Breaking Down Bombas’ E-Commerce Site [Video]

In this episode of Coffee + Commerce, we break down Bombas’ e-commerce site with Faisal Masud and Ryan Bartley. Faisal is our CEO here at Fabric and was previously the director of AmazonBasics and the CTO at Staples. Ryan is our co-founder and was previously the director of mobile at Staples and product manager at eBay.

Bombas is known for selling high quality and unique socks, but this wasn’t reflected on their website, the main problem being the basic Shopify templates they use.

As you’ll see in this episode, the templated nature of the e-commerce site creates problems for the customer experience and doesn’t give you a good idea of the brand’s identity. However, by making the changes recommended in this episode, Bombas can inspire more visitors to buy, and inspire existing customers to buy more.

Key Takeaways

[0:20]

Articulate brand differentiators on the homepage.

On the homepage, the first problem we encounter is the lack of a clear message about the brand’s mission. For a company like Bombas, it’s key to tell us what makes them unique and different from other sock brands.

[0:52]

Make product search meaningful.

The search functionality presents us with an abundance of products and seems to completely miss the intent of our search. It may be worthwhile to take down the search feature until this issue is resolved.

[1:13]

Increase conversions with better performance.

The page load time acts as a disruptor during a majority of the shopping experience. When a page takes longer than one second to load, conversions decrease.

[1:31]

Optimize your product filters.

A product filter exists throughout the site but it seems to be quite old school. Nowadays, many companies are re-thinking the way they guide their customers with filters so they can find the products they really want.

[1:58]

Optimize your default sort order.

The sort order in this section is not clear at all. It seems random. Price and relevance are the most common options to sort products, but this can be optimized by combining more than two options together.

[2:50]

Add USPs to category pages.

Category pages should include a unique selling proposition (USP) and other product information that drives people to scroll down the category page. Bombas is unable to do this because of the Shopify templates they are using.

[3:23]

Optimize checkout page speed.

The standard Shopify checkout flow takes a long time to load, even the express checkout which is ironic. It also took an extremely long time to load Amazon Pay and PayPal features.

[3:49]

Offer the most convenient pay features (Apple Pay).

Although Amazon Pay is a convenient payment feature, it’s a bad experience overall. It takes you out of the Bombas’ site and doesn’t offer any additional benefits. Apple Pay should be offered instead, or in addition to this.

[4:10]

Offer subscription options for replenishables.

The site doesn’t offer any subscription or loyalty features. The lack of a subscription feature is an especially big opportunity loss for Bombas since socks wear out relatively fast.

[4: 45]

Make reviews meaningful and use reputable third-party apps.

At the bottom of each product page there are reviews but it’s not clear whether the review is positive or negative. Also, the third party review SaaS or Shopify app had a bug during this breakdown. (Use reputable product review SaaS.)

To make changes based on these recommendations and upgrade your e-commerce site, a headless commerce setup is vital. This makes it easy to add new e-commerce functionality and features while maintaining full control over site experience. To learn more about this modern approach to e-commerce, check out Fabric.

Dana Lim

Content marketer @ fabric. Previously marketing @ KHON-TV and Paramount Pictures.