Despite being a dearly loved brand, JOANN faced several challenges, especially with its e-commerce experience. These challenges were crippling margins and driving away its fiercely loyal customer base. To right the ship and position themselves for the future, JOANN kicked off a digital overhaul.
DEPT® worked with JOANN to create a digital transformation roadmap, starting with immediate needs that would have a high impact in the short term. Within six months, JOANN had decreased costs and increased revenue, freeing up capital to reinvest in more meaningful digital initiatives.
Success-based partnership and growth
JOANN has been a staple for generations, serving millions of professionals and hobbyists. But its transformation from in-store to online wasn’t seamless. Over the years, it has accumulated a lot of technical debt without much to show for it.
JOANN was at a critical inflection point, so they reached out to DEPT®’s commerce team, hoping to turn around their online and mobile app e-commerce experience.
After analyzing their technical landscape, we identified a large number of high-impact, low-effort initiatives that could be implemented before the quickly approaching holiday season. Revenue gained from core improvements would fund the next wave of initiatives and relieve pressure on the cash-crunched business.
Massive holiday gains via site performance
Our holiday swat team focused on three key areas of opportunity:
- Usability
- Performance
- Bugs
By simply implementing a few best practices, we immediately saw a 25% jump in conversion rates.
Performance improvements were a bit more complex. There were several areas to investigate and improve, from the CDN setup to the server-side integrations. We reduced the number of promotions by over 70% and lowered the SKU count by almost 50%, and we cleaned up the front-end code to deliver a more optimized experience.
Ultimately, we were able to reduce page load times by an average of 40%, increase the cache hit rate by 300%, and lower the total number of page requests by 25%, all of which worked together to drive the conversion rate up even further.
All in all, the most significant impact on the site was simply fixing the basics needed for a successful online purchase journey.
This rapid initiative resulted in amazing results, including an 11.2% increase in online revenue without incrementally increasing traffic.
11.2%
Increase in revenue in six months
25%
Increase in conversion rates
What’s next for JOANN’s digital transformation
Now that JOANN’s budget has some breathing room, we can tackle bigger projects.
We have just kicked off the second wave of their transformation, which includes a composable commerce offering and a new React Native mobile app experience. From there, our roadmap includes a comprehensive commerce strategy, including UX/UI enhancements, a cohesive experience between stores and the online experience, media marketing, and a social media strategy.
For JOANN, we’re here for the long haul and look forward to growing its customer base, revenue, and profitability.
Questions on commerce?
VP of Commerce, Americas
