Decibullz amplifies conversions after migration to BigCommerce

The Decibullz success story

As an Olympic-level gymnastic coach, Kyle Kirkpatrick had a very specific problem. He wanted to listen to music while training athletes but needed headphones that would stay in place, regardless of whether he was running or jumping on the trampoline performing flips and other techniques.

After years spent researching and testing countless headphone brands in search of a product that offered solid sound quality along with flexibility and mobility, Kyle realized the product he wanted didn’t yet exist. So, he decided to build it.

Kyle began to brainstorm ideas and experiment with various plastics. He consulted audio engineers, material specialists, and high-level athletes to develop and test hundreds of designs, formulas, and prototypes in order to create an easy and affordable custom molded earphone.

After validating with friends and family that his earphones were sufficiently differentiated in market, Kyle bet big on his business, selling his car in order to apply for his first patent. With a patent in hand and after months of working with suppliers domestically and overseas, in February 2012, Kyle officially launched his first headphone product - the world’s first thermo-fit custom earphone.

Today, Decibullz’s array of headphone and hearing protection products are sold through over 2,000 retail locations in North America and sold globally through ecommerce channels and international distributors.

WooCommerce unable to handle Decibullz growth stage

As told to BigCommerce by Clay Lyell, Marketing Manager, decibullz.com

I've been at Decibullz for two and a half years. I was really drawn to the role and the company because of the awesome opportunity to collaborate with a unique team of people in order to achieve ambitious goals.    

In 2014, we were looking for an ecommerce platform capable of scaling with our business and supporting our needs to customize the site and integrate with our ERP and other systems we rely on to use the business. We knew about BigCommerce but felt a platform like WooCommerce — which is ‘free’ and open source — would give us more flexibility.

In late 2017, it became apparent that WooCommerce wasn’t the right solution to support the next phase of our business, so we began evaluating alternative platforms. BigCommerce quickly rose to the top of the shortlist, and in February 2018, we decided to fully migrate the site.

Improving uptime and customer experience

As told to BigCommerce by Clay Lyell, Marketing Manager, decibullz.com

When we started evaluating ecommerce platforms, our primary requirement was speed. While we were using WooCommerce, we had trouble with slow load times which led to customer complaints, so it was critical that our new platform delivered great performance out of the box. We also suffered from downtime when our website would go down and customers couldn’t transact at all. Most of the time, this was caused by plugins breaking or needing to be updated.

We liked having the ability to easily add functionality, but we didn’t like the burden of never knowing when something was going to break unexpectedly, which is inherent when using open source ecommerce software.

A platform built for speed and performance

As told to BigCommerce by Clay Lyell, Marketing Manager, decibullz.com

What appealed to us most about BigCommerce was no longer needing to think about maintenance or uptime. We realized during our research that we wouldn’t have to do a lot of work on the backend to manage the website once it was all set up, which meant a lot more time to manage the business. Specifically, BigCommerce offered guaranteed SLAs, which most other providers aren’t willing to do.

Finally, we saw a drastic improvement in our site load times after migrating to BigCommerce. Our page-load times were close to six seconds, on average, with WooCommerce, and now we're at around 1.2 seconds on BigCommerce, which is an 80 percent improvement.

BigCommerce partner DIGITLHAUS delivers fast and intuitive site experience

As told to BigCommerce by Clay Lyell, Marketing Manager, decibullz.com

We worked with DIGITLHAUS to help design our website. When we first transitioned to BigCommerce, we knew we'd have to use a design firm to help customize one of their themes, simply because we had never done much custom coding in BigCommerce before.

We found DIGITLHAUS on BigCommerce’s agency portal and visited a couple of example sites they had done which really stood out to us. While we talked to other design companies, we felt like we got the best guidance from DIGITLHAUS.

We have two very different product categories, which makes us unique in our category. We have hearing protection products, which includes our earplugs as well as some hearing protection filters, and we also have our headphone products on the audio side. In the past, it’s always been a pain point in customer service to explain the two different sides of our business to customers.

It was very helpful to be able to go back and forth with the DIGITLHAUS team and say, “Here's the vibe we're going for. Can you guys make this happen?”

They did a great job and were able to implement everything we wanted for our site.

New functionality, without coding requirements

As told to BigCommerce by Clay Lyell, Marketing Manager, decibullz.com

The ability to easily test and add new functionality through the BigCommerce App Store has been huge for us.

Coupon Manager is one of our favorite apps. We use it to do a lot of our coupon management, which has been beneficial because it will generate all the codes for us quickly. Then, we can easily upload them in a CSV and send off to our printers. We also use Google Shopping by Sales & Orders, which is extremely helpful in getting all of our products to our Google Shopping feed. Our shopping ads convert better than any of our other Google Ads.

Improved website drives direct sales and channel opportunities

As told to BigCommerce by Clay Lyell, Marketing Manager, decibullz.com

We sell with large retailers including CVS, Cabela’s, Sportsman's Warehouse and Gander Outdoors. Having a professional website is vital to showcasing our products to our retail partners, as well as attracting new ones.

There are so many different online sales channels now but our ecommerce website is really successful. From a margin standpoint, our site is one of the best. Selling on BigCommerce helps us stay true to our brand because it enables us to deliver a holistic and powerful brand experience to every customer who orders from our site.