An Adobe Commerce solution for a beloved global audio brand.
With a legacy stretching back over 60 years, a brand like Audio-Technica that’s held in such high esteem deserves a web presence that sets them above the competition. As marketplace and third party stockists generate a healthy chunk of their online revenue, it’s crucial that Audio-Technica’s own website gives customers the best on-site experience possible to not only exceed their high standards but continue a long lasting legacy of excellence.
Leveraging Adobe Commerce’s robust features and flexibility, coupled with Hyvä’s modern frontend technology, they can now offer customers a seamless, lightning-fast browsing and shopping experience. This upgrade not only enhances their online presence but also positions them for sustained growth and success in the competitive eCommerce landscape.
Multi-site, multi-store, multi-lingual Adobe Commerce solutions
Hyvä is considered to be the future of the Magento frontend – and it was the perfect tool for this project, delivering unparalleled performance and flexibility.
Audio-Technica x Aware Digital project at a glance
Identifying the blockers
The first stage of the project is to collaborate with all key stakeholders to unravel the issues that are causing bottlenecks. Often these can only be identified by digging deeper into seemingly innocuous problems, which in turn stifle other growth opportunities.
Working with the Audio-Technica team and carrying out our own technical audits we quickly established:
- Core Magento was several versions out of date causing issues with extension compatability and leaving it at risk of being compromised
- The standard Luma front end theme was difficult to work with, slow to update and clashing with a custom WordPress integration
- A huge technical debt was hampering upgrades and forcing development road maps to be delayed
- A distinct lack of agency and account management support who were not driving the project forward
- Increasingly slow deployment times, outages and delays when releasing new code
Setting out key requirements
With a clear assessment in hand, we roadmapped an ambitious yet achievable plan to get Audio-Technica not just back on track, but allow them to thrive:
- Designate a core team of project managers, designers, front and back end developers and task them with working with Audio-Technica’s stakeholders to deliver a high quality technical product
- Reduce their technical debt to allow us to streamline deployment time, create a more manageable website and provide enough headroom for implementing new features
- Implement PageBuilder and CMS blocks to allow the team to quickly build out landing pages and new modals that fit their own brand requirements
- Ensure security was at the forefront of the upgrade with PCI compliant payment portals, MFA user access and dedicated servers for production, staging and local instances
Most challenging of all – the project turnaround was to be no longer than 6 months
Adobe Commerce with Hyvä
Lightweight Solutions: The Marriage of Magento and Hyvä
With speed and agility in mind, we engineered a lightweight Magento build on the Hyvä theme framework. This dynamic duo delivered unparalleled performance without compromising on functionality, ensuring swift load times and effortless navigation for visitors across all devices.
Roadmapping Audio-Technica's
new and improved eCommerce presence.
With a stable, easy to use Adobe Commerce solution, Aware have been able to road map future enhancements for Audio-Technica on the platform, and focusing on bespoke business integrations/
Speak to Aware about your Adobe Commerce journey.
Let’s start a conversation and see how we can help you transition, upgrade or stabilise your eCommerce.
Contact
Talk to Aware about your Adobe Commerce today.
Built fit for purpose and the future.
Aware redesigned the entire frontend experience and rebuilt it with Hyvä integrating multiple bespoke connections on Adobe Commerce.
Adobe Commerce rescue, now Bigger and Better than Ever.
Customer focused content editing.
Aware helped Audio-Technica to launch their new and upgraded Adobe Commerce solution in less than 6 months. With over 10 sites and with 8 language options. The online store featured advanced integrations between Adobe Commerce, SAP and D365.
Now fully upgraded and secure, Audio-Technica can focus on a future and the road maps Aware have put in place to help the Global brand move forward.
Unrivalled Magento performance with Hyvä
Hyvä comes into its own as an alternative frontend solution, delivering the tools for an immersive cross-device experience without many of the drawbacks of existing PWA themes.
Hyvä provides a lower bar to entry for developers and has much more in common with standard Magento themes. The result is faster development times and much less potential for issues – and if one is encountered, comprehensive documentation and direct access to Hyvä’s expert developer team means there’s the help available to solve it quickly. There’s also a library of compatibility modules which work with many popular Magento modules.
PageBuilder & CMS blocks
When Audio-Technica first joined Aware for support, their initial Magento was orientated around a WordPress CMS integration, with bespoke code and a Liquid frontend. This left Audio Technica with technical debt that left them stuck on an outdated Magento.
The solution.
During the Hyvä implementation Aware removed all instances of the WordPress integration, working closely with Audio-Technica to replicate their bespoke blocks in Adobe Commerce page builder. Not to waste time on manual lift and shift, Aware were able to build an end to end data migration tool that allowed for a seamless transition.
The future.
With a global presence, Audio-Technica aims to consistently showcase new products that impress their customers every day. Having the ability to create dynamic landing pages without a developer inside of Adobe Commerce has been a game changer, keeping them secure and future proofing their product for years to come.
Personalised Marketing: Integrating Dotdigital for Targeted Campaigns
As cookies and data privacy restricts common acquisition channels, personalised marketing is a game-changer. By integrating Dotdigital, a powerful email marketing platform, we’re able to segment their audiences and deliver tailored campaigns that resonated with individual preferences. Using this data-driven approach will allow us to foster stronger connections with customers and drIve repeat business.
Plus, using the sophisticated automations, triggers and data available within Dotdigital, we can start sending messages at the right time, to the right contact rather than relying on old fashioned batch and blast email marketing campaigns.
The results
Achievements so far
The dust is still settling on what has been an extremely quick turnaround taking a stagnant storefront to a fully operational and optimised ecommerce platform. Thankfully the alignment between Aware Digital and all of Audio-Technica’s global eCommerce and marketing teams has proven to be a winning formula. In the first 6 months we’ve been able to:
- Rebuild the entire Magento instance, incorporating over a dozen store views, handling translations and currencies
- Optimised the entire front end by replacing an outdated and weighty Luma theme with a best in class Hyva solution
- Passed Core Web Vitals and achieved incredibly high scores on mobile and desktop for page speed and performance
- Reinstated their Dotdigital account to focus on first party data collection and email remarketing
- Carried out a thorough UX review of the homepage to identify areas for customer journey optimisation
- Increased deployment time from ~1 day to ~5 minutes, resulting in better website stability and allowing us to adhere to an ambitious 2024 development roadmap
Future developments
Now that the website is on a much healthier foundation we’re able to plan further ahead and plan further improvements, rather than have to deal with existing issues:
- Streamline the checkout process to make it an enjoyable experience for Audio-Technica’s customers and unify the solution across the global network of websites
- Implement further customer segmentation and grouping to better target audiences with products, pricing and marketing assets that are more relevant to them
- Work with localised Audio-Technica teams across the rest of the world to centralise all ecommerce activity into the website
- Add additional GeoLocation functionality to ensure that locally relevant content is being shown for the right customers
- Proactively implement security updates, patches and monitor for any performance issues, rather than wait for it to be flagged
Best of all – we’ve been able to work collaboratively across multiple teams and stakeholders to deliver an extremely ambitious project that lays the groundwork for future growth.
Ready to start working with a leading UK based eCommerce growth agency?
Knowing your objectives and core business visions will allow us to create a plan with the right actions and solutions to offer you the best eCommerce platform.
Speak to Aware about your Adobe Commerce journey.
Let’s start a conversation and see how we can help you transition, upgrade or stabilise your eCommerce.
Contact
Talk to Aware about your Adobe Commerce today.