Carrot-Top Industries is a leading supplier of high-quality flags, banners, and other patriotic products in the United States. Founded in 1980, the company has grown significantly over the years, expanding its product line to include custom-made flags, banners, and other specialty items for a wide range of events and occasions. Today, Carrot-Top is known for its exceptional quality, fast turnaround times, and outstanding customer service.
In recent years, Carrot-Top has made significant strides in its online business thanks to its implementation of SuiteCommerce. This powerful e-commerce platform has helped the company overcome several challenges and achieve impressive results.
Dwight Morris founded Carrot-Top Industries in 1980 as a small brick-and-mortar store in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Initially, the company focused on selling flags and related accessories for local customers.
In the early days of e-commerce, Carrot-Top established a basic online presence with a simple website that allowed customers to browse and purchase products. However, as the company grew and competition increased, it became clear that a more advanced e-commerce solution was needed. That’s when Carrot-Top decided to implement SuiteCommerce, a fully integrated e-commerce platform allowing them to manage their entire business operations from a single system.
By choosing SuiteCommerce, Carrot-Top was able to streamline its business processes and provide a better overall experience for its customers.
Carrot-Top was using SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA) as their eCommerce platform. Although they had enjoyed success in the past with SCA, they began to experience issues with the version they were using. The team needed to make website changes but needed to figure out how best to proceed.
Carrot-Top was using SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA) as their eCommerce platform. Although they had enjoyed success in the past with SCA, they began to experience issues with the version they were using. The team needed to make website changes but needed to figure out how best to proceed.
Carrot-Top found that they needed to catch up on the latest version of SCA. This meant they could only take advantage of some of the new features and performance improvements offered by more recent versions. To remedy this issue, they upgraded their platform to ensure they could enjoy the latest version’s benefits.
In addition to needing to be updated on SCA, Carrot-Top also experienced performance issues on their site. They decided to re-platform in another eCommerce platform which would allow them to meet better customers’ demands for a more robust and performant website. This decision allowed them to increase site speed and improve the user experience for customers visiting their site.
Carrot-Top experienced broken SEO engine issues in SuiteCommerce, which caused some pages on their website to become unindexed by search engines such as Google and Bing. To fix this problem, they hired a third-party SEO company that worked tirelessly to ensure that all pages on their website were optimized for search engine visibility and indexing. As a result, organic traffic increased significantly due to improved SEO optimization efforts on their part.
Another challenge faced by Carrot-Top was that matrix items pages took too long time load due to too many options available for customers when selecting products from the matrix items page. To address this issue, they implemented lazy loading techniques, which allowed customers’ browsers to only load necessary information rather than loading everything at once, resulting in faster loading speed and improved customer experience overall.
The Other challenge faced by Carrot-top was implementing code best practices which are essential for ensuring websites run optimally across different devices & browsers while providing a seamless user experience no matter what device or browser customers use when visiting your website. To address this issue, they employed web developers with expertise in coding best practices & can implement those best practices efficiently.
Carrot-top found out that their website had poor core web vitals score, which indicates how fast a website loads and how well it performs on different devices & browsers. To address this issue, they worked with third-party web optimization companies who specialize in improving core web vital score and the website’s overall loading speed. As a result, customer experience significantly enhanced due to faster loading speed and better performance on different devices & browsers.
Carrot-Top turned to UnlockCommerce, a SuiteCommerce development agency, to help them overcome their challenges. With the help of UnlockCommerce, Carrot-Top made several significant improvements to its SuiteCommerce site.
Carrot-Top turned to UnlockCommerce, a SuiteCommerce development agency, to help them overcome their challenges. With the help of UnlockCommerce, Carrot-Top made several significant improvements to its SuiteCommerce site.
Carrot-Top was having significant issues with its Server Side extensions connected to LiveOrder. UnlockCommerce was able to focus on the backend and identify problems that were causing an issue with Carrot-Top’s shopping cart. After working closely to assess the situation and pinpoint the exact source of trouble, UnlockCommerce was able to resolve the issues quickly, allowing Carrot-Top to get back up and running with minimal impact on their services.
UnlockCommerce conducted a thorough review of Carrot-Top’s tax logic setup to identify and resolve any issues that could impact the store’s ability to process taxes correctly and accurately. This intervention from UnlockCommerce allowed Carrot-Top to trust the accuracy of its sales tax data, eliminating discrepancies and improving profits significantly.
We analyzed Carrot-Top’s customer user events and determined how to group them best to save time and streamline processes. Additionally, they were able to transition some of the customer user events onto a more efficient schedule that has proven beneficial for Carrot-Top’s workflow.
Unlock evaluated their sales order user event and determined that it could be easily grouped for faster completion. They also suggested moving the related action to a scheduled time period that would be more convenient for the users.
UnlockCommerce was able to help Carrot-Top by cleaning up the code on its website, making it lighter and faster than ever before.
Unlock conducted an extensive review of the website’s Third Party embeddings, resulting in vastly improved site loading speeds.
One of the most significant improvements was matrix items in their shopping cart, which resulted in significantly faster loading times and better search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Unlock reviewed the site and identified aspects that did not need to load, resulting in a significant boost to the loading speed.
Working to optimize the font loading, UnlockCommerce improved the site sizing, helping to make loading time faster for customers. This improved customer experience and professionalized the look and feel of Carrot-Top’s website.
UnlockCommerce was able to migrate the SCA version to 22.1, streamlining the overall workflow and paving the way for smoother operations in the future.
Unlock ran an audit of their third parties to discover any implications that could slow down their site. After the audit, Unlock helped Carrot-Top apply the necessary fixes to ensure their site loading speeds were optimized. impact on their services.
UnlockCommerce improved the overall user experience for Carrot-Top by investigating if it was possible to delay specific product listing page loading processes. By doing so, searches and category displays were improved, allowing customers to find their desired items quickly and easily.
By taking a close look at their existing development stack, the Unlock team could identify and remove unnecessary extensions that were slowing down loading times and negatively affecting the overall user experience.
By implementing lazy loading enhancement on the images so they would load after user interaction and personalizing the main homepage slider to have the first image in the transitions load right away with the others following afterward, Carrot-Top achieved a powerful eCommerce upgrade that is sure to make their customers’ experience much more pleasant.
The improvements made by UnlockCommerce had a significant positive impact on Carrot-Top’s business. The company achieved a number of critical results that helped improve the user experience and increase sales.
The improvements made by UnlockCommerce had a significant positive impact on Carrot-Top’s business. The company achieved a number of critical results that helped improve the user experience and increase sales.
First and foremost, the performance of the site improved dramatically. The site was faster, more responsive, and more reliable, which helped to reduce bounce rates and increase engagement. This, in turn, helped to increase conversions and drive more sales for the company.
Before GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
After GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
Before GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
After GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
In addition, the improvements made by UnlockCommerce helped to improve the site’s SEO performance. Pages previously unindexed began to appear in search results, which helped increase visibility and drive more organic traffic to the site.
Converting website visitors into customers is essential for any business that wants to be successful online. To do this it is important that your site has an excellent performance.
UnlockCommerce managed to improve the performance grade of carrot-top site from “F” to “A”
The overall performance which reflects both, how fast your page loaded for users, and how well it’s built for performance went up from 27% to 93%.
The structure, which represents how well the site is built for optimal performance increased from 64% to 94%. And the Web Vitals that indicate whether you are delivering a fast and good experience to the visitors are within the recommended time.
We are confident that visitors of carrot-top now enjoy a pleasant experience, that cause that more and more visitors are turning into new customers.
Before
After
Having good core web vitals means a site is user-friendly, a prominent SEO ranking factor now. So we improved Carrot-Top’s core web vitals, and it showed an increase in page ranking and organic traffic.
Having good core web vitals means a site is user-friendly, a prominent SEO ranking factor now. So we improved Carrot-Top’s core web vitals, and it showed an increase in page ranking and organic traffic.
Before GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
After GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
The fixes made to the tracking tools ensured that data was accurately tracked and monitored. This allowed Carrot-Top to gain better insights into customer behavior which can be used for marketing purposes, such as designing more effective campaigns or optimizing their site for higher conversions.
The fixes made to the tracking tools ensured that data was accurately tracked and monitored. This allowed Carrot-Top to gain better insights into customer behavior which can be used for marketing purposes, such as designing more effective campaigns or optimizing their site for higher conversions.
Before GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
After GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
The improvements to the Product Listing Page also had a significant impact. The page was more visually appealing and easier to navigate, which helped to improve the user experience and increase engagement. The improvements to the matrix items in the cart also helped to reduce friction in the checkout process, which helped to increase conversions and drive more sales.
Before GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
After GTM Lazy Loading adjustments:
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The success story of Carrot-Top Industries provides a valuable lesson for e-commerce businesses of all sizes. Choosing the right e-commerce platform can make all the difference in achieving success, and staying adaptable to changing market demands is essential for long-term growth.
By implementing SuiteCommerce and working with a trusted partner like UnlockCommerce, Carrot-Top could overcome its challenges and achieve its goals of improving the user experience and increasing sales.
For businesses that are looking to achieve similar success, SuiteCommerce is an excellent option to consider. It offers a range of features and capabilities that can help businesses to streamline their operations, improve the user experience, and increase sales.
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