Petrol

Durable denim menswear.

For over thirty years Petrol have made high-quality, durable denim menswear. Taking aesthetic inspiration from roadtrips in vintage cars and classic motorcycles, the brand creates fashionable garments that are ready for whatever adventure you want to throw at them.

Selling in 21 countries all around Europe, the label made their first jump towards ecommerce in 2018. Business boomed and expansion quickly drove onto the horizon. However, their previous store setup couldn’t provide the scalability they required.

We began a collaboration with Petrol to bring their ecommerce platform to the next level. Migrating the site to Shopify 2.0, with a full site redesign done in house by the Ask Phill design team, we built a brand new digital flagship store that delivers the Petrol brand identity, boosts conversion and encourages customers to return again and again.

Let’s take a look at some details. 

From Shopware to Shopify.

Petrol had reached the limits of what Shopware 5 could offer them. The niche ecommerce solution doesn’t cater to a broad audience, and instead offers a compact, technical platform that requires a reasonably high level of expertise to properly manage. 

Implementing store updates requires developer know-how, and the platform cannot provide websites in the same league as Shopify. For an ecommerce experience to remember, able to withstand high levels of customer traffic without faltering, and scale Petrol into numerous countries worldwide, the brand needed to make a switch.

Shopify 2.0 provides the perfect base for their needs. Highly customisable on the frontend, combined with an industry-leading backend, the platform is a secure, fully hosted solution that can scale the business anywhere they need to go.

A big factor in Shopify’s appeal is the ease of integrating 3rd party software to improve your store. We built Petrol’s new store with an Elevar integration to give a real-time window into their customer data tracking, subsequently building the foundations of a data-driven way of working.

In our eyes, Elevar is the number one data tracking and analytics tool. Providing server-side tracking to circumnavigate Apple’s iOS14 update, it helps businesses track 100% of their conversions and improve their customer retention levels.  

The design Phill‑osophy. 

Petrol’s previous store design was not at the standard to reflect the brand. Our in-house design team revitalised Petrol’s online look with our mobile-first Phill-osophy that finds a balance between aesthetics and functionality.

Starting from the smallest screen and expanding outwards, our designers make sure a client’s store provides a unified experience across all available channels. By beginning with various mood boards that convey Petrol’s core values, they transferred ideas into a sleek ecommerce flow that guides customers towards the checkout whilst also staying true to Petrol’s identity.

Shopify 2.0 affords greater freedom to our designers because of the Sections Everywhere update, introduced at Shopify Unite ‘21, and its capacity to support HQ images, video & animations. With these tools at their disposal, the Ask Phill design team delivered a captivating digital experience that boosts conversion and lives long in the memory.

At the end of a great project with the Petrol team, we’re excited about the results and what the future has in store for the brand. We look forward to continued collaborations with Petrol and many more projects to come!