Kaporal leans on Front-Commerce to improve online engagement
Kaporal is known for its commitment to its customers. In 2020, Kaporal decided to look to web agency Smile for an overhaul to its digital strategy, concentrating on improving its online customer experience. By reviewing the e-commerce architecture already in place it was decided that they move from Magento 1 to Magento 2, putting together a strategy that would allow them the flexibility to continue to adapt to customer demands now and in the future.
“Front-Commerce is for us the most efficient solution to make our e-commerce platform evolve. The Front-Commerce team is available to help us both with the possibilities offered by the solution and also to support the development team. The functional coverage and the technical quality bring a real gain in productivity.” – Nicolas Ciccione, E-Business, CRM and Innovation Director at Kaporal
Enhancing the customer experience through innovative technology
French clothing company Kaporal has specialized in denim since its creation in 2004. It is around jeans that the brand has built a real success story. With a know-how acquired over nearly 15 years, Kaporal sells its products in over 100 branded physical stores, via more than 1600 retailers and also directly via its own e-commerce platform. In the French Fashion market, kaporal.com is ranked number 115 with > US$20m in online sales in 2021.
They had been using Magento 1 to power their e-commerce for a few years. Not only was this platform aging, the vulnerability of the M1 frontend was a factor accelerating the need for change.
The Kaporal team studied the options available to it to make its e-commerce site evolve as efficiently as possible while preparing for the future. It was determined that migration to a microservices architecture was the innovative solution needed in order to reach for the best performance improvements possible.
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“This architecture opens up new perspectives for Kaporal, such as the possibility of changing the back office without changing the front office. It will no longer be necessary to go through a complete overhaul of the platform, the modular architecture will therefore be more sustainable.” – Source : Pierrick Olivier Smile
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Headless and microservices are the new standard for e-commerce architecture
A headless architecture combined with a PWA was chosen to skyrocket web performance and business efficiency. Decoupling the original Magento 1 frontend and backend, and migrating to Magento 2 with the implementation of the Front-Commerce frontend, has provided Kaporal with a seamless front-end experience across all current sales channels. With the possibility to evolve and add new channels when needed, under the same architecture.
A direct migration to Magento 2 implied a complete redesign project: long, costly and risky. Regardless of the technical aspects, the mobilization of internal teams is often very trying, not to mention the risk of turnover loss during the changeover. So Kaporal chose to migrate progressively, in two different phases. This also allowed them to isolate risks, especially around important seasonal sales periods for the retailer:
Front-Commerce: a brick that you can lean on to achieve competitive advantage
The Kaporal team turned to Front-Commerce to learn more about our solution and know-how. For them, it is the best solution to meet the challenges they were facing:
- an essential component for a scalable platform with an agnostic approach that allows to connect different functional or business solutions together (composable commerce approach)
- an ultra high-performance frontend that optimizes conversion rates thanks to the PWA standard, especially on mobile phones, Kaporal’s preferred target audience.
- UX freedom thanks to the decoupling of backend and frontend offering the possibility to provide users with the ultimate customer experience.
- an unbeatable time-to-market/cost ratio thanks to the industrialization level of the solution and its functional coverage (100% of the functionalities of Magento 1 and 2 in Community or Enterprise version are natively covered by Front-Commerce)
Accompanying digital growth, continually
Kaporal changed payment provider during the second phase of migration. The ease of switching service providers with a microservices architecture was not only demonstrated successfully, but effectuated without issues whilst changing the backend solution entirely.
Results
The figures speak for themselves. Using headless technology divides the cost of migration by 5, the time to market by 4, while optimizing the customer experience on all media including mobile.
For the KPIs monitored, the positive impact was immediate with the launch of the new version of the Kaporal online store under Front-Commerce. And, with 9 months hindsight, on a like-for-like basis, Kaporal now has solid comparative figures:
- A 60% drop in the bounce rate on all devices, linked to the positive impact on the site’s display performance and speed: faster page loading.
- Increase in overall conversion rate: +15% on desktop and +8% on mobile du to a smoother user experience and responsive UX.
- Increase in site engagement with a positive increase in the number of page views (especially the product catalog): +40% and in the useful time spent on the site +8%, due to fluid navigation, ultra-fast page loading
“ Headless architecture will become the market’s standard in the future. Front-Commerce has become a foundation of our e-commerce platform allowing it to evolve gradually while controlling our costs. It’s extremely performant and being able to work on the one part of the experience that needs attention is ideal. Flexibility is changing how each brand does e-commerce. The freedom of structural choices that are invisible for the customer, but have a big impact for the business, allow companies with bigger teams and more rigid processes to move step-by-step on the important stuff and take the time to make decisions. And being able to address each user personally with an exceptionally performant experience where he or she is, that is to say on his device is exciting.”
– Nicolas Ciccione, E-Business, CRM and Innovation Director at Kaporal