Wunderman Thompson Commerce: Hotter Shoes

Leading manufacturer Hotter Shoes wanted to provide its customers with a more compelling digital experience – one that was slicker, seamless for users and more representative of its brand. The UK-based company also had ambitions to expand its reach into the U.S. and Europe.

The COVID-19 pandemic added new urgency to these plans. With lockdown measures pushing consumers online in their droves, Hotter was faced with getting a world-class website up and running in record time to manage the surge.

The brand partnered with Wunderman Thompson Commerce to mastermind a new, modern headless commerce platform in HCL WebSphere 9, built on Google Cloud to increase overall server capacity. The migration to a cloud environment was critical to ensuring the new platform could scale to handle rapid increases in traffic without impacting response times, and regardless of whether customers accessed the website from their phone, tablet or desktop.

Other features of the new solution included:

• Single Page App (SPA) – a modern approach to building superfast websites.
• Progressive Web App (PWA) – a further enhancement of SPA that enables features such as HTTP push notifications, offline/limited internet browsing and superfast interactions.
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – technology designed to make mobile landing pages load instantly and offer SEO benefits since Google positions AMP results above other Google search results.

As a result of the changes, Hotter is now driving towards sub-second view transitions and near-instant page transitions in many areas of the site, meaning it functions much like an app.

The new site has reinforced the company’s global presence and since it launched, Hotter has seen an 8% reduction in bounce rate, a 49% increase in conversion rate and a 37% increase in revenue, compared to the same period last year, along with a 50% drop in speed times and 600% increase in capacity.

Victoria Betts, CCO, Hotter Shoes, said: "Launching the website during lockdown had initially seemed a daunting task, but Wunderman Thompson Commerce, together with the Hotter Shoes team, worked remotely – and tirelessly – to get the new site off the ground in time for our customers to shop digitally from the safety of their own homes. We now have a new and improved ecommerce platform and website that’s already proved valuable, with increased sales and improved search engine rankings. We can’t wait to see how the site will go from strength to strength."