Interim E-Commerce leadership for SWIMS' move to Shopify Plus

SWIMS is a Norwegian brand known for galoshes and water-friendly loafers, with boots, sneakers and clothing alongside. It sold online in North America and Europe from an Episerver store, with each region running its own stores and its own ERP: A2000 in North America, Navision in Europe.

SWIMS brought DYODE in to run its North American online business day to day and to fix what the store was getting wrong. Our audit found a homepage with no call to action, a cart shoppers couldn't edit, no quick view, no back-in-stock alerts, and a menu where you couldn't click Footwear to see all footwear. SWIMS also had to decide whether to stay on its platform or move.

We started with the evidence: a desktop and mobile audit of SWIMS.com, a competitor review against Cole Haan, Tretorn and Hunter Boots, and a review of the paid search account that found budget going to search terms that never converted.

For the platform, we modeled the options side by side: staying on Episerver, or moving to Shopify Plus, Workarea or Magento, and what each would cost to license, host and build. SWIMS chose Shopify Plus. We then compared three Shopify Plus build partners on scoped hours, timeline and how each would connect both ERPs, and SWIMS hired one.

While the new store was planned, we ran the North American E-Commerce desk. Each week we reported sales, traffic, conversion, cart abandonment and return by channel, tracked top sellers and their stock, and met SWIMS' customer service representative in New York on returns, exchanges and fraud.

We checked every global email for links, messaging and regional stock, sat in on the paid search agency's meetings, set the monthly North American marketing budget, and ran Google display retargeting and prospecting. We also planned the holiday season, from markdowns and a gift guide to shipping cut-offs and launch-day QA.

On the Shopify Plus project we sat on SWIMS' side of the table. We ran the global project tracker, checked change requests against the agreed scope, and reviewed the new store's flows against E-Commerce practice.

We also worked through the ERP integration with SWIMS' ERP consultant and the build partner: the order, item and refund files A2000 would exchange with Shopify, automated fraud screening, and a plan for separate stores by currency, with product data matched across both ERPs by UPC.

SWIMS made its platform decision on side-by-side costs, and hired its Shopify Plus partner on scoped hours, a timeline and a plan for connecting both ERPs.

When SWIMS' own E-Commerce team took over, we handed off a written summary of every recurring task, from the weekly business review to the marketing budget, plus our recommendations for what to do next: a new email platform, an affiliate channel and a display program.