Case study – prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com

MIRTA is a small family company whose main mission is to help those who want to improve their health by producing natural cosmetic products from medicinal herbs from the island of Lošinj.

Mirta not only addresses domestic and foreign tourists, who sometimes visit Lošinj, but also wants to offer its products to the global market. Given that in their own business (development of cosmetic products) they take into account improvements, upgrades and trends, they have done the same when it comes to sales channels. This is where our Studio enters the scene – Mirta LLC has chosen us to create a web store and implement a other tricks from our sleeve from the world of digital marketing.

Disadvantages of the old web store

Mirta LLC contacted us dissatisfied with the existing website, which did not meet their business needs. In short, these were the following problems:

• the previous web store was based on a commerical WordPress template and was not further tailored to the needs of this client,
• like many other commercial templates, it was sluggish, with occasional problems loading content,
• a large number of generic text elements on the web store were not translated into Croatian (they remained in the original English), so all together it seemed a bit unprofessional and without credibility,
• multilingualism (additional language version) seemed incomplete – Croatian and English content were mixed, and some of the content was not translated into English at all.

These 4 reasons were enough for the owner of the company, Mrs. Mirta Lozančić, to start from scratch – to create a completely new web store that will be adapted to the needs of her company in every sense.

New web store – a little different from what is mostly seen on the internet

When we started planning a new web store, we knew we were going to move away from the classics – at least as far as our market is concerned. First of all, we mean the design that we wanted to adapt to the latest trends, which at first glance is reflected in large photo formats, large stylistic elements, fonts, etc ..

User screens are larger than ever before and the “close-up” website is more comfortable to use.

CMS extension

As with all of our web development projects, we did not use a commercial (purchased) WordPress theme, but we developed the theme from scratch. This is a prerequisite for a stable and fast website, which will later be easy (and affordable) to maintain.

Front page

All of the homepage content boxes can be managed from the interface itself, and for these purposes a custom framework was built in that is easy to use even if you have no prior programming knowledge. Among other things, we created a custom content slider through which our clients can upload photos and icons and / or textual content, define links, and even define the colors of certain elements.

Below we will briefly present the most striking specifics of the web store prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com:

Static image instead of slider

This way, we improved the first impression a user sees after loading the website – he sees a group of the most important products and can read the most important message instantly.

Mega menu

When dealing with websites and stores with a lot of content and a diverse assortment, it is important to achieve transparency – this is exactly what the so-called mega menu is (visible from the homepage and from each inner page). We presented the main product groups through a thematically appropriate image, the title of the main category, and a list of subcategories or related products. We designed this content module in line with the rest of the website, thus achieving design consistency.

Product page

We managed to achieve a big distinction compared to typical web stores with a specific product page concept (you can see an example at the link https://prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com/proizvod/losinjski-melem-50-ml/). The “close-up” dominates here as well, with a large part of the page occupied by the photo itself – because, they say, it speaks a thousand words

We transformed the classic WooCommerce layout, removed impractical cards that contained descriptive content, attribute tables and user ratings, and arranged all these elements linearly, one below the other. We created additional content frameworks for the presentation of product specifics (composition, method of use, etc.), thus expanding the standard capabilities of the e-commerce solution used, while ensuring that these content frameworks are easily managed from the interface of each product page.

All together, it led to the products being presented more clearly, and by doing this, the user experience was taken to a higher level.

Send an inquiry instead of a purchase

Our principle is that nothing should be left to chance. We are aware that many customers are hesitant about buying and have hundreds of questions before they actually place an order. Therefore, we decided to place an inquiry form on each product page, which is opened by a click of the button (Send inquiry). The form opens in a modal window, which saves some space, and does not impair the visibility of the presentation.

We should emphasize that we had a broader picture in mind this time as well, so we made sure to avoid potential misunderstandings. We programmatically solved the automated filling of the form field with the product title, depending on which product the query is sent for (from which exact product page), thus saving the user the time needed to manually enter the product name he/she is interested in, thus avoiding potential errors. The request is sent to the administrator by e-mail, and the automated e-mail notification contains information from this field, so the store manager knows which product the user is inquiring about.

You can try it yourself at https://naturalcosmetics-mirta.com/proizvod/rosemary-facial-toner/, it’s convenient, isn’t it?

A departure from the classic look of WooCommerce elements

When we develop custom websites or stores, we strive whenever possible to give a touch of the unique and not always stick to the predefined concept and design brought by WordPress or WooCommerce. This is the answer to the question why the development of custom projects takes at least two months.

In this sense, we will mention a few specifics that characterize the web store prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com.

First of all, we decided to change the default WooCommerce search filter position, so we moved them from the side menu to the position above the product listing. In this way, we have achieved greater visibility and fresher design.

We customized the classic WooCommerce shopping cart element, achieving more interactivity and a better user experience.

We’ve built in functionalities for adding products to the wish list and to the comparison module, and these are highly interactive elements that open in modal windows.

Specific product appearance – packages

The aspect of the web store prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com that we are very proud of is the presentation of several products on the same page (a group of products sold as one). Namely, the company Mirta LLC has in its range several such packages, composed of individual products (which can be purchased as stand-alone), but when package together have a lower price and are shipped in an interesting packaging suitable for gifts. You can see an example of such a product at the link https://naturalcosmetics-mirta.com/proizvod/gift-box-immortelle-lavender/.

The presentation of the package consists of an overview of all the products in the package, where the names of these products are clickable and take customer to more information about each of them (individual product pages). There is also a photo gallery, a classic product description and the possibility of evaluation, which is one of the standard presentation elements of the product on the WooCommerce store.

Creating packages within the website interface is very simple. There is a module in the interface of each product page where you can choose whether it is a standard product or a package, and if you select a package, additional options open to select the products you want to integrate into it.

Additional language (on its own domain)

Due to the importance of foreign buyers, not only tourists who occasionally visit Lošinj, but also a much wider audience interested in natural products, an important aspect was the performance of multilingualism. It was solved through the most advanced multilingual plugin for WordPress – WMPL, and our task was as follows:

It is also worth mentioning that we have placed the English language framework on its own domain (naturalcosmetics-mirta.com), which makes it exist as an independent website, when in fact it is not – the English language framework is accessed through the same interfaces as the Croatian. WPML allows for such interventions and whenever we have the opportunity, we use this functionality. This raises the credibility of the website and the business behind it, because the user gets the impression that he is buying from a more localised store. Ask yourself, if you were English, Swedish or German, would you have more confidence in the store at prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com or naturalcosmetics-mirta.com?

In any case, the advantage of the language framework created through WPML is that it can be optimized for search engines regardless of the Croatian language version, because there are technical prerequisites for this (meta descriptions and tags, alt tags and all other elements for strategic content optimization).

Email marketing tools

Email marketing is a tool that we always suggest to all clients because its potential is simply inexhaustible. In most of our web stores we implement a so-called three-phase email marketing strategy, which consists of the following:

When we mention integration with Mailchimp (or some other e-mail marketing service), it means that all the data of website visitors who use these forms (subscribe to the newsletter, order a discount coupon, make a purchase, etc.) are stored in a mailing list on Mailchimp, where this information is used directly when sending promotional newsletters. Mailchimp has very advanced options for creating and running promotional e-mail campaigns, which makes it one of the most popular e-mail marketing services on the Internet.

We also want to emphasize that the client, even without programming knowledge, can manage most of the elements of e-mail marketing tools that are visible on the website – change the text next to the form, photos, and then make a link to another web form created on Mailchimp (via ID code).

Backend interface in Croatian

As with all the other custom websites we create, our job is to enable customers to easily manage content in the future, while minimizing costs. Therefore, we are expanding the standard capabilities of the CMS and integrating an additional framework that allows our clients to independently change almost all content elements that are present on the website.

Yearly maintenance

Mirta LLC has hired us to maintain their web store for a period of one year, and this service includes the following:

These technicalities may not tell you much, but, it is about taking care of all the necessary aspects so that the web store prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com is always available, working stably and quickly. If any error occurs in the operation of the website, our support responds within 12 hours.

What are the next steps for prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com?

The following steps can be summed up in one word: GROWTH.

Make sure that the web store is interesting and always up to date – and this will be achieved through the dynamics of content. More content on the practical application of products with which Mirta LLC will gather a loyal audience around their website, better quality photos of products that will increase the credibility of the web store itself (and thus the business behind it) – these are just some of the steps that the owner Mirta Lozančić intends to take in the near future.

Our steps will include taking care of the functional aspects and harmonize the web store prirodna-kozmetika-mirta.com over and over again with new technologies and trends.

We would like to thank the owner of Mirta LLC for the trust she has placed in us and wish her much success with the new web store.