MagCulture
Arts & Culture
Shopify Plus
One home for a world of magazines
With a well-established Wordpress blog that had become the online authority for all things magazines, MagCulture were looking to bring their vast editorial content in closer integration with a re-imagined eCommerce experience, ready for a 2021 audience.
The MagCulture team had tried it all: A bespoke CMS, Wordpress, BigCartel, to name a few.
So by the stage the MagCulture team were contacting Pixelcabin, their own words summed it up perfectly:
"The two-headed WordPress/Shopify web presence worked but it was messy. Add in social media and then specialist platforms like Soundcloud, Vimeo and Eventbrite, and things got more and more fragmented. And then there was our mobile (lack of) presence..!"
Sound familiar?
We brought all of their existing content onto Shopify, simplifying the entire MagCulture experience onto the solid foundation that is the Shopify hosting and infrastructure. The MagCulture team have never looked back, and neither have their readers.
Designing a new experience, with a design-centric client
Pixelcabin worked closely in collaboration with the MagCulture founder, Jeremy Leslie, to bring the experience of their coveted London physical store to their online customers.
The iconic tiled floor was recreated as an easy-to-update content area on the homepage to showcase the breadth of the magCulture brand, with flexibility to support different layouts to keep the home page feeling fresh.
In addition, browsing by categories and curated collections was brought to the fore. This enabled customers to enjoy the browsing of their unrivalled range, whilst also making it easier than ever to complete a purchase, including fast payment options like Apple Pay and Google Pay.
And who better to give their verdict on the new experience, than the dedicated following of MagCulture. We think their reactions say it all!
Project Challenges
MagCulture had been using Wordpress for years as their content platform, and had built up significant SEO through these URLs, however the platform was self hosted and becoming expensive to manage. Shopify was used already for the store, but with a third party theme that did not suit the product catalogue needs.
The solution
Migrating the Wordpress content to Shopify meant MagCulture could take advantage of the rock solid hosting and CDN as part of Shopify, whilst also enabling us to seamlessly link product content into blog article content. All blog URLs were redirected to ensure historic links would still route to the correct articles.
MagCulture was known for its iconic physical store and enjoyable browsing experience, however this had not been effectively translated to the online experience.
The solution
Working closely over video calls with the founder of MagCulture, who was able to be present in the store as he spoke with Pixelcabin, we were able to design and emulate the in store experience into a beautiful new theme that makes browsing as easy as buying.
Using an older theme structure, the MagCulture team found it difficult to update the site with fresh content and curated selections of titles for customers to discover
The solution
Ensuring the 'Sections' functionality was used optimally so that whilst a bespoke design, the content of the homepage especially could easily be updated, both within each block, or even the order of blocks on the homepage.
Pixelcabin built an integrated solution for the magCulture team to connect blog articles with products, for seamless cross-promotion and discovery from their highly coveted content.