The Challenge
Bedloft’s website wasn’t a generic online store. It supported an entire ecosystem of products and services that college students and their parents could buy or rent for the school year — and it wasn’t just a few colleges. It partnered with more than 40 major colleges around the country.
With different products, pricing, and requirements across schools, shoppers needed the website to help them narrow down what was actually relevant to them. Students and parents struggled to immediately find approved products for their specific school, creating friction early in the buying journey and causing some prospects to drop off. The site also lacked modern accessibility standards and wasn’t optimized for mobile users.
That complexity created problems behind the scenes, too. Bedloft’s small internal team couldn’t easily manage the setup themselves, making changes to school details and products difficult without external support. With information varying across dozens of colleges, they needed more control over the website and the flexibility to make updates as those details changed.
Client Priorities
Make it easy for students and parents to find products and services for their specific school
Create a mobile-friendly, accessible experience for all users
Give Bedloft’s small internal team more flexibility to update school details and products without relying on external support
The Plan
Bedloft’s business model required a complex eCommerce setup, but that complexity didn’t need to carry over into the customer experience. BizzyWeb focused on creating a simpler shopping journey for students and parents while giving the Bedloft team more control over the system behind it.
Instead of presenting shoppers with randomized product suggestions, BizzyWeb created a school-first shopping experience organized by college and location. Students and parents would start by identifying their school, allowing the site to guide them toward the relevant products and services rather than making them sort through options that didn’t apply to them.
BizzyWeb also built the eCommerce structure around Bedloft’s existing business model, giving its small team more flexibility to manage school details and products as information changed. This reduced the need to rely on external support for ongoing website updates.
The redesigned experience also incorporated mobile-friendly design and modern accessibility standards, making the new shopping journey easier to use across devices and for a wider range of customers.
The Results
The redesigned website turned a complicated eCommerce setup into a more controlled experience for shoppers and the Bedloft team alike. Students and parents now start by selecting their school, allowing the website to personalize the shopping journey from the beginning and surface products and services relevant to that college. College-specific products and requirements create a more personalized path through the website, which also carries through into a simplified checkout process.
A more manageable eCommerce setup gives Bedloft’s team greater control over school and product updates without constantly relying on external support.
Bedloft still has a complex business to manage. Its website just doesn’t make shoppers or staff carry the weight of that complexity anymore. Students and parents get a more direct path to the products available for their school, while the Bedloft team has more control over the information powering that experience.
Before and After
