Reimagining Sweef.se: A Case Study on Enhancing Performance and User Experience Through Next.js and Crystallize
Enriching online shopping experience amidst a challenging furniture market with Next.js and Crystallize.
3 minutes
Sweef.se, renowned for its unique, high-quality, on-demand furniture at reasonable prices, is doing it by offering not just furniture but Sweden's comfiest furniture, fostering a culture of comfort, quality, and individual expression. They needed solid tech to back their efforts to deliver that via their digital storefront.
The previous platform, PrestaShop, although functional, lacked the flexibility and speed essential for delivering a superior user experience and managing the complex product configurations offered by Sweef.
Betting on a monolithic approach in the age of omnichannel demand, composable commerce, and best-of-breed tech stacks is an arduous task doomed from the beginning. So, instead of going the beaten path of eCommerce, they took a leap of faith and opted for a headless approach.
The main goal was to significantly enhance performance and user experience (UX) while ensuring seamless product information, content, and pricing management with a future-proof tech stack. The initial attempt to upgrade the eCommerce solution became too complex, leading to a project failure after eight months.
Luckily, the challenge was passed on to ZCO Stockholm, in collaboration with Crystallize, to develop a Proof of Concept (POC) for a Product Display Page (PDP) that could accurately model and calculate prices for the hyper-modular product sofas.
Delivering quickly and according to plan is a challenge in itself. As per our fixed price per project strategy it clearly states our responsibility to deliver regardless of complexity and time.
Martin Ericson, Co-founder of ZCO Stockholm
ZCO, armed with a four-month deadline, leveraged Next.js for the front end and Crystallize as the backend to craft a launch-ready version of the site. While Next.js is renowned for its server-side rendering, in this project, we used its Server Components capabilities, with Crystallize, known for its seamless product management and eCommerce capabilities, which proved quintessential.
ZCO's approach was to start by creating a bug-free website experience in the new design for Sweef with a much better UI, intuitive navigation, and easy checkout for both users on desktop and mobile.
Additionally, integrations like CharpstAR for 3D/AR, Ingrid for shipping, and Klarna & Stripe for payments enhanced the site functionality. Despite the time constraints, the first version with all the basic yet critical functionalities was successfully deployed. A more refined version followed 1.5 months later, incorporating sophisticated storytelling to guide customers toward educated purchases.
The tight deadline was the project’s biggest adversary. However, a synergistic collaboration with the Sweef team, who managed the old site while contributing content to the new one, was a game-changer.
The core of Sweef is its highly modular furniture products. They have a wide range of sofa bases, fabrics, colors, and add-ons to match. Paired with dynamic pricing based on the fabric and the amount of fabric used for the given sofa base, the product model is not straightforward.
The core of Crystallize is the highly customizable PIM that enables you to define complex product configurators easily. This engine was used to design a composable product model with dynamic pricing based on customer choice combinations. We refer to this in Crystallize as the product universe for Sweef.
The performance of the webshop was greatly improved and is passing the Core Web Vitals with flying colors—or green colors, as Google uses for this. The webshop page speed performance, in addition to the improved customer experience, has been nothing short of a success.
The newly developed platform significantly enhanced Sweef.se’s digital storefront. The flexibility and quick setup provided by Crystallize, coupled with the performance optimizations from Next.js, resulted in a seamless and intuitive user journey, consequently improving the CTRs.
We are selling more than ever while Sweden's overall furniture market is down 46%.
Ludvig Ungewitter, CEO & Founder of Sweef
Sweef.se uptick in sales underscores the pivotal role of a well-optimized eCommerce solution in navigating market adversities.
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