Mr. Fothergill's leans on Remarkable to lead their eCommerce development
For nearly 50 years, Fothergill's has been one of the most successful seed companies in the UK. The company's growth has come from a commitment to providing the gardener with the best products. The Shopify-based retailer needed advanced development support, to help turnaround their negatively trending conversion rate.
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Rooted in success
For nearly 50 years, Fothergill's has been one of the most successful seed companies in the UK. The company's growth has come from a commitment to providing the gardener with the best products.
Increase in site engagement
Increase in add-to-bag rate
Reduction in checkout exit rate
Quicker code deployments
Overview
Established as a family business in 1978, the British-born brand Mr. Fothergill's has evolved into a prominent name in the global gardening industry, operating in over 30 countries. In 2022, the company underwent a private equity-backed management buyout valued at over £100 million.
Its success is driven by a steadfast commitment to excellence in both product quality and customer service. For more than four decades, Mr. Fothergill's has supplied retailers and garden centers with a wide range of seeds and plants. While the brand has historically achieved significant success through catalogue marketing, its direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy has increasingly shifted towards eCommerce in recent years. Its success is driven by a steadfast commitment to excellence in both product quality and customer service.
For more than four decades, Mr. Fothergill's has supplied retailers and garden centers with a wide range of seeds and plants.
While the brand has historically achieved significant success through catalogue marketing, its direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy has increasingly shifted towards eCommerce in recent years.
Mr. Fothergill's migrated their eCommerce platform in 2023, and since then they have struggled to move into a solid position, with several ongoing issues and complex challenges they were struggling to solve. This case study explores the key challenges and areas we have helped the Mr. Fothergill's teams.
The challenge
The group is a collection of 3 distinctive brands (Mr. Fothergill's, DT Brown Seeds and Johnsons (formally Woolmans) - each of these brands have their own Shopify storefront, yet there were many disparities and large differences between their tech stacks, features and functions, and customer UX.
A major goal of the group was to move towards a cohesive strategy and stable development configuration, where all 3 sites shared the same theme versions, metafield data structures and development roadmap. The primary goal of our appointment was to take control of all development of the sites and unlock their growth potential - through resolving all known (and hidden) bugs and issues, then implementing a strategic roadmap of new features to better engage customers.
The solutions
The project began in late 2024 and Remarkable took control of all brands immediately. Fothergill's worked closely with their dedicated team at Remarkable, to audit and quickly implement fixes across several areas of their site.
We delivered several major improvements which were instrumental and improved conversion rate:
Removing third-party integrations
Cleanly and safely removing third-party integrations, and replacing with Shopify native functionality, such as a large plugin that was previously powering Site Search and Merchandising, yet was negatively impacting customer experience, slowing down site speed and harming conversion rate.
Restyling key areas of the site(s)
When attempting to display a large amount of text or data, it is vital for the styling and design aesthetic to be visually appealing and easy to digest. For example, the styling of the dropdown panel in the navigation area needed immediate improvements to help the customer understand the structure of the sub-menus.
Redeveloping quick-basket
Mr. Fothergills use ReBuy's 'Smart Basket' widget instead of Shopify's native quick-basket function as this allows them to better control the overall styling and merchandising carousels inside of the panel - such as YMAL and related promotion/campaign product carousels.