How Public Rec posted double-digit increases in site speed and CVR with Pack
Discover how Public Rec supercharged site speeds and conversion rates with Pack’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
Margaret Julian
Director of Product Marketing
"We're thrilled with the new headless storefront that they built. The site is much faster, we have more frontend control, and we've seen a meaningful increase in our conversion rate."
About
Meet Public Rec
Public Rec is a digitally-native apparel brand on a mission to make comfort look good. Born from a Kickstarter campaign that attracted thousands of backers, Public Rec has since grown into a leading men’s and women’s workleisure brand — garnering acclaim from publications such as Business Insider, Men’s Health, and The Chicago Tribune
The Challenge
Public Rec sought to scale its Shopify store without impacting site speeds
Public Rec started with a single product: its All Day Every Day pant, which catapulted the brand’s reputation and popularity. At the time, the Shopify theme they relied on to build and manage their storefront suited their needs — providing core ecom features without the tech headache.
However, as Public Rec’s product catalog expanded, their business logic, operations, and (most importantly), their website’s front end grew more complex. They soon hit an inflection point where scaling their storefront further would dramatically impact site speeds and conversion rates.
To solve the site speed problem, they moved to a custom headless storefront, using Shopify Plus, Gatsby and Contentful.While site speed did marginally improve, there were also some major drawbacks to the setup:
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Slower content launches: Because of the complex CMS and nature of deployments, it took much longer to get content out the door. This hampered the team’s ability to test and iterate quickly.
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Feature bloat: While Contentful did provide flexibility, a lot of the meaty features went unused because Public Rec was focused on pushing content to their website, and didn’t need to push content to other channels (Ex. in-store kiosk, mobile app).
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More maintenance: Instead of focusing on building new features and optimizing their site, the team had to spend a lot of time on upkeep for their complex headless store.
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High total cost of ownership: With the complex additional tool sets, high maintenance costs, and slower time-to-market, the total cost of ownership for their new site was high.
Public Rec didn’t want to go back to a slower, less flexible Shopify theme. Yet, they also knew they needed an easier, less expensive way to manage their site.
The Solution
Pack’s DXP helped Public Rec scale its Shopify store without overcomplicating the tech
Public Rec partnered with Pack to implement a new custom storefront that would structurally support its growing catalog of products — but maintain the ease of use of their Shopify storefront.
With site speed as a key focus, the new storefront they built with Pack empowered the team to scale Public Rec’s product catalog while delivering the snappy performance of a headless site – with the added benefit of a low-maintenance tech stack that was easy to use.
In addition to the blazing site speeds provided by their new storefront, the Public Rec team also loves how Pack streamlines customization of their front-end experience by offering:
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Real-time visual editing that makes it easy to create and publish content—regardless of the team’s technical background
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A seamless Shopify integration
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Pre-built website components, hooks, and utilities such as product hooks, listing pages, and checkout links
With Pack at the helm of their new Shopify storefront, Public Rec is free to bolster its product catalog, without impacting the customer experience.
The Results
Public Rec boosted site speeds by 52% and CVR by 26%
Since partnering with Pack, Public Rec has increased site speeds and CVR significantly – all while expanding its product line to include men’s and women's tops, bottoms, outerwear, and accessories.
Thanks to Pack’s DXP, Public Rec has seen the following results:
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52% faster page loads
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26% increase in CVR
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10% increase in AOV
Moving forward, Public Rec can’t wait to continue expanding its product line to fill the wardrobes of men and women alike. With their eCommerce side of operations on track, they can also focus on broadening their reach into brick-and-mortar storefronts – an effort which they have been keen to pursue.