The Journey of Artistic Commerce Success | Ecommerce Agency | Xigen

Jackson’s Art Supplies are the UK's favourite online supplier of the world's finest art materials, which ship their range of 60,000+ products to 246 countries worldwide

UK-based Jackson’s Art Supplies, which sells 60,000+ art material products to 246 countries, appointed Xigen in 2011, initially to move them to a new eCommerce platform with some bespoke additions, as they looked to scale and grow their business online as well as improve their user experience.

After moving Jackson’s successfully onto the Magento platform, Xigen’s role has evolved with Jackson’s objectives to ensure that all aspects of the eCommerce offering across all devices are delivering a great experience for customers. Xigen has also been proactive in identifying and opening up new revenue streams for the retailer.

Xigen’s work has seen the creation of a dedicated Magento channel for Jackson’s to run orders across Amazon and eBay, the delivery of platform infrastructure that supports organic search, interface changes to improve usability, the creation and launch of Jackson’s websites globally, the building of a new shipping system, and outside of core eCommerce the design and development of a bespoke EPOS system.

Service overview

The Jackson’s Art story

Jackson’s Art are very happy to accept Xigen’s recommendations, knowing they will see a strong return from the activity. This case study looks at the recent proactive activity Xigen has delivered for Jackson’s Art Supplies (from 2016 onwards),and details how Xigen has helped them to future-proof their website as it has scaled up, and drive revenue from it.

“Xigen have played a critical role in the success of our eCommerce business. Their knowledge and expertise in eCommerce, combined with their proactive ideas to improve the way we operate online, along with their fast execution, has helped us standout from the competition and experience strong revenue growth.”

“From re-platforming our website to help ensure our scalability and usability in the long term to opening up new online revenue streams, Xigen have been there every step of the way. They have even helped us with our in-store EPOS systems and back office order management system to better run and scale our business.

After eight successful years working with Xigen we have almost without exception accepted all Xigen’s recommendations which has resulted in a strong increase in online users, orders and revenue. The value they have added to us as a business has been immeasurable. We’re looking forward to working closely with Xigen for many more years.”

Managing Director
Jackson’s Art Supplies

“As true extension of the Jacksons Art team, we are passionate and dedicated to provide outstanding service and quality.”

“We enjoy delivering a full-service eCommerce offering to Jackson’s, including re-platforming their site, being proactive in spotting opportunities to improve the usability and functionality of their site across all devices, including opening up new revenue streams; driving the site’s long-term scalability by ensuring its back-end keeps up with its front-end developments, and building and launching Jackson’s sites in other countries.”

Leo Matthews
Director, Xigen

2018

Xigen built and launched Jackson’s first international eCommerce website in Germany in May, the second biggest market for Jackson’s after the UK. The fully translated site was created bespoke for the German market. Also, Xigen designed the site to protect Jackson’s ranking on Google. Xigen is currently developing sites to launch in Russia, Spain, France, China and Italy.

Xigen’s ongoing analysis of Jackson’s website revealed that those who subscribed to their newsletter spent more. So Xigen made some changes to the Jackson’s Art website to encourage customers to sign up to the newsletter, and at the same time, amended the checkout process to improve the customer journey from the newsletter to checkout. With this activity taking place after GDPR Xigen managed to increase subscribers to the newsletter by +66% and revenue for Jackson’s Art increased over the same period by 6%.

Also, Xigen is working with Jackson’s to create a new back-office order management system to help improve the day to day running and scalability of the business – to better manage stock and calls from customers.

Xigen is also creating a new shipping system for getting products to customers because the existing shipping system is slowing down their Magento site by 80%. For Jackson’s retail outlets Xigen is starting to develop and build EPOS (customer self-service order points in-store). Xigen has designed a new bespoke system from scratch which will launch later in 2018.

Also, looking ahead, Xigen is developing and improving Jackson’s site infrastructure to keep up with the front end and strong growth, particularly in their new international markets. It’s worth bearing in mind that Jackson’s usually has 100 people on their site at any time. After a newsletter goes out or a promotion is communicated it rises to 400+, with even more online for Black Friday. The work Xigen carries out ensures Jackson’s site can easily cope with these peaks.

Results

Comparing January to June 2017 vs January to June 2018 – the number of users has increased 50%, organic traffic is up 34%, orders up 30% and revenue is up 24%.

“It’s been a privilege to support Jackson’s on their eCommerce journey to date by playing a vital role in helping to drive their growth online.”

“Outside of the core eCommerce work we always look to add value where we can, which includes helping Jackson’s to improve their internal business processes, hosting platform and undertaking work in-store with their EPOS machines. We’re looking forward to being a key part of their eCommerce success story in the long term.”

Mark Fitzsimmons
Operations Director, Xigen

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