Calibra came to Inspira looking for help launching their D2C sales in the UK. Working closely with the client to understand their business needs, we settled on a plan for a bespoke Shopify store for their UK business – incorporating some clever additions such as product subscription services and intelligent cross-selling tools.
Calibra has earned international recognition and is now offered as a sub-brand of Covetrus – a global animal-health company based in the US
Calibra is a company that manufactures and sells pet food, for customers all around the world. Their products began development in 2001, with an initial range of dry dog foods hitting stores in 2004. Since then, they have expanded to offer a variety of wet and dry foods, as well as dental treats, for both cats and dogs.
Created by Czech veterinarians, Calibra has earned international recognition and is now offered as a sub-brand of Covetrus – a global animal-health company based in the US. However, the Calibra chain was yet to fully break through into the UK pet food market, and so they came to Inspira Digital to see if we could help them set up a reliable platform for direct-to-consumer sales in the UK.
They opted to launch on Shopify which opens up the opportunity to take advantage of Shopify's mature ecosystem of off the shelf apps.
Calibra approached Inspira after seeing the fantastic work we did for My Family Vets – a large company working in a similar industry. For My Family Vets, we created a dynamic new presence on Shopify that took full advantage of features such as subscription services for consumables like pet food. Inspira certainly looked like a good fit for what Calibra wanted to achieve.
This project would involve designing and launching a D2C store focussed on the UK market. One of the first decisions that Calibra needed to make though, was whether to repurpose their existing ecommerce stores for UK sales – or to launch their UK store on Shopify. They opted for the latter, which we agreed was the best thing for them as it opened up the opportunity to take advantage of Shopify's mature ecosystem of readily available apps & integrations.
Here at Inspira, we have many years of experience working with Shopify, and we already had a successful track record in using Shopify for pet stores – so we already knew we could deliver the client something pretty special.
In addition though, through discussion with Calibra we found that their UK team already had a direct integration between Shopify and their warehousing system, all ready to go. Meanwhile, we knew that the mature ecosystem of Shopify would give them access to some very useful and relevant tools, such as product subscriptions – so ultimately, going the Shopify route made perfect sense.
We created a gorgeous, on-brand storefront for Calibra – something that would really stand out from the competition.
Our design teams starting point was modern Shop 2.0 theme. Which was carefully selected to provide majority of the requirements the project needed initially and to be a solid base to scale from. In fact the theme selection was so on point that it negated the need for any custom code, meaning we were able to move fast.
We then carefully started customising this theme to create a beautifully crafted ecommerce experience that reflected the brand values & aesthetics of the Calibra brand.
And the end result is a slick looking Shopify store that looks great and is easy to use.
In designing the site structure, we prioritised discoverability and ease of use.
Working closely with the team at Calibra we helped to systematically structure their data and product groupings. This would facilitate the streamlining of their back systems, but also, the newly sorted product hierarchy could then be expressed in a highly organised way on the front end of the store – to ensure that customers always find the products they were looking for. To this end we employed the theme’s mega menus, and filters powered by Shopify’s native Search & Discovery app. Added to this, we included plenty of visual CTAs and cross-selling prompts, to maximise that average cart value!
On the topic of boosting sales, we used a range of different approaches to help Calibra maximise their business potential.
For example, we built a method that allowed Calibra to map related products for the purpose of cross-selling – so if a customer buys dog food with specific nutritional characteristics, why not also show them the corresponding training treats?
We used an accordion presentation style to create an easy-to-digest user interface.
From vital information up top, visitors can then expand sections to get to all the details – such as feeding instructions, ingredients, kibble size – while keeping the overall appearance clean and streamlined. This is considered a best practice approach, as such a system would entail numerous benefits for the client – being likely to reduce customer indecision, and thus increasing conversion rates.
Finally, we implemented a number of tech partnerships through recommended app integrations – in order to supercharge the effectiveness and usability of the new Calibra pet store on Shopify.
Here’s a roundup of what we included under the hood:
The final result was a fantastic new UK-focussed Shopify store for Calibra. We were pleased to be able to meet all of the client’s specifications – delivering and launching the store online in perfect time to host their brand new product range.
