“Searchspring ultimately allows us to provide a better user experience for our customers. The platform empowers us to have more control over our online stores, and it has had a huge impact on our search conversions… The level of support we receive really sets Searchspring apart from other vendors we work with in this space.”

Airi Sutherland
Head of Digital, THE UPSIDE.

The Brand

THE UPSIDE is an Australian lifestyle brand inspired by a deep, authentic love of yoga and a desire to reimagine workout wear through a fashion-forward lens. Stylish shapes and colorful prints blend across their range of athleisure apparel, which is designed with the contemporary woman in mind.

With a commitment to sustainability, charitable contributions, and mental health awareness, the brand is focused on empowering customers “to be well and feel gorgeous in your pursuit of a joyful and healthy life.” 

“As a brand, we are very down to earth,” says Airi Sutherland, Head of Digital at THE UPSIDE. “We hold space for every mood, every moment, and every woman. Like the women that wear us, we believe in quality of life and legwear. We recognize the need to bring a fashion feel and a yogi soul to performance-grade apparel. As we evolve and grow, we continue to stay true to our guiding principles of balance and integrity, a code that is layered throughout THE UPSIDE’s approach to living, designing, and producing.”

The Challenges

With three ecommerce websites targeting different geographic regions, THE UPSIDE previously struggled to optimize and maintain the online shopping experience across each individual domain. 

“We’re looking to grow in the Australian market, to build on the following we already have here,” says Airi. “Additionally, we’re expanding with a focus on the U.S., while also looking at how we can grow internationally. As Head of Digital, my priority is to improve our acquisition and retention, and provide a more personalized on-site experience.”

THE UPSIDE’s previous ecommerce platform failed to provide the level of control that the team needed to achieve these goals. And, with the brand’s frequent releases of limited edition products, this lack of flexibility and customization proved especially challenging.  

“We have niche campaign drops where we bring out exciting new products on a fortnightly cycle. There’s always something new for our customer to engage with, as well as those foundational products that she can keep coming back to,” says Airi.

The Partners

In April 2020, THE UPSIDE selected Matter Design & Digital to deliver the next evolution in their ecommerce experience. A Sydney-based ecommerce consultancy, Matter offers a cohesive suite of services, including ecommerce strategy, branding, marketing, design, and development. 

As part of a site redesign and replatform to BigCommerce, Matter recommended Searchspring to THE UPSIDE team for its intelligent search and merchandising capabilities.

“Searchspring delivers an effortless customer experience and a short path to purchase through search and merchandising on THE UPSIDE store. The result is a high-converting website and platform for building the brand across multiple markets globally,” says Nigel Poole, CEO at Matter. 

BigCommerce was selected for its flexibility and API integrations, as well as its multi-currency functionality. “More than ever, merchants need ecommerce solutions that enable them to support their growth at scale,” says Shannon Ingrey, VP & GM, APAC, BigCommerce. 

“For THE UPSIDE, that means creating seamless customer experiences, expanding its online presence, and driving brand growth and recognition across multiple markets. By combining Matter’s extensive experience in ecommerce design and strategy, Searchspring’s search and merchandising solutions, and BigCommerce’s API openness and ability to help merchants scale internationally, THE UPSIDE has the right tools in place to support its local and international customer base across multiple domains.”

The Solutions

Managing THE UPSIDE’s three site domains has now been simplified with Searchspring’s merchandising automation and campaign copying rules. ”Our approach to merchandising the Australian site is very different to how we merchandise the U.S. site,” says Airi. “With Searchspring, we can accommodate those differences really easily, while also being able to clone rules or campaigns across all sites when we need to. That saves us a lot of time.”

Boost rules give the team control over which products are served to their customer in different scenarios, ensuring a hyper-relevant shopping experience. “The ability to create customized boost rules based on newness, stock availability, and how many units of a product have been sold is really useful. We love that we can control those parameters as opposed to having them fixed,” says Airi. 

The platform’s reporting also informs the team’s search and merchandising strategies. “Searchspring’s reporting is super user-friendly, it’s easy for us to pull the insights we need to determine where we should focus our attention. If we’re not serving up the best experience in response to certain search terms, we can fix it quickly.”

Search synonyms are just one tactic that the team has set up in response to these insights. “If we release a limited edition leopard print product and continue to see searches for ‘leopard’ after it sells out, we can add that term to the ‘animal print’ synonym to ensure the customer still finds relevant results.” 

THE UPSIDE is now implementing Searchspring’s personalized product recommendations across their sites. “We see personalized recommendations as having huge potential to create a more meaningful experience for our customer. The ability to make suggestions based on her previous purchase history – or based on historical shopper behavior, if she’s an unknown customer – is really compelling. We expect Searchspring’s recommendations to have a really positive impact on conversion rates and average order value,” says Airi. 

The Results

“Searchspring ultimately allows us to provide a better user experience for our customers. The platform empowers us to have more control over our online stores, and it has had a huge impact on our search conversions – to the point that we’re updating our homepage design to prompt more shoppers to use the search bar. We also love having visibility of the product roadmap, there’s always new functionality and capabilities to get excited about,” says Airi.   

“The level of support we receive really sets Searchspring apart from other vendors we work with in this space. I can’t speak highly enough of Colleen, our Customer Success Manager, she has been absolutely fantastic. We’ve also worked really closely with Tina, who is just such an expert in personalization. She has really helped us to build a plan for what we want to achieve with product recommendations.”