OneBlade Increases Refill Subscription Rate by 579%

Luxury shaving brand, OneBlade, was growing fast. But their monolithic site with slow performance, a labyrinth-like checkout experience, and creative limitations inspired a need for a unique shopping experience.

OneBlade turned to all-in-one Frontend Platform Shogun Frontend with the help of Avex to create a headless progressive web application (PWA) that not only supported a sleeker experience, but maintained their existing Shopify backend. 

After Shogun Frontend, OneBlade saw a 579% increase in active users for refill subscriptions, a 30.1% increase in average order value YoY, and an 83% decrease in page-to-page load time.

The Challenge

OneBlade’s rapid growth and vision for a differentiated online shopping experience got them thinking about shifting to a headless storefront. The team had faced some challenges with their traditional ecommerce platform that limited their growth, including:

Slow site speed

The brand’s existing Shopify storefront was a workhorse, but with average page-to-page load times nearing 12 seconds, the team knew they were risking losing potential conversions to slow load times. The visually-rich brand needed to showcase products throughout their site without heavy imagery or animations impacting site performance.

Plus, OneBlade wanted to experiment with video, which proved to be difficult on a monolithic build because of unsupported or large file sizes, and restrictions on where the web team could place video within the site’s existing theme.

As Josh Nash, OneBlade’s Chief Marketing Officer, shares:

“We’re a visual brand, and we’re a luxury brand. So we really needed to allow people to immerse themselves in our design without slowing the site down.”

A maze of a checkout experience

Another hurdle OneBlade needed to solve for was simplifying their click-to-checkout experience. With their existing store, customers had to click through various product pages to eventually end up at the cart page. There were a few unnecessary steps to purchase.

“We’ve found that most people are ready to buy after they see a given product’s landing page,” says Nash. “So, we wanted to make that experience much faster and easier — all from our landing pages on the site.”

Enabling the marketing team with a merchant-focused approach

With the site design ideas the team had, along with third-party tools like ReCharge Payments for subscription management, OneBlade’s web team needed a headless commerce solution that would integrate seamlessly with their Shopify backend and existing tech stack.

Further, the marketing team needed to quickly create on-brand site pages more independently — without needing to burden developers. The team needed a low-to-no-code environment to work in.

The Solution

OneBlade took its existing Shopify store headless with Shogun Frontend.

Before going headless the brand was unable to include rich media throught the site because of increased latency, slower site speeds, and the developer costs. But now, OneBlade can manage and build custom pages and features quickly and easily.

For example, the brand has added rich merchandising throughout the site. Now, when a visitor clicks between different product colors, the images on the page all dynamically update to match a given selection:

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This functionality isn’t possible with traditional ecommerce platforms, and helps site visitors to examine a product carefully, seeing every detail ahead of checkout.

Moreover, with their new progressive web app, OneBlade simplified their click-to-checkout experience. Now, customers can add items to their cart in just one click and view their cart within whichever page they’re on.

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Since transforming the site into a progressive web app, it’s easy for OneBlade to achieve their custom look without any slow down. The store’s creativity is now uncapped:

“We wouldn’t have been able to feature 3D renderings of each razor model on the site without Shogun Frontend and the speed it affords us as a PWA,” says Nash.

Not only does OneBlade now have faster site performance with a decoupled Frontend, but they didn’t have to switch up their existing tech stack. OneBlade’s store is built with Shopify, and they use apps like ReCharge Payments. As packaged headless software, Shogun Frontend merges with this current tech, so the brand hasn’t missed a beat.

Further, Josh and team no longer have to worry about unexpected backend updates:

“If Shopify does a big update and changes the way custom fields populate — which happened recently…when we didn’t have Shogun, we had to hire a developer to adjust our API which costs us customers and revenue,” says Nash. “But with Shogun and having gone headless, we now don’t have to worry about Shopify’s backend updates to the API.”

OneBlade now has complete control over their entire ecommerce experience from top to bottom.

The Results

OneBlade launched their headless storefront with Shogun Frontend on January 7th, 2021. Since then, the brand has increased average order value by 30.1% (comparing the periods of Q1 ’20 and Q1 ’21). As OneBlade’s razors range from $50 to $2,500 USD, this increase is considerable for revenue.

“After implementing Shogun Frontend, sales have shifted towards our higher-end razors, which confirms we’re now able to deliver high-converting, high-end user experiences,” says Nash. “We’re already seeing a year-over-year increase in average order value. No other changes we’ve made to our business have even come close to that kind of an impact in such a short period of time.”

Brand differentiation is important to OneBlade, and their web team needed to showcase their sophisticated products without sacrificing speed or customer experience. With Shogun Frontend, Josh and team now deliver the best, fastest ecommerce experience possible.

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As Nash shared, thanks to simplifying checkout and boosting site load times, the average number of store pages now viewed before checkout has decreased from ~seven pages to just two. Further, OneBlade’s average page-to-page load has dropped from ~12 seconds to just one to two seconds. These are positive signals site visitors are quickly finding what they need, and purchasing.

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And finally, in their first quarter after launching their Shogun Frontend-powered site, OneBlade saw net new active subscribers to their razor blade, shaving cream, and after shave refills increase by a staggering 579% over the previous quarter.

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Now that their Shopify store is headless, not only is it visually stunning and fast-loading, but it’s even more high converting thanks to eliminating points of friction.

The site runs as smooth as the shave OneBlade provides.

On the decision to transform the site with Shogun, Nash is thrilled with the change:

“Imagine if your store’s website loaded instantly — no matter the size and complexity of the content; imagine if customers could instantly add anything to their cart from a landing page and be sent directly to checkout; imagine if every page loaded blazing-fast and every interaction with your customers was precisely designed how you want it to be. Shogun Frontend lets you do all of that and edit on the fly from anywhere without code, without the hefty price tag and complicated interface.”

Josh Nash

“Imagine if your store’s website loaded instantly — no matter the size and complexity of the content; imagine if customers could instantly add anything to their cart from a landing page and be sent directly to checkout; imagine if every page loaded blazing-fast and every interaction with your customers was precisely designed how you want it to be. Shogun Frontend lets you do all of that and edit on the fly from anywhere without code, without the hefty price tag and complicated interface.”