Redesign and rebuild for BOSKA: quality first

BOSKA is a Dutch family business making food tools that last a lifetime since 1896. They always strive for quality in everything; hence, at Code, we are pretty proud to call ourselves BOSKA’s e-commerce partner for five years already! In 2017 we took care of BOSKA’s migration from Magento to Shopify Plus, including a B2B environment: five years of Code collab, five international B2C stores and five B2B stores later, it was time to renew the B2C webshops on Shopify 2.0.

CLIENT

BOSKA

INDUSTRY

Home, Food

TECHNOLOGY

Shopify plus webshops

PACKAGE

Webshop rebuild

Services we delivered

Migration

Store Development

E-Commerce Optimization

UX/UI Design

Email Marketing

Internationalization

B2B

Improved UX with Shopify 2.0

BOSKA was once one of Code’s very first Shopify clients, and has grown ever since. Not only thanks to the moving online of the B2B branch (which up until 2017 operated as an offline wholesaler), but also by focusing increasingly on the customer and their needs. The upgrade to Shopify 2.0 was the perfect timing to give the whole User Experience of the BOSKA store a boost. The big plus of Shopify 2.0 is the ‘sections everywhere’ feature, which gives not only the homepage but all pages infinite flexibility - without any complicated HTML programming. 2.0 also means faster loading speed (which translates to a better SEO ranking, lower bounce rates and higher conversion) and faster checkout. This opened a range of possibilities for the store.

Rebuild? Time to evaluate!

Of course, BOSKA opted for quality here as well and took the opportunity of the 2.0 switch to evaluate their whole e-commerce strategy. Head of E-commerce Pascal Verheul recalls: “At the start of the project I had a sparring session with Wouter (CEO), Marloes (Project Manager) and Coen (E-Commerce Strategist) of Code, about the question: what could this look like? That quickly got interesting! Coen proposed to evaluate the entire website, particularly the UX, and then make the move from 1.0 to 2.0 with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Start nice and fast, put it live, and then continue building towards strategic goals.”

Interested in a sparring session with Coen about your business? Check out Code’s Acceleration & Growth Program here!

Coen, too, is enthusiastic about BOSKA’s ambition and drive to keep innovating. “BOSKA is originally a B2B brand, but they realize more and more that D2C calls for a fundamentally different approach from B2B. It’s really inspiring to work with a family business like BOSKA, which has existed for a hundred years already but is still open to improvement and renewal - to give their customers a first-class experience. Not just with their quality products, but also by offering excellent service and customer experience.”

A new design was also part of the plan, because the old one had not changed for five years and wasn’t optimal to begin with. “Code advised us to work with Bolden, who delivered a really beautiful design. It was almost directly perfect, we hardly needed to finetune anything. Our previous design was made in-house and a lot of it turned out to not be possible in Shopify, which led to the result falling slightly short. Back then I was caught in the middle in terms of communication, too: that went totally different now. Bolden knows how UX works and they have Code on speed dial: as a client there is no need for you to play referee between your designer and your builder. Quite nice.”

At the start of our Shopify 2.0 project I had a sparring session with Code, about the question: what could this look like? That quickly got interesting!

Pascal Verheul Head of E-commerce at BOSKA

It’s really inspiring to work with a family business like BOSKA, which has existed for a hundred years already but is open to improvement and renewal - to give their customers a first-class experience.

Coen Frederiks E-Commerce Strategist

UX optimisations: bestsellers and giftwrapping

All five B2C stores (NL/DE/FR/EN/USA) went live in October 2022, just in time for the holidays. Important UX optimisations were the bestseller module on the homepage, the entirely renewed navigation and the extensive blog with inspirational content.

BOSKA also pays special attention to keeping its products giftable. Pascal: “We did some research in the checkout once, and found out that 51% of our orders are a present. Hence, a gift-wrapping service is a must. We tried to find a good, standard gift-wrapping app in the Shopify Appstore, but we didn’t find any. In the end, front-end developer Aivis built one for us himself.” That’s how Code works!

E-Commerce goals for 2023: sustainable growth

Now that the new store is live Pascal can look ahead. In December 2022, BOSKA receives its official B-corp certification. At Code, we very much applaud this! We love clients like BOSKA, Stoov, Kambukka and MUD Jeans, who take the environment seriously and actively follow up on this with their B-corp certification. Pascal: “Ultimately, we want to become an impact organisation. Our vision is quality = sustainability. With 100% timeless designs and lifelong warranties on most of our products we prevent waste.”

2023 will be the year in which BOSKA will get even more serious about its growth strategy, partly in collaboration with Code’s ecommerce strategist Coen. Pascal: “Our Customer Retention has to get a lot higher. Our target for 2023 is 25%, which we hope to realize by broadening our product catalogue and by personalizing our marketing even further. We were always known for our cheese slicers and fondue sets, but we have expanded from cheese tools to food tools - basically everything that makes food lovers’ mouths water. Last year we launched cooking knives and kitchen knives for instance, and an electric fondue set: those are completely new product categories for us! Next summer we also plan to launch a series of BBQ tools.”

Since 2021 BOSKA also improved their cross-selling game. Where the selection of related products was once done manually, on gut feeling, now BOSKA has discovered the app CartUp. Pascal: “It wasn’t yet integrated with Shopify though, so we connected Code with its owner to make a connector. The app uses AI to select the bestsellers for our homepage banners. We’re planning on fine-tuning it further in the coming period, to also show relevant accessories with products.”