Ecommerce and Retail • Neto
Gritty Pretty: 100K Visitors and a New Ecommerce Site with Neto Partner, Toolbox Designs
Alison Jordan, Partner Manager
08 Mar 2018 • 8 min read
08 Mar 2018 • 8 min read
Australian beauty blog Gritty Pretty is beauty, minus the bullsh*t. With a hundred thousand unique visitors reading the blog every month, Eleanor Pendleton, Australian multi-award winning style influencer and editor of Gritty Pretty, saw an opportunity to leverage her readers with an online store stocking the beauty products the blog reviews.
Eleanor could see that the readers were clicking through to purchase from their affiliates like Mecca and Adore Beauty—so why not push that traffic to their own store?
Gritty Pretty used blogging favourite, Wordpress, for their blog, which was working well, but didn’t quite cut it for the ecommerce dream they had in mind. An expertly curated array of beauty products, it was critical that this carried all the way from the blog through to the webstore and into the customer’s hands; delivering a consistent customer experience through an intuitive and effortless user interface.
Eleanor aspired to create an experience that was incredible, beautiful, luxurious, and premium, but still simple, “beauty products should make you feel good - not overwhelmed.”
That’s when Gritty Pretty met Neto partner, Toolbox Designs
So how exactly does using a Neto Partner work? What’s important to look for in a partner? Why work with a partner? And what were the results? Let’s dive right in, shall we?
In the sea of digital, design and creative agencies, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. Design agency, Toolbox Designs, have always done more than just offer a cookie-cutter approach to web design. Rather than focussing only on what a client needs now, they also consider what the future will look like; they plan for growth. And planning for growth means finding products to use that are built for growth.
In their 10+ years designing and developing websites, the Toolbox team has used almost every player in the ecommerce game to build online stores for their clients, but realised they, "needed a more robust solution for clients who had outgrown platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify", which is when they came across Neto.
“After hearing about Neto we sat down and did a complete comparison with all the other platforms - looking at features, price, and applications. Overall, Neto was the best ecommerce platform. It can be used for the most basic or complex sites”, says Liam O’Toole, Director at Toolbox Designs.
One thing Liam loved about Neto was the offering of Australian integrations—“something that no one else is doing”. The native integrations make it simple for their clients to work with shipping providers like Australia Post and Sendle, and to easily accept payments with payment gateways like Stripe, Braintree and eWay, who understand the Australian retail environment and regulations.
And so the partnership was born.
Toolbox Designs partnered with Neto as a Design and Solutions partner to help deliver their clients a long term solution that they love; a partnership that helped Gritty Pretty scale their business and realise their retail dreams.
Gritty Pretty were looking for someone different—a partner with a bit of an edge who would really push the bar with the design of their website, instead of just building a run of the mill website that simply ticked boxes.
By partnering with Toolbox Designs, Eleanor was able to draw on their years of experience building ecommerce sites to make the store she had envisioned into a reality with the Neto platform. On the other side of the coin, Liam from Toolbox intimately knew Eleanor’s business, understanding all of her pain points, and his knack for asking the right questions and thinking long term saw Gritty Pretty become what it is now.
Liam says; “when we first spoke to Gritty Pretty, they talked about onboarding, dispatch and order fulfilment. People starting out don’t think a lot about the fulfilment side of things”, so asking questions like “do they want to trade internationally, do they want 3rd party integrations, dropshippers etc”, made it clear Neto was the perfect fit.
Neto’s intuitive and easy-to use back end was icing on the cake. Eleanor says, “we had a play around with Neto and it was very easy to use; we’d only had Wordpress experience, but the Neto interface was super easy to navigate”.
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For toolbox designs support is more than just ‘support’… it’s ongoing account management. They’re the ‘partner that can do anything”, whether that’s;
“Sometimes for clients it’s a case of looking at their competitors and asking us ‘can we do something like that?’ Liam says. Or, they pick our brains about all the things they’d love to do, like automated marketing for example. And we bring ideas to the table, too. It’s our job to keep up to date with the latest trends and technologies, whether it’s web design, payment gateways or CRM.
Having an amazing web support team is crucial. They’re on the phone whenever we need.
Liam expected hundreds of orders within the first few weeks of launching, and Eleanor would have been happy with a single order when the online store launched. But the orders came in thick and fast right from the word go.
The Gritty Pretty online store went live on a Wednesday afternoon and within half an hour a couple of stories were leaked, including one from publisher Pedestrian.TV announcing the store’s launch, and then it went gangbusters. “The orders started coming in like bing, bing bing!’
Safe to say the launch and site is very successful; Toolbox Designs were able to create a seamless Gritty Pretty customer experience from start to finish with Neto:
“When you online shop at every increment and touchpoint, you get a little endorphin rush. You get your SMS & EDM, you shop and then your purchase arrives. So when you finally get that order, you’re so excited. With Gritty Pretty even the packaging is consistent, whoever packages the order signs their name, adds a beautiful black wax seal and when the customer opens it, they have a beautiful personalised card,"
There is a strong sense of satisfaction for Eleanor when she sees in the analytics that a reader reads the blog and clicks through to purchase a product that she has packed.
Even though the blog was pre-existing and thriving, starting the ecom store was like starting from scratch. The great thing about Neto is that we can see our customers and repeat purchasers down to a fine detail.
And Gritty Pretty, with the support of Toolbox Designs and Neto are more than prepared for growth:
“What I like about it is that we can grow to a place where we have an enormous warehouse and Neto will accommodate that, If we go to bricks and mortar, I like that Neto can support us in store.”
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Whether you’re switching from another platform or are new to selling online, we have a network of partners and specialists to help you get the most out of Neto from day one. Check out our experts directory to find your perfect match.
Think you have what it takes to create amazing experiences for your clients with Neto? Become a Neto Design and Solutions partner and grow your clients businesses on Australia’s only all in one retail management platform that provides a complete solution for ecommerce, POS, inventory and fulfilment. Not an agency but still know someone who could use Neto? Become a Referral Partner.
Specialising in the design and development of uniquely crafted ecommerce stores for clients that desire to build a strong and reputable online store. Whether it’s a simple microsite or a sophisticated ecommerce store, Toolbox Designs excel in creating remarkable marketing solutions that your audience will enjoy.
