🏆 Winner: Best ecommerce re-platform 2024
As with most brand, the home and living sector continues to face rising operating costs, higher customer acquisition expenses, and rapidly evolving consumer expectations. Legacy platforms often prove too inflexible and costly to maintain, holding back innovation and scalability. At the same time, international expansion has a strategic priority, with growth opportunities emerging in markets beyond the UK, such as the Middle East and Asia, where demand for premium homeware is accelerating.
The Results
The Challenge
The Conran Shop’s Magento platform had become increasingly difficult to manage, weighed down by excessive partner apps, customisations along with high maintenance costs for upgrades, security patches, and hosting. This complexity conflicted with their agile roadmap and slowed their ability to adapt. As the business shifted focus from a wide multi-brand catalogue to prioritising own-brand products, the limitations of Magento became more evident. What they needed was a simpler, more flexible platform that would reduce total cost of ownership, streamline operations, and create the agility required to pivot at pace, including expansion into new markets.
The approach
The Magento to Shopify migration wasn’t just about changing platforms; it was about creating a future-proof digital ecosystem that aligned with The Conran Shop’s growth ambitions. Our approach balanced technical precision, design innovation, and strategic foresight, ensuring the transition reduced complexity while elevating the customer experience.
Seamless migration: Leveraged our deep knowledge of both Magento and Shopify to ensure smooth transition
Market readiness: Built-in Shopify tools for payments, taxes, and currencies tailored for international rollout
Agile framework: Empowered The Conran Shop to test, adapt, and scale with Shopify’s app ecosystem - with handholding and support by us
Design overhaul: Delivered a full UX and UI redesign, improving navigation, product discovery, and overall usability while reflecting the brand’s premium identity
Cultural shift: Reduced reliance on heavy customisation, embracing built-in features to lower maintenance and streamline operations
The solution
Seamless Shopify Plus migration
The Conran Shop's transition from Magento to Shopify Plus replaces years of complex integrations with a lean, modular ecosystem. So far, this has reduced total cost of ownership by 50% and continues to save the business money.
International expansion readiness
The Conran Shop has the agility to continue moving into new international markets beyond the Middle East. Shopify’s built-in tools for payments, taxes, and currencies enable The Conran Shop to test and roll out new regions with confidence.
Design overhaul for UX and UI
A complete redesign elevates the brand’s premium identity while simplifying navigation and product discovery. Clean layouts, intuitive menus, and high-impact visuals create a more engaging and user-friendly experience across devices.
Email marketing transformation
By integrating Klaviyo, The Conran Shop unlocks more personalised campaigns, increasing email-driven revenue by 23% and strengthening customer relationships through data-driven insights.
Unified retail and ecommerce experience
The introduction of Shopify POS brings consistency between online and in-store journeys. Combined with ERP integration, the business now runs on a centralised system that streamlines operations and enhances customer experience at every touchpoint - opening up BOPIS, omnichannel vouchers and gift cards and much more
Client quote
“Unified are a good bunch of experienced people who are a pleasure to work with. They always deliver on what they say they will deliver, and I look forward to more continued success."
Richard Voyce - Director of Technology - The Conran Shop
Impact
Conversions increase by 54%, email-driven revenue rises by 23%, and total cost of ownership is halved. The project sets a new industry benchmark, outperforming competitors such as Heal’s, Soho Home, and Loaf.
This award-winning ecommerce website replatform delivers a fast, scalable, and beautifully designed international ecommerce experience - positioning The Conran Shop for long-term growth across digital and retail channels.
