JH wins Best Technical Achievement for a B2B eCommerce website – for the second year running
We’re thrilled to share that JH have won a W3 Silver Award for Best Technical Achievement for the second year in a row – this time for our work with Workwear Express on their B2B eCommerce site!
Last year we announced we won the W3 Best Technical Achievement Award for the PWA we built for Selco Builders Warehouse, and we’re thrilled to confirm we are winners again in 2021 – this time for the PWA site we built for Workwear Express.
A leader in personalised clothing
As an independently owned, UK based business, Workwear Express now serve a customer base of over B2B 600,000 clients, supplying businesses across 100 different countries in 2021 alone. 30 years of expertise and two 40,000 sq. ft purpose-built factories make Workwear Express Europe’s largest customised workwear production and fulfilment centre.
Offering Embroidery, print, transfer and more, their end-to-end custom work clothing process covers personalisation across a range of 20,000+ products – including uniforms, PPE, promotional clothing and much more. Supporting businesses of all sizes, from a one-time buyer to a blue-chip giant seeking bespoke manufacturing, Workwear Express have built a reputation in the industry as providers of top quality bespoke products, with exceptional customer service to match.
Time to level up
Partnering with JH allowed Workwear Express to unlock new levels of business growth. When they joined JH in June 2019, the biggest challenge Workwear faced was that they were processing customisable product orders manually. Prior to the site re-build, Workwear did not have the ability to approve, process and confirm customer orders that included artwork automatically through the site – their internal team was required to communicate via phone or email with customers in order to approve artwork, order quantities and turnaround times. Site speed was also a big issue for Workwear. Their product catalogue is vast and navigating a site with slow load-times was a paint-point for both customers and the internal team.
A new chapter
JH worked closely with Workwear to devise a plan of action that would see them fully automate their sales process utilising the best solutions and integrations for their business model. We migrated the Workwear Express site from their previous PHP custom platform to Magento 2.3.5 with PWA functionality in order to boost speed and agility. Building the site as PWA, using headless architecture, also means that Workwear can effectively scale for future growth – while the site took only 4 months to build, it has future-proofed Workwear’s business for years to come.
The process of artwork approval and confirmation is now fully automated using Magento. B2B buyers are able to access the Workwear customer portal for their orders, where all communications and information surrounding the status of their order, such as artwork approvals, order quantities and turnaround times, can be found at all times. The customer now also receives automated notifications at each stage of their buying-journey. They are also now empowered to manage their order, including re-proofing artwork. This has dramatically improved customer trust, cutting down on the amount of customer queries.
Supporting a growing business
A robust and user-friendly website, paired with robust integrations with Workwear’s complex back-of-house systems – like their manufacturing and personalisation processes – resulted in almost overnight business growth, in addition to enabling them to capture additional revenue and scale up quickly.
After the new website launched, Workwear Express saw huge growth across their key KPIs, including:
- x2 increase in site speed
- 23% increase in revenue
- 17% increase in conversions
- 12% increase in AOV
One of the fastest sites in the world
Even with a complex user journey and intricate personalisation functionality, we were able to build Workwear a site that was so optimised for performance, it now ranks as one of the fastest PWA eCommerce websites in the world!
“Being market leaders, it’s important for WWE to continuously provide exceptional service at all levels – and coupled with great customer service and the wide range of products and offerings, site speed is a cornerstone underpinning the success of this exceptional company!” – Janak Kika, Account Manager for Workwear at JH
Bespoke and unique features
One of the most exciting aspects of this site for us was the huge range of unique features the JH team worked on – our developers relish a technical challenge, so it’s doubly exciting for us that the technical achievements of this project have been recognised with this award.
“In my opinion, this site showcases the best (and most technically challenging) mobile experience we’ve ever created. The product customisation added an additional layer of complexity to the user journey, posing challenges for accessibility, functionality, and usability. The hardest task was translating that into an experience that worked just as well on mobile as it did on desktop, but the attention to detail paid off – the result is a smooth and responsive experience that’s easy to navigate and understand for Workwear Express’ customers.” – Oliver Chenery, JH Lead Developer on the Workwear project
Product customisation
The most complex area for Workwear was product customisation – with 1000s of products and genuinely limitless possibilities, we had to find a way to translate all those options into a simple and clear user journey that ensured customers felt empowered to create their vision. Backed up by extensive research from our design team, we created a step-by-step process, aided by smart functionality that updated prices and totals in real-time, giving customers all the information they need to make a purchase decision.
Wearpack bundles
A key tool for Workwear Express was the option to create bundles of products – showcasing the range and possibilities of their catalogue to new and returning customers. We developed a bespoke bundling system that empowered the Workwear team to add new and updated product bundles to their site – allowing them to promote new products or offer discounts on slower-moving lines as they see fit and without additional development time.
Customer service portal
With a bespoke and centralised customer service portal, Workwear customers are able to access all their orders, customisations, and communications all in one place. Staff are also now able to access a customer’s basket remotely and add products to their basket for them – giving the service capability of a traditional B2B business with the self-service experience customers expect from an eCommerce website.
Shared baskets
B2B customers often require input or signoff from several members of staff internally – to make this easier, we built a ‘shared basket’ system into Workwear’s site functionality, enabling customers not only to share the basket they’d created with a colleague or collaborator, but allow them to edit or add to it remotely. While this functionality is becoming more common in eCommerce now – Deliveroo launched a similar group order function during 2021 – when the Workwear site launched in June 2020, this was a feature arguably ahead of its time!
Recognising technical achievement
As winners of Mobile Excellence in eCommerce at the Magento Imagine Awards 4 years running – making us the most decorated agency at those awards – we’re no stranger to creating award-winning websites. While this W3 award for Best Technical Achievement on Workwear Express’ eCommerce site joins our already long list of accolades, we are proud to have our technical expertise recognised by the W3 Awards once again, and proud to have brought a great client along with us.
If you’d like to achieve the same growth and award-winning success that Workwear Express have gained for your business, get in touch with our team via thrive@wearejh.com or +44(0)115 7940060.