“The old ecommerce platforms made it so hard to take a step forward, I was ready to quit the business. Now, I wake up knowing there’s no glitches and we can focus on community. Shopline made it super easy to set up a great website.”
Joshua Akerry, Owner, The Anime Collective
With its founding anime fashion range making an immediate impact, business for The Anime Collective looked promising. But finding an intuitive, cost-effective ecommerce platform that could keep up with founder Joshua Akerry’s vision proved challenging.
“The first platform wouldn’t play well with any third-party apps,” Joshua recalls. “We shifted to what seemed like the only other choice, and that was the start of the nightmare.”
Despite a tech background, Joshua found building the website fiddly and the platform sluggish. It threatened to slow their momentum, left little time for community building with the brand’s niche audience, and the costs were adding up.
“It was an absolute write off. Not just the slow site, but paying for server costs, plugins, yearly adjustments and additional security. Simple colour changes could take weeks.”
“The old platforms were destroying my passion and battering our revenue. A slow, glitchy website kills conversion – customers think you’re a scam, they don’t trust you, and they won’t buy from you.”
Lack of clarity around return on ad spend (ROAS) meant The Anime Collective were limited when it came to understanding their profitability and making strategic marketing decisions.
“We didn’t know where purchases were coming from, so we had to guess and calculate ROAS collectively rather than by channel – how could we know what was really working?”
“The old platforms were destroying my passion and battering our revenue. A slow, glitchy website kills conversion – customers think you’re a scam, they don’t trust you, and they won’t buy from you.”
Joshua was almost ready to give in when a colleague mentioned an APAC based platform with promising ecommerce features.
“I started building a site immediately and there were heaps of free themes and mad integrations. I didn’t need to hire any developers, it was just me. What really shocked me was the site speed. Shopline is incredibly fast!” says Joshua.
The Anime Collective was supported by the Shopline team to migrate over 8000 SKUs from the old platform and “straight away started making sales”. Integration with Shopline’s range of apps and data intelligence tools has been key to transformation, including the conversion tracking app exclusive to Shopline. The integration Meta’s latest APIs ensures consistent and accurate data synchronisation, resulting in higher performing ads.
“It’s a game changer in unlocking conversions for increased profitability. We’ve also started using the loyalty program app to improve our offer.”
Shopline’s customer support proved to be a standout for The Anime Collective after their frustrating platform experiences.
“The Shopline team are always quick to assess any issues and jump in to make changes straight away. Shopline is incredibly open to change. They’re constantly developing new customisations, optimisations, and making things easier for us.”
“What really shocked me was the site speed. Shopline is incredibly fast!”
One year on from switching to Shopline, The Anime Collective went from a 0.6% to 2.1% conversion rate thanks to a greatly improved website, customer experience, and speed.
Exclusive tracking functionality has also replaced the guesswork of old, leading to accurate ROAS insights.
“It’s what we can now do behind the scenes that’s generated that result. The tracking has been absolutely incredible, especially differentiating organic and paid Facebook orders,” says Joshua.
“The website is simply better. Images load faster, descriptions are more vivid, buttons are easier to see. Shopline enables you to really nail the layout – the site looks legit, builds trust, and supports personalisation of reviews and recommendations,” Joshua says.
“Since moving to Shopline we went from a 0.6% to 2.1% conversion rate. The tracking has been absolutely incredible, especially differentiating organic and paid Facebook orders.”
With a highly effective ecommerce platform largely taking care of itself, The Anime Collective is focused on building community – a key strategy for growing the niche brand.
“The old ecommerce platforms made it so hard to take a step forward, I was ready to quit the business. Now, I wake up knowing there’s no glitches and we can focus on community. Shopline made it super easy to set up a great website.”
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