If you’re a dedicated trout angler, you have no doubt heard of the Elk River. The Elk River Guiding Company is world-renowned for its expert guiding service on some of the finest trout streams in North America. The company came to us with a unique challenge: blend two websites (Shopify eCommerce & WordPress) into a single experience.
After launching our site, we saw a 70% increase in traffic, and our incoming leads doubled month over month thanks to the landing page. Clients love the updated design, and they now have a better understanding of our services.
Paul, Owner Elk River Guide Co.
Why use Shopify AND WordPress?
There are quite a few reasons why you might use multiple systems for your website. We explore a few below…
You Want to Separate Content and eCommerce Administration
Are you a manager running multiple digital teams? This might just be the setup for you! Using two systems lets you keep your content marketing team busy in WordPress, while your eCommerce team manages the products and orders in Shopify. No complex permission sets are required!
You Want the Best of Both Worlds
The content marketing power of WordPress and the eCommerce ease of Shopify? Yes, please!
WordPress has made it possible for a flexible content management system to power a feature-rich, beautiful website. Administrators running Shopify eCommerce websites often wish they had more design and content flexibility out of the box.
Shopify makes eCommerce dead simple. Rich metrics, order management, POS integration? Super-easy with Shopify!
You Already Have One System Set-Up
Let’s say you already have an awesome eCommerce website set up, but you want more content freedom than the eCommerce system provides. In this case, you would likely retain your e-commerce system and add a system to provide more content flexibility.
Our Elk River client had a new Shopify website and an ageing Drupal 7 website. The Shopify website served as a digital storefront for consumer goods. The Drupal 7 website was responsible for marketing the business’s fishing guiding service. The Drupal 7 guiding website was quickly approaching end-of-life and needed to be replaced.
The Challenge
The challenge of this project was threefold:
- to replace the ageing Drupal 7 guiding website with a new guiding website
- integrate the new guiding website with the Shopify store website
- create a user-friendly system within a tight budget and timeline.
Whenever we are dealing with two separate systems, with separate navigations, we encounter the issue of user flows between the two websites. If a user wants to briefly check out the shop pages, how do we bring them back to the guiding website in a seamless user experience?
The WordPress Guiding Website
In order to save some budget for the Shopify integration, we had to eliminate the design phase and build on the go. The team reviewed analytics data and sketched out a few rough wireframes and user flows to reduce rework down the line. We created briefs on cross-site navigation and hopped almost immediately into development. It takes a special client to trust a development team with this process! Thank you for your trust in us, Paul!
The Shopify eCommerce Website Customizations & WP Integration
The Shopify website was pre-existing and doing a great job with eCommerce. In order to guide users from the Shopify store to the WordPress website in a seamless experience, we needed to integrate the WordPress website’s main navigation into the Shopify header. The design needed to closely match the WordPress website in order to create a simple, seamless experience. The integration makes administration simple; when a new page is added to the WordPress website’s main navigation, it is added to the Shopify navigation as well. Details about the custom Shopify programming are explained in the video below.
Blending the User Experience
The Shopify website initially had a light theme. We updated the styling of the Shopify website to more closely match the WordPress guiding website. This ensures the user never feels like they’re leaving the website to visit the store and keeps the user focused on achieving their goals.
Summary
This case study offers solutions for website, integration and eCommerce development within a tight timeline and budget. If you’re looking for a great eCommerce design case study, and have a bigger budget set aside for design, check out our UI & UX Design for eCommerce.
Contact us today to talk about WordPress, Shopify or your integration requirements! If you’re looking to get outfitted or venture out on the fishing trips of a lifetime, check out the Elk River Guiding Company!