Website and Shop for a better sustainable economy
Flip GmbH | Website + ShopFlip is a startup founded by journalists with the big goal of fighting greenwashing and making the economy better. Driven by investigative journalism and transparency, Flip is establishing itself as a reliable source of information and research for all things pertaining to the sustainable economy.
Our work with Flip involved two projects: improving their existing website, and launching their e-commerce website. Here are some highlights of what we worked on.
Improving the Flip website
Enjoying a growing reputation and some viral social media campaigns, Flip already had a website where they shared their investigations and gathered a user base interested in their offering. However, growing their business and implemented new ideas became a challenge due to the technical challenges they faced.
Working closely with our internal product and engineering team, as well as with the Flip team, our goal was to increase the usability of their existing website, and increase the number of user registrations.
Simpler registration
In order to increase the user base of Flip, we first started by simplifying the existing registration process. This latter was leading to the loss of many potential users who didn't see the registration through due to the registration confirmation not being required, and being rather confusing by sending several emails at once. Our solution aligned with standard practices and allowed new users to choose their own credentials and whether they were interested in the Flip newsletter. The registration was then implemented by keeping the double opt-in process and ensuring that the confirmation was properly taken into account to allow access to the articles.
New registration processWe also worked on featuring a registration wall on their articles. Since the articles written by Flip constitute their main asset, their business model required these articles to only be accessible to registered users. For that reason, we designed the registration wall in a way that prompted readers to register, while still being integrated in a way to offer a glimpse of the content.
Registration wall on article pagesRebrush of the Startpage
While Flip had a lot to offer to its community in terms of valuable research and information, their Startpage was structured in a way that promoted their newsletter and general mission more than what the articles they had to offer. So we set out to change that by shifting the focus to the articles as their biggest asset. We worked on a rebrush and put forward the articles first so that we clearly presented them as an educational platform and provided readers with a more direct access to the information they seek.
Launching the Flip shop
Taking matters into their own hands, Flip decided to build a marketplace gathering sustainable products that have been vetted by their investigative research and reader community. Instead of it being just another sustainable e-commerce platform, the mission of the Flip shop is to not only be a place to sell sustainable products, but also to educate consumers on what it means to be sustainable and find their away around greenwashing practices.
Working closely with our internal product and engineering team, as well as with the Flip team, we worked on the launch of this sustainable e-commerce platform using Shopify as a CMS. Here are some highlights of what worked on.
Product page with brand-check
For technical and budget requirements, the marketplace was built using Shopify as a CMS. We started by choosing a template that was close enough to the look and feel of the Flip website, so as to keep the development efforts focused on feature development rather than styling. This meant finding a template that provided enough elements and flexibility to fulfill the many requirements of building an educational e-commerce marketplace.
In this respect, we customized the product page to provide an overview of the brand-check information and link to the relevant research it's based on. This was particularly important for Flip as it is based on their innovative concept of a Greenwashing Filter that they use as an evaluation blueprint to vet the many sustainable brands in today's economy.
Allying e-commerce and education
One of the challenges for this project was reconciling the commercial aspect of the marketplace with the strong educational asset of the platform. By keeping the marketplace true to its commercial identity, we were able to keep the primary focus on the marketplace intentions while inviting the community to dive deeper into the educational insights at a secondary level. On the startpage, this meant that while the majority of the content elements were related to the products, we also had supporting sections that provided insights into the mission and driving cause of Flip in order to build trust in the marketplace.
Flip continues their investigative journalism on their website to raise awareness and fight greenwashing practices. They have launched their shop where they offer sneaker maintenance and repair services.