How brands have tackled ecommerce migrations to Centra with Storyblok
As we see more retail businesses explore multiple pathways to connect with their customers through more than just an ecommerce storefront, many are looking toward a more flexible and dynamic way of managing their content for various platforms, such as omnichannel experiences.
We continuously see retailers looking to grow their ecommerce efforts while being overwhelmed by a rigid monolithic system that ultimately results in slow site performance, poor site security and breakdowns – and lost revenue as a result.
Organizations are discovering the need to adapt to new innovations to keep up with their consumer’s habits or risk being left behind. Migrating to a headless content management system (CMS) platform that provides a best-of-breed experience rather than an all-in-one suite ecommerce platform allows brands to take control of what goes into their technology stack and what stays out, cherry-picking the technologies that fit their needs and customers.
What is ecommerce migration?
Simply put, this is when an organization goes through the process of moving its ecommerce website from one platform to another. This is either done from one ecommerce platform to another, or in this case through a futureproof setup using a headless CMS.
Should your organization consider migrating your ecommerce storefront to a headless CMS?
Headless commerce goes beyond offering your product and services through a single website but instead through omnichannel content distributions that can allow your brand to stay constantly connected with your customers as they move. Migrating to a headless CMS is a task that brands must prepare for to ensure proper data migration, testing and launch.
A headless CMS can open opportunities for your brand and internal team. Its benefits for ecommerce businesses specifically are that it empowers your content creation and marketing team to focus on getting the customer user journey right throughout the entire ecommerce journey – and it provides more personalized experiences. Bringing a headless CMS into your ecommerce plans gives your marketers and editors full control over your content and exactly how you tell your brand story to your audience across multiple platforms.
Here are some things your organization should consider about migrating your ecommerce storefront to a headless CMS:
Omnichannel content distributions: This gives your team full flexibility and functionality with your front end, while APIs take all the heavy lifting to push your content to any channel while storing it in one centralized platform and location. This includes distribution to websites and online stores that can be integrated with ecommerce integrations such as Centra to create mobile applications, AR/VR, voice assistant content and PoS interfaces.
A reduction in go-to-market time: As all content pieces are stored in a centralized platform, any distribution can be instantaneous when launching into new markets and campaigns on the go.
A best-of-breed selection: With a headless CMS, a best-of-breed selection is possible for your team, allowing them to pick technologies, frameworks and integrations that best fit their needs , creating the best possible content experience.
Storyblok as the headless CMS for ecommerce
Storyblok is a headless CMS that enables developers, marketers and editors to deliver powerful content experiences across any digital platform and channel, working with retail businesses worldwide. With a headless CMS, marketers, developers and editors can look forward to:
An easy-to-use and flexible visual editor for creating product pages, catalogs and marketing campaigns in real time
APIs and leading ecommerce integrations for a best-of-breed approach
Personalization and localization tools that optimize and create audience-specific content
A scheduling and releases feature that allows you to group content into releases and automatically publish at the right moment to maximize your sales
Collaboration tools directly within the Visual Editor allow your team to publish faster and increase productivity
One of the most secure, enterprise-grade CMS’s on the market – ISO 27001 certified
An image service that optimizes and caches every image through Storyblok’s Image service and global Content Delivery System (CDN).
Nestable and composable components that provide a breadth of templates, global components and more for marketers and editors to work with
Retailers that went headless with Storyblok
Storyblok has been the headless CMS of choice for multiple brands, pairing powerful content management experiences with ecommerce integrations. Centra allows brands to enter the new generation of composable commerce architectures, paired together with Storyblok’s headless CMS to create a centralized system that suits your brand’s needs.
Brands that have successfully used Storyblok with Centra include Stronger and Xlash, working collaboratively with Swedish digital ecommerce agency Made People.
Made People’s optimization for hypergrowth and rebranding with Storyblok
Stronger is a Swedish lifestyle and fitness clothing brand for women, rapidly growing as one of Europe’s most successful DTC (direct-to-consumer) brands, present worldwide and selling online in over 120 countries, growing from zero to 25 million EUR of annual online revenue in just under five years.
Choosing Storyblok & Centra for Stronger
Stronger came to Made People with no set technology-centered specifications, having previously been on a more monolithic Magento setup. Yet, their only requirement was for a brand new architecture that could futureproof their business for the next four to five years, where they could migrate to a stack that could be adapted to future consumer experiences as the brand and market grew.
With Storyblok already on Made People’s agenda, this was a perfect opportunity and system to aid Stronger’s vision to grow and focus their content toward their customers, into new markets, and with omnichannel and localized-focused experiences on the horizon through a set of best-of-breed integrations with Stronger’s architecture. The following stack included:
CMS: Storyblok
Framework: Nuxt.JS
Hosting: Cloudflare
ecommerce Platform: Centra
CDN: Cloudflare
Filtering: Findify
Emails & Newsletter: Klaviyo
Reviews: Yotpo
On-site Instagram Display: Flowbox
End-to-Dnd Delivery Solution: Ingrid
Returns Management: ReBOUND
On top of this, building with Centra as an API-based ecommerce engine through Storyblok allowed the brand to use the two systems together to create the ultimate B2C content experience hand-in-hand. Made People were able to enrich and migrate any product data from Centra on the backend and push it forward to the frontend via Storyblok’s CMS. With the Visual Editor experience, you can see content as you are changing it in real time. Custom-built components were also created by the agency for Stronger to meet their specifications and needs, consequently fitting with the Storyblok experience to reuse components and tools for different projects and campaigns repeatedly.
After launching the site in November 2020, just in time for Black Friday, the new site tested the limits and performance of what was to come. Stronger was able to see incredible improvements in its overall growth and efficiency, with instant results
From November 2020 to November 2021, they have shown an astonishing (Centra):
167% increase in orders
172% increase in total revenue
14% increase in mobile conversion
123% increase in total traffic
We want to give our clients an easy start and grow with their technology stack as the business grows without having to change the whole architecture. With Storyblok, we have the perfect CMS. We can start fast and simply expand it as we keep tapping into new markets. - Jonathan Selander, CEO, and Co-Founder at Made People
Xlash’s global ecommerce expansion
Xlash is a Swedish beauty brand that has taken the world by storm over the last few years, expanding into new markets and locales, creating unique, clinically proven and dermatologically tested vegan mascara alongside eyelash, eyebrow and lip care alternatives. Today, the brand comprises a team of 40 people, focusing primarily on ecommerce and B2B efforts.
Migrating from a monolithic setup to Storyblok and Centra
Xlash came to Made People as a fast-growing consumer brand that needed to get new content to market as quickly and efficiently as possible as it expanded into new markets and languages. Having previously been on a WordPress setup representing seven different WordPress stores for each market, processes and any updates to the pages had to be done up to seven times in each online store, bringing frustrations across teams. Additionally, any product stock uploads with their ERP had to be manually done by hand due to WordPress’s monolithic structure. This hindered the brand’s ability to scale and grow and created more static processes internally.
Xlash made the decision to migrate to Storyblok alongside Centra and Business Central (their ERP), with Made People consolidating the change to reinvent their entire system, in 2021 and early 2022 through a best-of-breed solution. The following integrations were used:
Ecommerce platform: Centra
ERP: Business Central
Reviews: Yotpo
Direct Instagram Display Component: Yotpo Visual UGC
Newsletter: Klaviyo
Financial Services: Klarna & Ayden
This ensured that the brand could scale successfully from the start and grow into new locales and regions. Through its ecommerce migration, Made People and Xlash could build all product pages inside Storyblok, ensuring that all referenced real data came directly from Centra. In this case, it is important to note that there is no sync between Storyblok and Central, as all content is built using references from Centra to a certain product on Storyblok’s front end.
The overall implementation and migration process took four months, through an external JSON backend that Made People prepared, allowing Xlash’s ecommerce team to easily build existing and new product pages, reference to Centra’s API integration, and feed to Storyblok’s frontend. Compatibility is an important factor to take into consideration throughout ecommerce migrations – with Centra, products were able to be pulled to specific market sites, and today, Xlash is available worldwide in 120+ countries, 12 languages and over 7 currencies.
To top it off, just one month after the brand’s relaunch, Xlash’s organic traffic had almost doubled, with 90% of site traffic coming from mobile devices.
The ability to preview and see what you are doing has been key in the Storyblok. It’s easier for non-technical people to understand what they are doing and see the results of their actions immediately before it’s put live to the customer, which many CMSs don’t offer - Emelie Samuelsson, Head of Tech at Xlash
Considering an ecommerce migration for your brand soon?
Storyblok is able to bring your brand to a new generation of ecommerce efforts with Centra. As a headless CMS, Storyblok is made to fit your scalability needs, regardless of your product, markets or languages, or the best-of-breed selection to grow. Choosing the best technology stack for your brand’s needs is vital in creating the best possible experience for users.
If you are interested in migrating your ecommerce storefront soon, why not consider Storyblok as a headless CMS? To learn more about the platform, discover its content management capabilities and learn about their Enterprise offering, reach out to Storyblok directly.
Storyblok has been able to help businesses like Stronger and Xlash propel themselves into new possibilities and audiences by providing a great content management experience to their marketers, editors and developers. In combination with Storyblok, a Centra integration can help you build an on-brand experience and share your content with the world.
