After its 12-week migration, Alessi increased page views by 233%

Founded nearly 100 years ago in Northern Italy, Giovanni Alessi’s namesake brand has produced countless icons of contemporary design. The Alessi universe is made up of more than three hundred designers across the globe, and includes different categories of home products ranging from tableware, kitchen and home accessories, cooking utensils, and lighting. You can also find Alessi on display in the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. 

To Alessi, nothing is more important than design. So when its previous ecommerce platform announced it was sunsetting its open source version, the company saw an opportunity to migrate to a solution better suited for its aesthetic needs. With Shopify Plus, Alessi has enjoyed:

• A beautifully designed site that was up and running within 12 weeks
• A 233% increase in page views
• A dramatic improvement in conversion rate (109%) and more than 200% increase in transactions and revenue

Challenge

Alberto Alessi, Alessi’s chairman, has said that “true design work must move people, convey emotions, bring back memories, surprise, and go against common expectation.” Clearly, owning its design, irrespective of channel, had to be paramount for the brand. 

Yet while the focus of the company’s products and in-person experience was all about design, the home goods brand relied heavily on external agencies to create an aesthetic for its online offering. 

With its previous ecommerce platform sunsetting its open source version, all merchants were required to migrate to a newer version—and simply upgrading was not possible. Instead, Alessi leveraged the predicament as an opportunity to explore other options. 

The challenges were obvious: Because of a global lockdown in 2020, Alessi had to navigate a major change with its new chief digital officer held in Spain, much of the business operations in Italy, and all working toward an ambitious goal to replatform in just 12 weeks.

Solutions

By creating and developing a thoroughly mapped-out and detailed migration plan, Alessi launched into its replatforming with vigor, no matter that remote working and lockdowns across much of Europe made life difficult. 

Ironically, an out-of-the-box solution ended up being the way the brand customized its online stores, taking back control and ensuring its web design stayed in line with its own preferences and aesthetic. 

Despite working on the migration from across the globe, disciplined project management and increased internal communication ensured the Alessi team was able to migrate its 99-year-old business within its goal of less than three months.

Results

Since migrating, Alessi has seen a 233% increase in page views, and Alessi is finally secure that shoppers are interacting with a website that reflects the brand it has spent a century crafting.

With Shopify Plus, Alessi can operate the site itself and keep control over the brand’s strict design rules—without the need for third party support. The proof is in the numbers: a 109% improvement in conversion rate, 222% increase in transactions and 210% uptick in overall revenue.

The business attributes its success in migrating to a mammoth company-wide effort, combined with an easy-to-implement solution, the previous experience of its in-house tech team, and the knowledge that—as it sets out for another century of contemporary Italian design—a little flexibility in times of trouble can go a long way.