By: Vanilla Heart Publishing
As the global ecommerce landscape evolves, businesses across industries are leveraging technology to create smoother, more personalized shopping experiences. The rapid pace of technological development has transformed how customers interact with online retailers, particularly in highly competitive sectors such as fashion and accessories. Companies that once relied on basic online storefronts are now implementing sophisticated systems to improve user engagement, streamline product discovery, and enhance scalability. Among these businesses is Just Sunnies, an Australian eyewear retailer that has embraced cutting-edge ecommerce solutions to maintain its edge in an increasingly crowded market.
Founded in 2007 by Jason Rose, Just Sunnies quickly gained recognition as a notable player in online sunglass retail, offering an extensive catalog of eyewear from international brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley and local Australian brands. While the company initially focused on offering a wide variety of eyewear at competitive prices, evolving digital retail trends led Rose and his team to explore new approaches to enhance customer experience and support long-term growth. This journey led Just Sunnies to adopt advanced ecommerce technologies that have played a crucial role in the company’s continued growth.
One notable change in Just Sunnies’ digital operations was the transition from its previous eCommerce platform to BigCommerce, marking a significant technological shift for the company. One of the more popular SaaS ecommerce platforms is BigCommerce, which offers greater flexibility, scalability, and integration than legacy systems. Just Sunnies transitioned to BigCommerce to support its evolving digital infrastructure, accommodate a growing product catalog, and manage an increasing customer base.
In addition to moving to BigCommerce, Just Sunnies invested in creating a headless, composable tech stack. This approach separates the front-end user experience from the backend system, allowing for more flexibility in customer-facing features while keeping strong backend capabilities. For Just Sunnies, this entailed creating a customized front-end experience that delivered smooth and intuitive shopping journeys while leveraging efficient backend solutions for data management and transaction processing. This compositional tech stack allowed the company to be agile in the pace of adjustment by the market without being weighed down by the burden of rigid technological framework constraints.
One key feature of this new tech ecosystem is the introduction of a Progressive Web Application (PWA). PWAs are designed to blend elements of native mobile apps with the accessibility of web-based platforms, aiming to enhance both reliability and speed. For example, Just Sunnies provides customers with a high-speed, responsive, and user-friendly shopping experience, whether they access the website from a desktop or a mobile device. PWAs are highly valuable in ecommerce: they reduce page loading times and enhance overall performance. That, of course are two critical factors in preventing cart abandonment and increasing conversion rates. A PWA adoption allowed Just Sunnies to address the growing demand for mobile-friendly shopping to serve an increasingly mobile-first audience.
Just Sunnies further considered customer engagement to make significant strides as it pushed through its technological advancements. The company added Klaviyo, a customer relationship management tool, to its tech stack to improve communication with customers. Just Sunnies uses Klaviyo’s functionality to deliver personalized marketing campaigns through emails based on customer behavior, preferences, and past purchases. This approach aims to enhance customer loyalty and retention, potentially increasing lifetime customer value. Klaviyo offers real-time performance insights after running a campaign, helping companies adjust their efforts and refine communication with their customers.
Product discovery was also an essential part of the e-commerce experience, and it has improved through technology. Just Sunnies added Searchspring, a tool for search and merchandising, to help enhance how customers browse the company’s product options. From sunglasses to prescription eyewear, with over 14,000 items in the catalog, the ability to quickly help customers find what they need became a priority. Moreover, Searchspring has enabled Just Sunnies to enhance dynamic product filtering, making it easy for shoppers to find a product close to their preferences. More importantly, it helps personalize product recommendations for shopping to a new level.
All these technologies have helped Just Sunnies grow and expand further. With the company expanding into prescription eyewear in June of 2023, technology became more of a keystone. Customers could “own their look,” with prescription lenses offering an even higher degree of personalization than had ever been seen before-to-the-minute alignment with the day’s changing consumer demand. Just Sunnies’ technological infrastructure enabled the expansion of prescription services across a broad range of products while maintaining a streamlined user experience. The company scaled up its operations without compromising on the quality of the business as it began to boom.
Another benefit was that through these innovations, Just Sunnies could keep pace with the rapidly changing landscape of ecommerce. Reap the full benefits of BigCommerce, Klaviyo, Searchspring, and PWAs to elevate customer satisfaction and unlock long-term success. Scaling while personalizing the shopping experience has become a key focus for Just Sunnies, helping to strengthen its position in Australia’s eyewear market.
In short, Just Sunnies’ focus on technology innovation has played a key role in its growth as an online retailer in the eyewear industry. Transitioning to the headless, composable tech stack and integrating with advanced tools such as Klaviyo and Searchspring all help improve the customer experience and support the company’s growth.
Published by Tom W.
