New Era Cap
Founded in 1920, New Era Cap Company are the leading global headwear manufacturer producing more than 35 million caps per year. They are the exclusive manufacturer and marketer of the official on-field cap worn by every Major League Baseball team and their Minor League affiliates across the world. New Era have also developed a very strong identity on the street and is growing its brand into apparel and across new markets.
The Challenge
New Era were keen to develop a new site for the EMEA region that represented the authenticity & individuality of the New Era brand as the existing site was outdated and not optimised for conversion.
New Era goals were to:
1. Design a new site for the EMEA region that supported a solid, high traffic e-commerce platform optimised for conversion.
2. Represent the authenticity & individuality of the New Era brand as the existing site was outdated.
3. Optimise for usability across key journeys.
4. Attract a wider customer demographic whilst growing its engagement.
5. Increase conversion rates.
The Solution
Leading the CX team at Made to Engage, we had joined forces with New Era in 2019 with the focus on a holistic customer-focused programme of work to increase conversion rates and customer engagement.
User Interface
The potential to achieve dramatic results via by setting up a process of iterative change that is perfectly illustrated by New Era Cap’s experience improvements. The cross functional teams worked to completely overhaul their EMEA website:
Homepage & Category Navigation
- Homepage
- Category Taxonomy
- Main Navigation
- Intermediary Category Pages
Product Lists & Filtering
- List Layout
- List Items: Product Info & Thumbnails
- List Items: Interface & Hit Areas
- Filtering: Available Filters
- Filtering: Interface & Layout
- Sorting
Product Page
- Product Page Layout
- Image Gallery UI
- The “Buy” Section
- Product Variations
- Cross-Sells & Cross-Navigation
Cart & Checkout
- Shopping Cart & “Added to Cart” behaviour
- Account Selection & Creation
- Customer & Address Information
- Payment Flow & Methods (Incl. Third-Party)
- Credit Card Form
- Order Confirmation & E-Mail
- Cross-Sells
- Field Labels & Microcopy
- Field Design & Input Optimisation
Data & Experimentation
Building on top of the company’s continued use of Optimizely’s A/B testing platform, New Era’s use of experimentation to iterate and test has allowed for rapid growth. By experimenting at speed and scale, New Era has experienced sustained year-on-year growth.
The Results
Optimizely Experiments is central to New Era Cap’s roadmap for 2022. By building these experiments on top of the Commerce and A/B testing Content Clouds, they’ll be able to experiment effortlessly at speed and scale, so they never need to guess - instead using the full power of the Optimizely stack to consistently delight and inspire their customers, just as they did with that first Yankees cap way back in the 1920s.
60% year on year e-commerce growth for the world’s biggest headwear brand
123% in 2021 Black Friday Sales YoY
70% increase in adds to basket
9% increase in returning customers
Optimizer Awards 2021 - Most Innovative Digital Experience in EMEA
European eCommerce Awards 2022 - European Fashion Apparel website of the year
"It’s great to see what you are doing here. The decisions you are making just seem to make sense. We are focusing in the right areas. It feels like you are thinking for us and working with us. Thank you. Let’s keep it going."
Paul Gils
CEO Europe, New Era Cap Company
