Pangaia
An Iconic Shopify Online Store Reborn
Shopify Custom Theme Development
Klevu integration
Performance Optimization
Ecommerce Consultancy
User Experience Optimization
Shopify Custom Theme Development
Klevu integration
Performance Optimization
Ecommerce Consultancy
User Experience Optimization
Live site
https://pangaia.com
TechStack
Shopify Plus,
Online Store 2.0,
Klevu,
Tagalys,
Pangaia is a well-known apparel brand celebrated for its sustainable, stylish, and colorful designs. But what many don’t realize is that material technology is at the core of its mission. Every product is powered by science-backed innovation, from bio-engineered fabrics to recyclable dyes, bringing an eco-friendly edge to every piece.
With this unique story and a fast-paced, innovation-driven approach, Pangaia needed a digital solution capable of capturing and conveying their unique brand narrative: a solution that not only showcased their products but also communicated the science and sustainability behind them. Yet, their existing digital setup was creating roadblocks that limited their ability to grow and evolve.
That’s when Pangaia turned to us. Together, we set out to align their online shopping experience with their core values of speed, innovation, impactful storytelling, and customer-focused design.
Key Objectives
- Removed the technical debt: Transitioned to a clean Shopify 2.0 custom theme.
- Optimized operation processes: Improved back-end systems to support improved storytelling, future integrations, and scalability.
- Enhanced user experience: Upgraded navigation and introduced smart search features.
- Advanced product discovery: Integrated Klevu and Tagalys to boost merchandising capabilities.
- Improved mobile usability: Redesigned navigation and tailored user journeys for mobile users.
Strategic Migration to a New Tech Stack
Before this transformation, Pangaia’s site was based on an outdated Shopify theme. Over time, the site had accumulated technical debt from multiple agency contributions. This resulted in a sluggish user experience and a back end that created operational challenges for the agile Pangaia team.
While Pangaia had a clear vision and was on the right path to bring their ideas to life, they recognized that the current site’s limitations would diminish the impact of their efforts. Navigating the three separate site instances was time consuming and slowed down content updates and overall performance. Key areas like conversion rates, user engagement, and bounce rates were all affected, threatening to stall Pangaia’s growth goals.
“Our primary goals were to enhance key performance metrics, such as session CVR, user engagement, and bounce rates. We aimed for a site that loaded quickly and allowed for agile content management, enabling us to adapt and respond to changing market demands.”
Ross Allsop, Growth Director at Pangaia
Commerce-UI took on a strategic rebuild of the Pangaia site. We began by assessing the current platform and creating a clear plan that addressed the risks of ongoing third-party migrations. Our initial team was small and focused, just a lead and senior engineer, who set the groundwork and integrated all current progress. Once this foundation was ready, we expanded the team to match the fast pace and meet the challenging two-and-a-half-month deadline. This marked the beginning of Project Reborn, a ground-up technological rebuild that presented some unique challenges.
Unified Multi-Store Setup
One of Pangaia’s most significant operational challenges was managing a multi-store setup with three expansion stores. Code changes had to be deployed separately to each store, making updates time consuming and creating maintenance headaches. This approach also led to hard-to-resolve bugs and inconsistencies between the stores.
To address this, we built a solution that automatically distributes code changes across all three stores while allowing unique content on each site. Our solution also performs automated quality checks to ensure site stability and consistency. This reduces the burden on the operations team and makes feature releases smoother and less risky.
Streamlining Storytelling
We focused on amplifying Pangaia’s brand storytelling by creating modular, reusable sections that allowed the content team to build rich content throughout the site. Each section was thoughtfully designed to balance ease of use with flexibility to provide the team with maximum freedom while ensuring safe and easy content updates. We also improved how images and videos are handled by allowing the upload of unlimited high-resolution media without affecting site performance. Additionally, we integrated industry-leading solutions, like Klevu and Tagalys, to boost product discovery.
“One of Commerce-UI’s key recommendations was to create a more modular structure for the site, allowing for greater flexibility in updates and changes with sections that weren’t restrictive. Their expertise in optimizing back-end processes and integrating within our current stack and navigating some larger changes was unbelievable.”
Ross Allsop, Growth Director at Pangaia
Gender Split: Displays for Unisex Products
Another major challenge for Pangaia was showcasing their unisex products in men’s and women’s displays. After considering several options, we recommended creating separate product listings for each version. This allowed Pangaia to control the gallery and content for each gender-specific display, but it also brought up some unique challenges:
- Even though each gender version was displayed separately, they needed to function as a single SKU.
- Both versions had to share the same inventory to keep stock accurate.
- Each version needed to be easily accessible from a unified product page.
To solve this, we built a custom inventory-syncing solution using Shopify Flow, which made maintenance easier, reduced costs, and allowed smooth distribution across all expansion stores. We also used Shopify Metaobjects to automatically link the men’s and women’s versions based on naming conventions to save the operations team from manually connecting hundreds of products.
Ongoing Partnership
Project Reborn was just the first step on Pangaia’s digital roadmap. With a solid technological foundation now in place, we’re continuing our partnership to expand their commerce capabilities and build a best-in-class shopping experience in the near future.
