%Arabica
Strategy, UX/UI, Ecommerce Build
Building an E-Commerce store that beautifully complimented their Hong Kong storefronts
% Arabica is a speciality coffee brand and one of the fastest-growing coffee franchises in the world. Originating from Kyoto in Japan (where their flagship store is still found!), they came to Digital Butter with the sole purpose of establishing the brand in Hong Kong.
Main Goal
The goal was to create an eCommerce store that beautifully complimented their Hong Kong storefronts, while from a business perspective, functioned as a valuable eCommerce platform that provided users with a seamless shopping experience and provided % Arabica with a platform of stable sales. All in a new, and very crowded market for the brand.
Technology
We chose Craft and Craft Commerce for this project because of its balance of design flexibility and development stability. Craft allowed our design team to forge a UI design that perfectly matched the existing % Arabica brand and helped create a distinctive digital identity moving forward.
As the client had a small operations team that would manage the platform upon completion it was also important for us to choose a CMS that was easy for the client to manage content and simple execute to process sales. Craft Commerce met these needs perfectly!
Challenges
This build used some staple plugins to help with performance and upkeep (such as SEO, schema, and Super Table) of content and the platform itself.
The main plugins used to improve functionality were; Enupal Translations, and Stripe. Enupal is a fantastic translation tool for Craft and Craft Commerce, it lets us and our clients control templates and plugins translations across multiple languages - in this case, English and Traditional Chinese.
Stripe allows us to easily integrate with the payment gateway to improve the user’s checkout experience and it also handles CC and user details to add an additional layer of security and assurance for our clients.
Results
This project resulted in a truly elegant website design that perfectly embodies the % Arabica Brand and identity that they have spent years defining with their physical storefronts. After opening their flagship store in Central Hong Kong, they have now grown to have 6 stores across Hong Kong and have firmly established themselves as a key player in the coffee market. The sales gained through their eCommerce store have given them a base to grow from and to disrupt the coffee market in Hong Kong - which is no easy feat!
