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Whola

Name: Whola
Item: Whola
Author: Igor Iakovliev

Optimizing the performance of an Australian marketplace by 5x, improving the page loading speed to <3 seconds, and supporting the Whola Magento website on an ongoing basis

Website

whola.com.au

Industry

Apparel & Fashion

Platform

Magento code audit, performance optimization & ongoing support

Country

Australia

Timeframe

5 Months of work

What we did

STEP 1

Magento performance optimization & code audit

Before Whola turned to us at Elogic, its page loaded from 12 to 20 seconds — something no user and search engine would tolerate. We detected the website pain points and bottlenecks, audited and rewrote the code, and stabilized the server environment (transferred the Whola marketplace to AWS cloud). The result was impressive: the website performance improved fivefold, and the page loaded in less than 3 seconds. In a month since the start of the project, the marketplace was stable and ready to accept the clients.

STEP 2

Custom geographic exclusivity feature

A geo-exclusivity feature was a highlight of the project. It was designed to give resellers a competitive advantage in their area and ensure their retail mix is always unique. The idea is that a user receives a notification on whether their added item has already been purchased in the area in the past 30/60 days. The feature is based on zip code and suburb name analysis.

STEP 3

Improved user experience & system of search

Whola is extremely protective of its clients’ intellectual property and opens its product catalog only to registered users. So initially, the main landing page comprised only login and registration buttons. At Elogic, we’ve suggested giving a sneak peek into the brand offerings with a Welcome page. Now the users see sleek banners, marketplace sellers, product samples, and other customer reviews, which has boosted customer conversion rate. We’ve also added a new filtering system and product category trees to make website navigation more intuitive.

STEP 4

Minimum order value & pre-order functionalities

These two features should make B2B sales easier. Thanks to a minimum order value feature, a customer is informed of the lowest order price and/or quantity of SKUs that a particular seller can ship. Meanwhile, a pre-order functionality allows a customer to reserve a product that is not in stock for the future.

STEP 5

Third-party app integrations

Product feeds to Facebook
HubSpot for customer relationship management (CRM)
Klaviyo for effective marketing
Chatbot powered by Intercom

The backstory

Whola is an Australian B2B apparel & fashion platform that collates some best fast-to-market fashion brands for 2,500+ retailers to access instantly. Alice Fitch, a co-founder of Whola and an expert in fashion wholesale with 10 years experience, had noted all the unnecessary amount of work involved to complete wholesale purchases. This idea drove her to set up a disruptive fashion B2B platform in 2020 that grew into a successful project in only a year.

The mission of the brand is to make buying easier, which was impossible to fulfill without a properly functioning website. When the brand turned to Elogic in mid-November 2020, the website page loading speed varied between a stalling 12 and 20 seconds. The retailer spent fortunes on a server environment that wouldn’t resolve the actual problems causing performance bottlenecks. The website also experienced some invoicing issues and lacked user-friendly functionality.

It was time to act and optimize. And that’s how the Whola & Elogic story began.

Key technologies

We helped the Aussie fashion marketplace increase their website speed and improve usability

The project started in November, and Whola saw noticeable results in the first month. Users no longer had to wait for a webpage to load: we reviewed the code, detected performance bottlenecks, and reduced the webpage loading speed by 5(!) times. Most of the website code and its logic were rewritten, and the Whola website got hosted on AWS cloud to stabilize it and reduce the maintenance costs.

The rest of the project involved developing extra functionality and optimizing web usability. Improved system of search and filtering as well as category trees added to the positive user experience. A suggested welcome page gave a sneak peek into the marketplace variety of brands without giving away the actual catalogs of exclusive ateliers. Custom geographic exclusivity and pre-ordering features allowed customers to make an informed purchasing decision. The brand saw increased customer conversion rates and a boost in company’s sales soon after website optimization.

Visit Whola

The collaboration of Whola and Elogic didn’t stop there. We are still adding the finishing touches & integrations to the fashion marketplace. Alice Fitch also loved our services so much that the brand signed up for an ongoing website support:

By demonstrating enthusiasm for it, they secured the engagement. Elogic Commerce improved the website’s speed fivefold and significantly advanced its overall operability. They are available no matter the time of day, which ensures a supportive partnership. Their attentiveness is also appreciated,

— Alice Fitch, a co-founder of the Whola fashion marketplace in Australia.

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