Premium Australian fashion house, Aje has partnered with Shopify Plus to bring its physical store experience online and offer the same in-store luxury across its digital channels. With Shopify Plus, Aje has been able to increase its conversion rate by 135%, reduce bounce rate and increase pages per session and average session duration in a matter of weeks.

Aje has been in operation for over a decade with 16 stores in Australia and two stores in New Zealand but was yet to embrace the online retail environment and appeal to its digitally savvy customers. While over 75% of Aje’s customers were engaging with the brand on their mobile devices, its mobile site wasn’t optimised.

Aje was also growing its international distribution channels in New Zealand and across American department stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, so its global website needed to be optimised and improved to accelerate sales with localised pricing, currencies, and seasonal content.

“For many of our global customers, the first time they encounter the Aje brand is online, so we wanted to design an experience that immersed them in the entirety of our world, as soon as they land on the site,” Aje head of ecommerce, Georgie Yates said.

Aje turned to Shopify Plus to quickly implement a new site with minimal downtime, merge its online and offline customer experiences and for testing ecommerce ideas. With the help of Shopify Plus solutions partner Moustache Republic, Aje and Shopify Plus worked collaboratively to identify all the things the site needed to do, and optimise where the old site wasn’t performing in relation to sales or the customer experience. Part of the business strategy was to go global and Aje wanted to offer an experience that best represented the brand in various locations with vivid imagery and frictionless and intuitive movement around the site.

“The support we receive from Shopify Plus in terms of resources and ongoing guidance is incredibly valuable. It’s like having an extension of your own team. Working collaboratively with a partner that shares so much valuable insight and expertise is both reassuring and motivating,” Yates added.

Aje now has three expansion stores to sell internationally. It launched a new site for New Zealand customers, offering a localised experience in NZD, along with its Australian site in AUD. Aje also launched a new global site for customers using multi-currency with Shopify Payments, supporting 20 currencies and shipping to 75 countries from this site, including to the US, Asia and Middle East. The company is now exploring Click & Collect services and a virtual stylist service.

Aje co-founder and CEO, Adrian Norris said, “We have built our business slowly and carefully in the last 12 years. Thankfully, we were able to adapt and transition during COVID-19 into utilising the digital space to consistently communicate with our audience, focus on core products and keep the consumer encouraged with compelling content and design. We are seeing an ascend through our Australian site and international site. Our plan is to continue to scale and listen to the customer, who is at the heart of the brand.”