How Boden’s commerce transformation unlocked cross-team agility and enhanced CX

“We wanted an e-commerce platform that was constantly evolving because our customer behavior keeps changing, including what technology or devices they use,” said Ana Machado da Silva, senior head of product management and experience at Boden. “We were spending less time making the website better for our customers, and instead spending energy, time and resources on our e-commerce build. 

“We make clothes, we don’t make tech; that’s not our business,” she said. “Our e-commerce evolution demanded a platform that already had features we needed and didn’t need to build, but was also constantly improving.”

A customized, disjointed tech stack held back Boden’s e-commerce experience

Boden leaned on its technology partner, Shopify, to reduce its dependency on custom tools and move faster in a fast-paced retail environment. As a DTC brand founded in 1991 as a mail-order business, Boden relies on its catalog, website and digital marketing to bring to life the quality and wearability of its clothing to customers.

Before transitioning to Shopify, Boden used several specialized platforms to manage its content, product data and online merchandising. As Machado da Silva explained, this approach required multiple integrations and development teams, on top of the total cost of ownership for each platform. 

“If we had a new idea that required more than one platform to deliver, we felt limited because we had to consider the integrations, the development time and priorities of the different teams, and then testing within and across platforms,” Machado da Silva said. “We couldn’t deliver the experiences we wanted for our customers quickly enough — that time and effort could take months to get a change live. We had great platforms that we were then customizing and bending slightly out of shape to fit our needs.”

How Boden maintained its brand identity with an intentional e-commerce transformation

In the past, when Boden introduced or transitioned new platforms, the organization struggled to implement those technology-driven projects successfully. For its next e-commerce transformation with Shopify, Boden included key people from several teams — including customer service, marketing, finance and e-commerce — from the beginning. These stakeholders participated in demos, discussions and more to give the different teams confidence that they could manage the updated website and better serve customers.

“The key difference was that decisions were being made together and compromises were being made together,” Machado da Silva said. “Shopify cuts across the whole business, and it is more efficient overall to do things together from the beginning and slowly work through it.”

As Boden underwent the replatforming process, the team purposefully kept the customer-facing website experience as similar as possible to the previous website. This allowed Boden to avoid introducing too much change for its customers while being better able to measure the impact of the replatform. 

For instance, the retailer was concerned that a new website would not be able to prominently feature its editorial images and videos, which are integral to the brand experience and its heritage as a catalog business. Ultimately, the team was able to replicate that same experience on the Shopify platform without too much effort or customization, according to Machado da Silva.

Two weeks before going live with Shopify, Boden conducted more than 30 user testing sessions with its most loyal customers from three different markets. The tests uncovered some friction points, and Boden was able to make fixes before launch.

“During these user testing sessions, they were talking about the product and the imagery most of the time — they did not notice the website had changed,” Machado da Silva said. “That was a huge positive for us, because it meant that the brand was still the focus. But we were also able to improve parts of the website in time to go live based on customer feedback.”

Ways Boden is unlocking enhanced CX and future growth opportunities

Since going live with Shopify in January 2025, Boden has already seen success. While the e-commerce team is still adapting to Shopify, the platform has enabled them to be more responsive to customer shifts or trends while reducing build time.

“We were very driven to have an MVP approach and go live with the site as best as possible, but not with everything we had before, and sometimes compromising on certain experiences,” Machado da Silva said. “Post go-live, we are in a stabilization phase, but we’re already looking at more A/B testing, introducing product bundles with complementary items and looking at other apps on the Shopify marketplace.”

One of the new features Boden has already introduced is Shop Pay as a payment method. Within the first two months of use, the retailer has already seen about 50% of its U.S. customers use this method to conveniently complete transactions. 

As Machado da Silva explained, the Shopify App Store can also serve as a growth lever, offering Boden fresh ways to experiment and customize new experiences. For instance, the retailer hopes to soon test and implement wish list capabilities, which had previously been deprioritized due to its multiple platforms and integrations. Along with product bundles, wish lists are an opportunity for Boden to retarget customers and drive e-commerce traffic.

“Instead of customizing something, we’re looking at the app marketplace. It’s such a different way of thinking, and that’s as big a benefit as adding a new feature to the website,” Machado da Silva said. “This kind of opportunity and new way of looking at things allows us to focus on the experience and what suits our customers and our business best.”

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