Simply put, scalability in business means managing challenges efficiently while maintaining a healthy profit level as the business grows. When it comes to eCommerce, scalability becomes crucial to long-term success. As we have witnessed, the e-commerce industry, accelerated by the pandemic, has seen a staggering increase in the overall number of global sales. The same is true for Green Paper Products, whose sales dramatically rose during COVID-19, and as a result, was looking to quickly implement a scalable eCommerce solution. Their web and digital marketing agency, Vividfront, utilized Storyblok to quickly design and develop a custom website experience that modernized the brand without taking away what made Green Paper Products special.
About VividFront
VividFront is a full-service digital marketing agency, offering end-to-end service with a refreshing and holistic approach to client-agency relationships. This can be reflected in their core values, including putting the team first, taking the high road, and fostering flow states.
With B2B and B2C clientele, their vast portfolio includes projects across the clothing, jewelry, home goods, financial, educational, and medical industries.
Who is Green Paper Products
As the name suggests, Green Paper Products is a company focused on providing sustainable alternatives to environmentally harmful tableware and food service products. Their impressive selection of high-quality biodegradable and compostable products from renewable sources reflects their commitment to protecting the environment.
With 13 years of experience in the industry, Green Paper Products has scaled their company to adapt to change, achieving great success in the process. Despite their small team, their renowned customer service and exceptional product offerings have helped them become a top direct-to-consumer supplier in the sustainable product space.
After working with Green Paper Products for a year, VividFront observed that connecting Green Paper Products’s website to other marketing platforms became increasingly difficult. Green Paper Products also experienced exponential growth in sales during Covid, which ignited a conversation about scalability.
The conversation
The conversation was simple — Green Paper Products needed a website solution that made connecting to other platforms a breeze while enabling growth. Their 7-year-old website wasn’t allowing for the amount of scalability they needed. The conversation quickly pivoted to discussing the steps of turning this vision into a reality, with scalability at the heart of this website redevelopment project.
The project
The original website was custom-built in .NET code. The two web developers built everything from scratch to fit Green Paper Products’s specific needs, resulting in a large number of custom features. The .net environment and the non-standard language and configurations of the previous website ultimately created obstacles to true scalability.
We didn’t have the scalability that we needed.
When looking for a long-term solution, VividFront analyzed Green Paper Products’s original website to ensure that they understood their current and future website functionality needs. They determined that Green Paper Products had a unique way of handling inventory, ordering, and shipping. However, the original website had excellent SEO value, so they wanted to keep that intact with the new site. They realized that no monolithic solution would be able to check all the boxes on Green Paper Products’ list of needs. Thus, they chose a headless solution when revamping the site, specifically Storyblok. The VividFront team had previous experience with Storyblok after working with WÜSTHOF, a global knife manufacturer. This experience in the headless realm allowed them to feel confident that Storyblok would give them the technical and content-based flexibility needed in order to deliver a better experience for managers and users.
Storyblok was the only recommendation we could give. From our understanding, it offers the best visual editing experience: Point, click, and edit.
After ending a collaborative discovery phase where the two teams worked closely together to map out the logistics behind new features, the project began and ultimately took less than 6 months to complete. In addition to the existing features, they implemented several types of content, such as a blog and FAQ section, empowering the new website with a boost in SEO opportunities. Now, users can buy eco-friendly products while learning more about ways to live a more sustainable lifestyle. The new stack of Storyblok, Shopify & next.js went live in early May and both teams saw immediate success.
Project success and future plans
Shortly after the website launch, VividFront noticed a significant decrease in the bounce rate and a very stable conversion rate.
- 16% Decrease in Sitewide Bounce Rate
- 25% Increase in Direct Traffic Conversion Rate
- 12.5% Increase in Sitewide Conversion Rate
Since Green Paper Products’ website is optimized for scalability, VividFront plans to increase the SEO value with content and ramp up Green Paper Products’s marketing efforts. They will also incorporate loyalty strategies to encourage users to come back and engage with the website.
