organizational level.”

Kinghorn and Swinton, however, do have specific strategies that worked for the specific context of their course. Given that this course covered topics such as depression, suicide, substance use issues, and more during the online weeks, the instructors informed students about upcoming content and encouraged them to approach these topics with care for themselves and for others. While there are different approaches to creating a trauma-informed environment, Kinghorn and Swinton focused on harm reduction in suggesting how instructors can think about this during a live course.

“My belief (as others have argued in the trauma-informed teaching literature) is that it should be a last resort for professors to invite students to opt out of a class due to difficult past experiences, as this kind of approach (if made systematic) can compound educational differences and marginalization— effectively giving educational access to those fortunate not to have particular trauma histories and excluding (even if student-driven) those who do,” Kinghorn said.  “I would much rather structure courses (as I think we did this semester) with the goal that every student, including those with recent loss or difficult trauma histories, feels a sense of welcome and belonging that enables them to participate in the good, hard work of the course.”

Swinton shared that choice is important to him in thinking about student participation.

“For example, if an online student has had someone close to them die by suicide either recently or historically and they feel that a class on this subject could be problematic for them, we would want to make sure that the person involved does not feel compelled to participate in the class if it is going to be harmful,” Swinton said of a hypothetical scenario. “It’s always going to be difficult with sensitive issues online, but we do the best we can to minimize the possibility of harm.”

Other strategies to help students feel like the course was a safe place for student learning included:

• Focusing on helping students create a connected community, which included putting them in consistent breakout room groups of 5-6 students for the semester
• Modelling honesty and humility as instructors  when receiving difficult questions during the immersive week
• Starting each class session with grounding practices (e.g., reading a psalm and pausing in silent reflection)
• Staying after class in Zoom to be available to students and ensuring presence and privacy by turning off recording features
• Providing clear guidelines about evaluations and deadlines, as well as sharing how students should communicate with faculty and teaching assistants
• Granting structured flexibility (e.g., offering a no-questions-asked 72-hour extension for one assignment over the semester)
• Respecting students’ privacy (e.g., not asking students to disclose why they need to turn in late work)

Teaching with Care

How might you begin to integrate trauma-informed practices into your own teaching? 

The first step, Swinton said, is to recognize that this is an issue instructors should take note of in all of their teaching.

Using Duke as an example, Kinghorn elaborated that while instructors should not be asking students to disclose their trauma, they can assume “that a majority or near-majority of every class of Duke students have survived trauma of some sort (recognizing the challenges of defining that term).”

“Assume that all students, including trauma survivors, are at Duke because they want to learn, want to engage difficult material well, and generally want to do good, hard work together,” he said. “Then ask: how specific to my subject matter can I invite students to do good, hard work in a way that respects their lived experience? That’s going to differ by class and by student but is the place to start.”

If you’d like to learn more about trauma-informed teaching, here are a few resources where you could start are:

• Trauma-Informed Teaching – University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse
• Trauma-Informed Pedagogy, Montclair State University
• Karen Costa’s Trauma Informed Pedagogy Course
• A feature of a recent Coursera course that integrated trauma-informed frameworks into its design
• SAMHSA, Trauma and Violence
• The Missouri Model: A Developmental Framework for Trauma-Informed Approaches
• CDC, 6 Guiding Principles to a Trauma-Informed Approach
• Potentially Perilous Pedagogies: Teaching Trauma Is Not the Same as Trauma-Informed Teaching

If you’d like to learn more about Warren Kinghorn and John Swinton’s work, here are a few places to start are:

• Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges (2020)
• Wayfaring: A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care by Warren Kinghorn (July 2024)
• Developing Best Practices for Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning