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6 MIN READ
While we sometimes hear merchant chatter to the contrary, we are here to reassure merchants everywhere: you can set up shared, multi-brand shopping carts in Shopify – and we have a lot of experience doing it. It doesn’t require complex development work, but sometimes it can be tricky to get right from a UI/UX perspective.
There are a couple of different ways to approach creating a Shopify multi-brand experience, as well as some pros and cons with shared shopping carts. However, when done right, we think a multi-brand shopping and shared cart experience can bring multi-benefits!
Before we dive into the benefits of multi-brand eCommerce, let’s look at how merchants visually merchandise a multi-brand shopping experience.
With multi-brand stores that share the same cart, the global header typically features a “tabbed” experience, where each brand is presented as completely distinct experiences with their own main menus and navigations.
When customers click on the brand “tabs”, they’ll see the global header styling change to align with the selected brand’s look and feel; however, once they start shopping across the different brands, they’ll notice that items are being added to the same cart. This allows for a seamless shopping experience across brands, providing customers with the ability to purchase products across all brands in a single checkout experience.
There are a few key reasons why merchants decide to implement a multi-brand shopping and shared cart experience.
Instead of maintaining several stand-alone eCommerce sites, creating a single multi-brand site can bring significant development efficiencies. Here’s how it works: a single template for each page type (e.g., product page, collection page, etc.) is designed and developed with conditional styling for each brand. At eHouse Studio, we work with companies to set up brand style guides and conditional styling to specify how the pages are displayed to the user via product vendor, type, or tags.
In addition to lowering development costs, having a single store with multiple brands can help merchants save on the costs of maintaining the features and functionality for multiple stores, as well as having apps running in multiple stores.
A multi-brand shopping experience can make it easier for customers to navigate across your different brands with ease and find the products they want for a better customer experience. And, when there’s a shared checkout, customers only have to enter their information once, making it faster and more convenient to purchase.
When it’s more convenient for customers to shop multiple brands in a single shopping trip or session, they may purchase more, boosting average order value (AOV). Additionally, a multi-brand shopping experience can be an effective way for companies to leverage their existing customer base to launch and grow new brands.
There also are some challenges or differences to consider when implementing a multi-brand shopping and shared cart experience.
When it comes to Shopify cart customization, there will be areas in a Shopify multi-brand experience that require “global styling,” meaning they won’t feature brand-specific design elements and will have a more neutral look. These include account pages, cart, and mini-cart flyouts. These areas are shared by all brands and will look the same no matter which brand a customer is shopping.
What about SEO for multi-brand sites? For a multi-brand experience on Shopify, you will have a global domain for your eCommerce site and domains for each of your different brands. However, each brand’s domain will be set up as a vanity URL that points the user to the “homepage” of the brand (each “homepage” looks like a homepage, but is actually built with a general page template). This may initially have some impact on SEO (this restructuring will require considering your SEO strategy and putting together a plan for redirections), but ultimately, companies need to weigh these challenges against the overarching business strategy and potential future SEO benefits of a multi-brand approach.
When considering implementing a shared cart experience, merchants need to weigh the pros and cons when it comes to advertising – whether reduced cannibalization of advertising spend is a higher priority than attribution by brand. This is because when multiple brands are purchased through a shared cart, they use the same analytics and conversion pixels, making it more difficult to attribute conversions at a brand level.
For example, a consumer may click on an ad for Brand 1 but end up purchasing from Brand 2 or Brand 3. The merchant still tracks a conversion, but not for a specific brand.
Often we see that even after merchants implement a multi-brand and shared cart experience, their customers don’t realize it. And when they do, they may be hesitant to shop multiple brands for fear they’ll lose what’s in their cart.
To avoid customer confusion, it’s important to design the shopping experience in a way that’s intuitive to customers as they navigate between brands. To determine how to structure the experience and set clear expectations for customers, it’s important to clarify how your brands are related. You can start the conversation by asking questions like:
The design of the page header is critical in creating a user-friendly, intuitive customer experience. Remember the “global styling” elements mentioned above? When these global/shared areas are a part of the tabbed header experience, it communicates to customers that these areas of the site are shared regardless of brand. For example:
In addition, clear communication is always key for a good customer experience. Beyond best-practice UI/UX design, it can be helpful to create content, for example, about your “family of brands.” This helps customers understand that they can shop across brands and benefit from shared cart eCommerce, such as experiencing faster checkout and having free or more cost-effective shipping.
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