Changing music history

The first Rough Trade store was first established by Geoff Travis in London in the 70s, on the doorstep of punk. For the next forty years, Rough Trade focused on spreading exciting music through its record label arm. It grew into a legendary independent music brand and opened stores across the UK.

As their stores grew in size and popularity, Rough Trade began looking into innovative ways to spread the celebration of independent thinking and creativity; and get great music into the hands of their customers. With the rise in online music sales, Rough Trade followed suit and built their website back in 2014, while going through several versions over the years.

Always looking to keep on top of innovation and exciting features to stay ahead of the curve, Lawrence Montgomery (Director of Rough Trade), was on the lookout for a team with passion and technical expertise to assist.

Scaling an e-commerce platform

CookiesHQ and Rough Trade met in 2018 for an initial team introduction and it was clear that this was the beginning of a great relationship. After discussing their overall online business goal of increasing conversions, the aim for this phase was to create a better shopping experience for Rough Trade’s online users, resulting in more purchases.

We began by conducting a code discovery and audit of the Rough Trade app. Following that, and after a review of the current site UX, we agreed that our focus would be on redesigning the product pages and improving the search functionality.

What resulted was a more up-to-date shopping experience: product pages now give users relevant information, designed in a way that looks contemporary and simple to navigate. To bring their users more relevant products based on their search criteria, we implemented different search weighting based on specific variables. Throughout the project, we also worked closely with their internal lead developer by reviewing certain branches to ensure consistent quality across the app.

We’re currently working on new features and services to help improve performance for their internal stock syncing and control.

Technologies used: Ruby on Rails, Elasticsearch