How Sylvanian Families modernized its image and boosted its conversion
The toy industry is a highly competitive sector where immersion and customer experience are paramount. To remain competitive, brands must adapt their digital presence to new consumer standards. This is the challenge Axome took on by supporting Sylvanian Families, the iconic miniature toy brand, in the redesign of its online store. By placing mobility and visual identity at the heart of the strategy, this Shopify e-commerce redesign perfectly illustrates how a targeted technological transition can serve a company's growth objectives.
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Context and objectives: why switch from PrestaShop to Shopify?
Sylvanian Families is an iconic Japanese brand owned by the Epoch d'Enfance group. While the brand's desirability was strong, as evidenced by a 47% increase in traffic, its old technical infrastructure was becoming a major obstacle to its development. Hosted on the PrestaShop 1.7 solution, the store suffered from significant technical debt, proved very difficult to manage on a daily basis, and created a heavy reliance on the previous agency for even the smallest updates.
Faced with these technical limitations, the brand turned to Axome to rethink its digital ecosystem. Sylvanian Families' expectations were clear and ambitious:
- Adopt a "mobile-first" approach to address the loss of smartphone users and increase the mobile conversion rate.
- Modernize the brand image and streamline the customer journey.
- Enhance brand storytelling to better immerse shoppers in the magical world of the characters.
- Gain autonomy and agility through an intuitive SaaS back-office.
Technical challenges of migrating from PrestaShop to Shopify
Moving from an aging open-source CMS to a modern solution requires rigorous preparation. The Axome team conducted functional workshops with the Sylvanian Families marketing and e-commerce leadership to map out the existing setup and validate customization requirements.
The migration from PrestaShop to Shopify required an intelligent redesign of the data model. We had to precisely structure native fields and create metafields (custom fields) to ensure the successful transfer of the brand's extensive catalog. Furthermore, maintaining organic search rankings was a top priority. Our SEO experts deployed a comprehensive redirection plan, achieving a relevance score of nearly 100% on the mapping of old URLs to new collections, ensuring a transition with no loss of traffic.
Modernizing brand identity and UX
Beyond the infrastructure, the main challenge was to translate the magic of Sylvanian Families onto the screen. Axome's web design team conducted in-depth UI/UX workshops to rethink the entire interface. The design was built "mobile-first" from the ground up, meeting current standards and facilitating touch-based navigation.
To enhance storytelling, the architecture of product pages and collection pages was completely overhauled. The shopping experience was streamlined through the deployment of high-value features:
- Setting up the Shopify Bundles app to enable easy creation of product bundles (figurines + furniture + houses).
- Integration of an announcement bar that can be managed independently by internal teams to promote offers or news.
- Navigation simplified through smart filters, essential for a large catalog.
Increase mobile conversion rates through automation
An e-commerce redesign Shopify performance incorporates background processes that are invisible to the customer but crucial for brand growth. Axome has deployed custom solutions to boost e-commerce automation and average order value.
- Tailored promotional strategy: To overcome Shopify's native limitations, our teams configured the third-party app Regios. This tool allows the brand to automate complex offers (freebies, discounts based on order volume), a key conversion driver.
- Advanced analytical tracking: A strict tracking plan, coupled with Google Tag Manager (GTM) and Addingwell, was implemented to precisely monitor the customer journey.
- Custom data pipeline (ETL): The major technical challenge was to automatically feed sales data into the Circana panel platform. Unlike PrestaShop, Shopify does not allow direct database access. Axome therefore developed and hosted a custom weekly script using its Node.js framework (AxFlux). This script queries the Shopify GraphQL API, transforms the data into Circana's strict format, and transfers it without any human intervention.
Proactive support to secure performance
Launching an online store is just the beginning of the digital journey. To ensure that their mobile conversion rate remains optimal, Sylvanian Families subscribed to our Run support package. Beyond simple maintenance support, our teams incorporate a strategic dimension by analyzing e-commerce data on a monthly basis to drive concrete interface optimizations (CRO) and increase the average order value (AOV).
Conclusion
By moving from PrestaShop to Shopify, Sylvanian Families shed its technical debt to gain a modern, scalable platform built for conversion. Thanks to a design reimagined by Axome, a seamless user experience, and high-tech automated developments, the brand is now equipped to engage its audience of parents and collectors, while gaining valuable marketing autonomy.
Are you planning a redesign of your e-commerce site or looking to solve your mobile conversion challenges? Contact the Axome agency today to discuss your goals and discover how our experts can support your brand's digital transformation.
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