Snuggle Hunny’s revamped site launches new era of success
How Shopify helped Snuggle Hunny leave a subpar website behind and relaunch with one that seamlessly energises and integrates facets of the business.
For those not in the know, Snuggle Hunny is one of the leading baby goods retailers operating in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Founded in 2015 and aiming squarely at new and expecting parents, Snuggle Hunny provides a wealth of knowledge and support to its customers, who are often in need of support and direction during the life-changing transitional period that often comes with adding a new member to the family.
The business was given a new lease on life when, in 2022, Flora & Fauna founder Julie Mathers bought the rights to it and started a period of massive transformation that has shot the brand into near cult-like popularity.
Bolstered by a growing number of loyal customers, as well as a burgeoning community of shoppers that live for the business’ eco-friendly approach to online retail, Snuggle Hunny has enjoyed major growth since it was reborn under Mathers’ direction.
The transformation involved a large amount of work. Perhaps the biggest change required was a move to a more stable online store network. Mathers said Shopify played an important role in that process.
WEBSITE UNWORTHY
When Mathers took up leadership at Snuggle Hunny, the first roadblock to her success was clear. Simply put, its website would constantly crash with no notice, leaving customers unable to access the storefront or complete orders.
The business was losing valuable sales as a result, and, perhaps more worrying, the constant site issues led customers to question whether the brand was reputable.
“That was the biggest issue to me,” Mathers said.
When you’ve got people asking, is this a proper website? Is this a proper business? If you’re an online business, you’ve got to be able to keep your website up.Julie Mathers, CEO, Snuggle Hunny
The crashes obviously hurt the brand’s revenue and relevance in the market. Worse still, whenever this happened, the team had no visibility into it until customer complaints were already coming in. This made it incredibly difficult to solve, as the team was constantly reacting to the issue, rather than proactively fixing it.
“It was obviously a really poor experience,” Mathers explained.
The issue with Snuggle Hunny’s previous web host was that it relied on external delivery network service systems to show sites in different locations, which could affect performance. The result – having an intermittently inaccessible website – proved costly from both a financial and brand standpoint.
As such, the search for a new hosting service began.
Enter Shopify
After a period of researching different website hosting services, the Snuggle Hunny team settled on Shopify. It was a solution that Mathers had experience with, having used it at Flora & Fauna, and it better fit the brand’s individual needs.
For example, Snuggle Hunny is largely focused on serving its local Australian market, but is also in the beginning stages of an expansion into the United States. This necessitates an e-commerce platform that can work across multiple markets, convert multiple currencies, and juggle the brand’s individual direct-to-consumer and business-to-business websites and orders seamlessly.
“That international bit was actually huge for us because if we can’t get the currency right, we can’t push into new markets or we would get complaints galore,” Mathers explained.
The team opted to launch its international site as a localised version of its Australian website, rather than as a separate site entirely, like its B2B portal. The benefit, Mathers explained, is that this keeps the site consistent across markets and keeps things simple for the Snuggle Hunny team.
Launching a dedicated B2B storefront made the brand’s customer-focused and business-focused services more distinct. Now, using Shopify, the brand can have two separate stores that cater to each individual customer. Those stores are built on the same backend and updates to one can seamlessly be pushed to the other, making the experience better for both.
A TOUGH IMPLEMENTATION, MADE EASY
Migrating across e-commerce platforms is rarely an easy task. It’s something Mathers has done several times, and considers some prior migration efforts to have been nightmares.
This time, however, the team was shocked at how seamless the process was.
“It was a breeze,” Mathers said.
We were very prepared for the whole thing. [Husband and business partner] Tom and I have put in 10 websites now during our career, so we have it down pat in terms of knowing the things that can trip you up, but Shopify was great to work with.Julie Mathers, CEO, Snuggle Hunny
For the creative side of the equation, Snuggle Hunny leaned on agency partner Process Creative to help structure the site in a way that would showcase the designs of the brand’s products, while also improving the customer journey and telling the brand’s story.
All in all, the initial data migration took around two weeks. Following that, Snuggle Hunny and Process Creative went through and optimised the brand’s new site to be what they needed, ensuring it properly represented Snuggle Hunny’s new identity.
“Websites used to be super transactional,” Mathers explained.
“We still deliver, and have made it easy to check out, and make the website experience as awesome as it can be – but I also think that websites need to be a bit more than that now.”
Telling the brand’s story, and reflecting its values, is incredibly important in the modern e-commerce space, Mathers said. As such, the team has worked to ensure that it is easy for customers to purchase the items they need quickly, or dive in and learn about the brand and products if that’s where they are in their buying journey.
NEW WEBSITE GIVES EXPLOSIVE BOOST
30 %year-on-year growth in D2C sales
40 % of customers returning for more purchases
3 k+reviews in a year
The results of this exercise are impressive, to say the least.
Direct-to-consumer sales have grown about 130 per cent, year on year, and the conversion rate has grown as well. The business is getting more customers onto the site, thanks to an increased marketing push, and, due to significantly improved reliability, the site is able to handle the traffic without crashing and enable new sales.
Customer retention has become more clear to Mathers as well, with around 40 per cent of customers now returning for additional purchases. Before switching to Shopify, the Snuggle Hunny team couldn’t accurately track each customer’s lifetime value, Mathers said. But more people are spending more time and money on the site since the migration, which is having a positive effect on customer interaction.
Snuggle Hunny went from having about 200 annual product reviews to over 3000 in the past year, largely due to the fact that, using the Shopify system, it can now ask customers to review purchased products, something that can substantially improve a potential customer’s trust in the brand.
Additionally, with improved sales reporting functions within the new site, Mathers and Snuggle Hunny’s leadership team are more easily and quickly able to see what is working, and what isn’t, and pivot the business quickly.
STANDING OUT PROUDLY
The move to Shopify was both seamless and impactful for the Snuggle Hunny business. While migrating to a new system is always a daunting process, undergoing the change has positively influenced many parts of the consumer journey on the Snuggle Hunny website, and has made the brand stand out in a way that it struggled to before.
For me, I want to create something that customers want to go back to. I want people to feel emotional about our brand, and to feel like they’re part of something.Julie Mathers, CEO, Snuggle Hunny
