September, 2022

Previous Platform: Custom

Industry: Mounting Solutions

Use Case: Integration to Shopify Plus

Company Summary

Created in 1990, RAM® Mounts is the manufacturing leader for mounting solutions that are reliable and adaptable for almost any application or device. RAM® Mounts is the most cutting-edge product line of its kind, including almost 5,000 modular parts. These parts, built on an interchangeable ball and socket system and built around an elastomeric rubber ball, include anti-slip properties as well as shock and vibration absorption. The innovative RAM® Mounts system’s patent-protected design offers easy installation, adaptability, and durability at a reasonable cost.

Project Summary

Ambaum helped RAM® Mounts create a plan to replatform from their own custom ecommerce site to Shopify Plus. The project broke out into 3 phases: create a custom theme for RAM® Mounts, assist the merchant with data migration, and help them create custom functionality on their new site by building a custom application. The final outcome of the project was a new Shopify Plus site with functionality similar to their old site plus UI updates and the ability for customers to build their own RAM® Mounts.

RAM® Mounts Custom Theme

To create the new theme, Ambaum worked closely with RAM® Mounts to make sure all of the functionality on the old site was recreated on the new Shopify Plus site. We worked with RAM® Mounts to build a more robust mega nav and developed templated landing pages that were reusable for many of the brands that RAM® Mounts supports.

Ambaum created a custom theme for RAM® Mounts and made sure to incorporate all of the latest Shopify infrastructure updates that rolled out in the summer of 2022. There were a number of important features added, the first one was we created the custom theme with sections everywhere which allows RAM® Mounts to use the Shopify UI to drag and drop sections on the site without having to get into the code. In addition, Ambaum used metafields in multiple places on the site, one example is on the product detail page where we were able to create a “complete your solution” section which is effectively a recommended products section, as seen here. The product template uses variant metafields to easily swap product data based on the variant selected, for example: images, tabbed data, pricing, title, description, etc.

About Us Page Customization

The about us page template is a custom page we created within the theme that allows the merchant to easily manage the content of the page. The about us page has multiple tabs, and each tab is a unique page that can be edited within the Shopify Editor. The benefit of this is the ease of use for the merchant going forward as opposed to requiring custom development to update and maintain.

Collection Page Functionality

RAM® Mounts products all had “facet data” aka metadata on them which allowed for very custom filtering. There are “tiles” on the existing collection pages and some of them have size data that is needed for extra filtering. Ambaum helped RAM® Mounts think through a couple paths for their collection filtering; path 1 was for us to create custom filtering logic and path 2 was to utilize a Shopify app to give them the required functionality. We eventually settled on using Product Filter and Search, a powerful app that gave RAM® Mounts the ability to leverage the metadata on all of their products and give them the custom filtering they needed.

RAM® Mounts Custom Builder

RAM® Mounts requested that Ambaum help them create a brand new feature on their site that allows customers to select the optimal mount based on vehicle, device and mounting location. With this custom builder, the user is prompted to go through a set of questions to determine which products are most applicable for the customer’s situation. If you take a look at the images below you can get an idea of what it looks like from the customer’s perspective to use this custom mount builder.

RAM® Mounts had their own internal IT team and was very hands on with us as we created their new Shopify Plus site. One example of how we worked very closely together was around the API feed needed for the custom product builder. RAM® Mounts provided the API feed that sent the data to the product builder to enable a customer to make their selections from the drop-down menus. Ambaum then built this functionality by utilizing Shopify’s Section Rendering API. This alters page content without reloading the entire page based on the user’s selections.

One final thing Ambaum did was develop this custom RAM® Mounts builder with Shopify reusable components that will allow us to create this same builder functionality for many other product lines in the RAM® Mounts catalog. The client indicated to us that it was important that our code was reusable as they had big plans to roll this feature out to other lines in the future.

Summary

At Ambaum we have been fortunate to work with a number of parts companies and help them replatform to Shopify Plus. RAM® Mounts was an intense project with a lot of theme customizations, API work and data management. We didn’t want to just build a custom site for the merchant, we needed to implement reusable code to help them manage their site internally without having to rely solely on developers for future updates. As you can see from the quote above, the client was very happy with their new site and can see the benefit of a platform like Shopify to help drive their companies growth.

Have questions about how Ambaum can help your organization in the next step toward scalable success? Reach out to us today and let’s hop on a call to go over your needs.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to spend a lovely and rewarding day in New York attending the ChargeUp event hosted by Recharge. This was my first event since the pandemic began, and it will not be my last. With the inspiring thought-leadership (and impressive hors d’oeuvres pictured below!), Recharge has proven to be truly apt in their event planning in the new post-pandemic tide.

After checking in, I was met with accessible high-top tables and enjoyed delicious breakfast items (most importantly; Coffee).

Welcome & State of the Industry // Recharge Product Roadmap

Led by the VP of Strategic Alliances, Lindy Crea, we discussed how undeniably there has been a spike in ecommerce growth during the lockdown, and we’re now seeing the gradual descent as we settle back to stasis. In addition to this, merchants are facing supply chain issues and clogged shipping channels, which has disrupted a significant amount of delivery flows.

The supply chain is not just backlogged, but it is getting more expensive. Customer acquisition cost continues to increase in the “cookie-pocolypse” causing merchants and consumers alike to pull back from social spend.

This has made the need for reliable revenue evermore evident for merchants.

Succeed with Subscriptions: Attract Subscribers

We then broke out to discuss one of the foundations of reliable revenue and successful, scalable, business being on customer retention, the marketing track led by Christy Ottesen, Senior Product Marketing Manager. One of the foundations of the panel; 32% of customers are prepared to abandon their loyalty to a company after one very bad experience. In a very interesting correlation, 80% of stores feel they’re delivering a great customer experience, where only 8% of customers feel they’re receiving a great experience.

Customer Experience (CX)

To add more on a merchant’s plate, buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS), is forecast to grow by 19.3% by 2027. Whether or not this is already cultivated, this will grow into a more significant vertical for merchants as the post-pandemic stasis levels out.

Finally, research has shown that through conditioning from big league experiences such as Disney, consumers will be expecting the utmost in response time and excellent customer service. As a merchant, you are expected from customers to perform within the same parameters as those big leagues with your customer experience. So, customers are not only expecting you to outperform your competitors, but they’re expecting you to provide the same level of customer service as a multi-level, thousand-employee-marketing-team, with granular operations, and nearly 100 years of honed experience.

I know. Like, what? How the heck are you supposed to do that?

There is a ton of strategy around the best CX, and this will change as the market does. Recharge has broken it down into three major principles:

Speed
Convenience
Friendliness

Speed: Attentiveness in responding to your customers is key to making them feel heard and understood. Recharge has partnered with Gorgias to serve and resolve subscription questions faster. This integration allows the sales team to re-active, refund, or cancel subscriptions all within the same window, so there is no need to switch between tools.

Convenience: RechargeSMS is a free tool for Recharge merchants that allows for subscription management through customer self-service via SMS. Providing the flexibility for customers to manage their own subscription dramatically increases customer lifetime value (CLV). All functions of the customer portal can be completed via text and this tool has proven to increase CLV up to 30%.

Friendliness: Providing an excellent customer experience on an omnichannel strategy is key to retention. Average customer behavior has been proven to pay a premium for additional benefits such as early access, a customized experience, and long-term discounts.

Understandably, lunch was buzzing with subscription strategy conversations and methods to increase retention, and decrease churn. I discussed a few areas of nuance with merchants of varying demographics such as customizations for subscription-pause, specifically around the school year, and how to automatically resume after summer and winter breaks. I also discussed how difficult the transition can be from WooCommerce to Shopify Plus without support, and how to decrease the churn that comes with customers needing to enter additional information or create a whole new profile on a new platform.

This event quickly made me realize that as our tech partners here at Ambaum begin to scale, these merchant needs are where our services can really step in to help. Through years of agency experience with over 30 active merchants, we are able to quickly identify this low-hanging fruit to then build long-term solutions and strategies for the merchant’s success. By working with many of our preferred partners within the first few years of their conception (Recharge for 4+ years!), we are able to travel parallel with their updates, step in, and solve these types of customizations that merchants need.

Case Study: Optimize your Subscription Business with Customization and Integrations // Happy Hour

The conference ended with a case study between Klaviyo, Wandering Bear Coffee, and their Shopify tech agency, where we covered their transition into e-commerce over the pandemic. Taking on Klaviyo for email and SMS, the merchant was able to take their sales to a new level. As Recharge provided the flexibility for customers to manage their own subscription, they saw their CLV soar. Through this panel discussion we answered the question: When do you start the conversation with your customers? The answer: Either now, or yesterday.

After wrapping up the conference, we finished with a happy hour on the terrace rooftop, and plenty of in-depth discussion about what is on the horizon for subscription services. Recharge has new updates upcoming including a way to understand the entire customer experience in a single view, data consistency between Recharge and Shopify where you can perform bulk discount imports with one click, and a widget for Shopify Plus for an incredibly easy subscription service setup. As these updates roll out, you can be sure we’ll cover them here, so sign up for our newsletter now (if you haven’t already!).

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoyed the day from the organized setup, to discussing poignant thought-leadership with peers and partners over the bustling city below. I look forward to the next event with our partners here at Ambaum, and new updates from our partnership with Recharge.

Month: September 2022

RAM® Mounts

ChargeUp New York 2022