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increase in sales
increase in visits
increase in conversion rate
Performance metrics compare January – December 2022 to January – December 2023.
Since 2007, Just Sunnies has been a leading provider of high-quality eyewear, serving the local community through their bricks and mortar locations and both nation and world-wide via their website Justsunnies.com. Just Sunnies has a catalogue of over 13,000 sunglasses from over 130 major brands with almost half of them being scriptable for those requiring optical lenses. As early entrants into the ecommerce space, Just Sunnies has continued to maintain a strong online presence since their inception.
“Our main goal is to provide our customers with an omnichannel experience where they can make purchases from anywhere,” said Laura Brukner, Digital Marketing and Ecommerce Manager at Just Sunnies. “It’s important for our customers to be able to purchase how they want, whether that’s online or heading into a store for a more personalised service.”
To create an ideal customer experience, Just Sunnies uses a unique blend of technology that allows for seamless inventory management and order processing, and flexibility that allows them to add new features and functionality as they see fit. But as they grew — and customer expectations began changing — their original ecommerce platform began showing its age.Â
“Our owner and his friend built our original platform in 2007,” Brooke Hutchesson, Sales and Operations Manager at Just Sunnies, explained. “There weren’t many online stores in 2007, the site worked, and it did what they needed it to do, but we had reached a point with that old system where anytime we wanted to add a new feature, we had to repair or update something. We needed a platform that could grow as quickly as the business.”
Just Sunnies then went off in search of a new platform that could help create this unified, scalable ecommerce experience — and found it in BigCommerce.
“We had reached a point with that old system where anytime we wanted to add a new feature, we had to repair or update something. We needed a platform that could grow as quickly as the business.”Â
Brooke Hutchesson, Sales and Operations Manager, Just Sunnies
“BigCommerce really made sense for what we were trying to achieve ,” Brukner explained. “The infrastructure was there, the security was great, but the main thing for us was all the different apps and programs that work with it. It makes everything so easy.”Â
In order to support their growth and scalability, Just Sunnies uses a modern headless “jamstack” architecture deployed onto a serverless environment. To achieve their desired front-end experience, logistics, and warehouse management goals, they use BigCommerce to support their core infrastructure, then adopt the react framework to utilise API microservices, such as Prismic, PeopleVOX, and AWS to support any additional features.
“Having a headless, composable tech stack was really important to us,” said Brukner. “Since the business started, we’ve had web developers in-house to make sure everything is built exactly the way we want it. When we moved to a new solution, we wanted to maintain that level of control.Â
“With a headless, composable system like the one we have on BigCommerce, you can basically just plug and play, pull things in and out, and create our site exactly the way we want,” she continued.Â
As they always have, digital innovation and user experience remain a core focus for Just Sunnies. The marketing and web development teams are dedicated to continue improving the customer journey across each touchpoint, and with their composable tech stack, they can implement new and innovative features across their website using a unique mix of external tools and custom-built front-end solutions.Â
In order to create a better mobile and desktop user experience, the Just Sunnies team developed a PWA that supports speed and scalability using a React front-end. They implemented Next.js to incorporate “incremental static regeneration,” which retains the performance benefits of static pages, and is scalable to their catalogue of over 13,000 products.
“This is just one of the many advantages we’ve seen using our new headless architecture. Across the board we’re seeing better speed, flexibility, usability, and excellent cross-platform support,” Brukner explained.Â
One of the biggest recent projects Just Sunnies has undertaken is the launch of Just Sunnies Optical, a technology that allows customers to personalise almost any pair of sunglasses with their optical prescriptions online.Â
“We got a lot of feedback from our customers requesting to add optical scripts to their frames,” Hutchesson said. “We knew it was something that our customers wanted, so we created a roadmap for it and here we are. BigCommerce made it easy.”Â
To create this new experience, Just Sunnies built a customised checkout experience, which is hosted on an easy-to-use draw-bag interface. After a customer inputs their prescription information during checkout, Just Sunnies arranges for the frames to be fitted with their custom lenses, then ships them using quick, competitive shipping methods. Their customers generally have their custom optical eyewear with 7-10 business days.Â
“This has really allowed us to become a one-stop shop for all things eyewear, offering the largest range of prescription sunglasses and frames online in Australia,” explained Hutchesson.Â
“We are and always have been committed to enhancing customer experience. The introduction of our optical branch is just one example of how we're achieving this goal with BigCommerce capabilities to store customer data and product functionality,” Brukner said.Â
While Just Sunnies does retain web developers on staff, they still often take advantage of the wide variety of technology partners that integrate with BigCommerce in order to help optimise functionality on their site.Â
To optimise checkout, the Just Sunnies team utilises a plethora of payment methods which includes PayPal as a digital wallet service to keep customer satisfaction at a maximum. “PayPal has been a longtime partner of ours and has contributed to our success,” Hutchesson said. “They remain one of our top payment methods because consumers trust them.”Â
Just Sunnies has also been able to use Klaviyo to remain in constant contact with their customer base. “Klaviyo is great for talking directly to our customers and nurturing customer retention. Integrating with BigCommerce, we can use customer and product data to personalise emails and keep customers updated with order details, the latest products they might like to see, and recommendations based on the website and previous purchase activity,” said Brukner.Â
“The integration has allowed us to use Klaviyo to assist in making communication between customer service and marketing much easier when dealing with specific customer enquiries,” she continued.Â
To optimise the on-site search, merchandising, and product discovery process, Just Sunnies integrated Searchspring into their back-end quickly and easily.Â
“We have well over 13,000 products in our catalogue,” Hutchesson said with a laugh, “so making it easy for our customers to find exactly what they’re looking for online is really challenging, but also really vital to the purchasing process.”Â
“Since partnering with Searchspring, we’ve really been able to elevate the merchandising experience,” Brukner said. “We can customise our search, our merchandising, and even our pagination. Those are all really important features when you’re shopping from a catalogue as big as ours. Since then we’ve been able to boost our conversion rate. It’s been such a valuable tool for us.”
Highlighted Applications:
Klaviyo, Email Marketing
Searchspring, Merchandising and On-Site Search
PayPal, Digital Payment Solution
Custom Checkout
Technical Features:
Progressive Web Application
Composable Architecture
BigCommerce Services:
“With a headless, composable system like the one we have on BigCommerce, you can basically just plug and play, pull things in and out, and create our site exactly the way we want.”Â
Laura Brukner, Digital Marketing, Ecommerce Manager, Just Sunnies
“BigCommerce has allowed the business to achieve our front- and back-end goals with unparalleled support, security, speed, and scalability, which has allowed Just Sunnies to continue to grow in the ecommerce space.”Â
BROOKE HUTCHESSON, SALES AND OPERATIONS MANAGER, JUST SUNNIES
Since switching to BigCommerce, Just Sunnies has seen a continuation of significant growth and success across a range of key performance indicators. “Our growth has been really impressive,” Brukner said, “especially in this new ecommerce atmosphere where consumer behaviours and customer expectations have changed so drastically.”Â
In the last year, Just Sunnies has seen an increase in sales. And, since optimising their mobile experience, they’re seeing 75% of those sales come from mobile devices, a 13% increase year-over-year.Â
“It’s not just our sales numbers that are impressive, either,” said Hutchesson. “Our subscriber database has grown almost 23% year-over-year. These increases have also allowed us to increase our product offering by 30%, cementing Just Sunnies as industry leaders when it comes to sunglasses and eyewear.”
While their success is obviously attributed to the hard work and dedication of their teams, they know that BigCommerce has played a major role in their growth. “BigCommerce has allowed the business to achieve our front- and back-end goals with unparalleled support, security, speed, and scalability, which has allowed Just Sunnies to continue to grow in the ecommerce space,” Brukner said.
“We’re so excited to see where BigCommerce will take us in years to come. We’ve already blown our growth goals away since we migrated over, so we’re really looking forward to what comes next.”Â
Brooke Hutchesson, Sales and Operations Manager, Just Sunnies
In the fashion and apparel industries, customer expectations are constantly evolving — not just from a product perspective, but with their shopping experience, as well. As the Just Sunnies team continues to strive to meet those evolving expectations, they know that BigCommerce will continue to give them the flexibility they need to make it happen.Â
“Between the flexibility of BigCommerce, and the support of the business owner in letting us explore new technological advancements, innovation is always front of mind,” Brukner explained. “When the market is growing as fast as it is, and there are so many cool new features and ideas we have, it’s nice to be able to explore those opportunities so quickly, without a lot of friction,” she continued.Â
Hutchesson couldn’t agree more. “We’re so excited to see where BigCommerce will take us in years to come. We’ve already blown our growth goals away since we migrated over, so we’re really looking forward to what comes next,” she said.
Published: July 2024
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