The Challenge
Goldsboro Books is the UK’s number one bookstore for author-signed first edition hardback books.
Founded in 1999 in central London, Goldsboro inspire book lovers, readers and collectors and provide the finest quality signed books in the world through their ecommerce site.
With more than 25,000 hardback first editions in stock, they have created the UK’s largest first edition Book of the Month Club, enabling book lovers to start collecting books that are an investment, as well as enjoyable to read.
There are also monthly subscription services for crime and science fiction/fantasy fans.
Goldsboro Books’ old Craft CMS-administered website required labour-intensive and costly updates, was unable to efficiently handle subscriptions and had challenges displaying out of stock items.
There were also issues with managing international shipping rates, all of which meant that the site was hampering Goldsboro’s business plans.
Ascensor recognised that replatforming the business on Shopify would alleviate these challenges, saving significant amounts of admin time and reducing human error-related issues.

What We Did
The Ascensor development team conducted a review of the functionality Goldsboro were looking for, and harmonised this with the corresponding functionality available in Shopify.
We also integrated Linnworks order management software into the site’s backend to help the Goldsboro team automate processes and reduce costs, removing a host of manual shipping processes.
Our experts incorporated a subscription model into the new Shopify design, creating an enhanced client login area that offers users much more flexibility in managing their subscriptions directly through the site.
Redesigning the Craft site in Shopify was a swift process for the Ascensor team. The Shopify theme was expertly styled to suit Goldsboro’s branding, and we also integrated and merged a series of apps and plugins to boost backend functionality for Goldsboro, including solutions for subscriptions, tax and event planning.
The move to Shopify hugely improved the user experience (UX) of the content management system, and the project also saw the successful migration of Goldsboro’s existing product data and page content into the new design.
Goldsboro then conducted a highly successful marketing campaign aimed at retaining as many of their legacy subscribers as possible, asking them to re-subscribe to the new system.

The Results
The redesigned site has been ‘life changing’ for Goldsboro Books’ dedicated team, with the enhanced automations freeing up thousands of hours previously spent on shipping logistics that can now be spent growing the business.
Since its launch, the new site has attracted over 1.1 million sessions from 470,000 users in more than 100 countries.
The upgraded system offers consumers enhanced access to Goldsboro’s extensive catalogue of 4,500 products and enables thousands of new subscribers to receive exclusive limited-edition books every month.
What Goldsboro Books said...
“Working with Ascensor has made an enormous difference to how we run our business - it’s been truly transformative. We have saved so much time thanks to the automated processes that we were previously doing manually. Everything is quicker, smoother and easier and our customers are enjoying a better level of service online as a result.
The Goldsboro Books site is now something we’re really proud of - thank you to everyone involved in the project.”