Goldsboro Books

Novel developments lead to life-changing results.

A move to Shopify with new back-end automation has transformed Goldsboro Books' online business, cutting admin and manual tasks and streamlining shipping logistics.

See how we did it →Skip to results

The numbers

1.1M

Sessions from 100 countries

470K

Users since website launch

100%

Improvement in admin process

1000s

Of hours freed from shipping logistics

02 / 06

The challenge

A subscription business on a site that struggled with subscriptions.

Goldsboro Books is the UK's number one bookstore for author-signed first edition hardback books. Founded in central London in 1999, it offers book lovers, readers and collectors the finest quality signed books in the world through its ecommerce site. With more than 25,000 hardback first editions in stock, it runs the UK's largest first edition Book of the Month Club, plus monthly subscriptions for crime and science fiction and fantasy fans.

Its Craft CMS website needed labour-intensive, costly updates, could not handle subscriptions efficiently and struggled to display out-of-stock items. International shipping rates were hard to manage too, so the site was holding back Goldsboro's business plans.

We recognised that replatforming on Shopify would solve these problems, saving significant admin time and reducing human error.

Sector

Ecommerce & retail

Services

UX DESIGN

WEB DEVELOPMENT

WEB SERVICES

SHOPIFY

WEB DESIGN

ECOMMERCE

Audience

Book lovers, readers and collectors, and the Goldsboro team serving them

Costly, labour-intensive updates
Subscriptions the old site could not handle well
Out-of-stock display problems
Manual international shipping

03 / 06

The B2B lead generation system

The parts of the system we used.

This project focused on one part of the system: the platform. Moving Goldsboro to Shopify, and automating the back end around it, cut the manual work involved in running the shop.

The system diagram is drawn here by the page script, lighting the parts that have copy below.

Platform

The heart

We moved Goldsboro from Craft CMS to a Shopify theme styled to the brand, with Linnworks order management, apps for subscriptions, tax and events, and a subscriber login area with more flexibility.

CRM & data

The brain

Reactive

Availability

Proactive

Broadcast

Thought leaders

Personal brand

Citations

Third-party proof

04 / 06

What we did

Map it, automate it, then move it across.

Square 1:1

Step 01

Map to Shopify

Our development team reviewed the functionality Goldsboro was looking for and harmonised it with the corresponding functionality in Shopify. The theme was then styled to suit Goldsboro's branding. Redesigning the Craft site in Shopify was a swift process.

Shopify
Functional review
Theme design

Square 1:1

Step 02

Automate the back end

We integrated Linnworks order management software into the back end to help the Goldsboro team automate processes and reduce costs, removing a host of manual shipping processes.

A series of apps and plugins, integrated and merged, boosted back-end functionality with solutions for subscriptions, tax and event planning.

Linnworks
Subscriptions
Shopify apps

Square 1:1

Step 03

Migrate and relaunch

The move to Shopify greatly improved the user experience of the content management system, and existing product data and page content were migrated successfully into the new design. An enhanced login area gives subscribers more flexibility to manage their subscriptions directly on the site.

Goldsboro then ran a successful marketing campaign asking legacy subscribers to re-subscribe on the new system, aiming to retain as many as possible.

Content migration
Subscriber accounts

05 / 06

In their words

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 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.

Rebecca McDonnell

Marketing Manager

Goldsboro Books

06 / 06

The results

What changed for

Goldsboro Books

Goldsboro's team calls the new site life changing, with a 100% improvement in the admin process. Manual tasks are down, shipping is streamlined and the site reaches readers in more than 100 countries.

R01

1.1M

Sessions from 100 countries

Since launch, the new site has attracted over 1.1 million sessions from more than 100 countries.

R02

470K

Users since website launch

470,000 users have visited since launch, with better access to a catalogue of 4,500 products and thousands of new subscribers receiving exclusive limited editions every month.

R03

100%

Improvement in admin process

Replatforming on Shopify saved significant admin time and reduced human error, and the enhanced automations freed up thousands of hours of shipping logistics.

In short

Thousands of hours back for the team, *and a site they are proud of.*

Get results like these →