Introduction

Freedom Fatigues is an American-made patriotic apparel brand based outside of Detroit, Michigan. Their mission is the make the most thoroughly American-made apparel on the market. Their supply chain is American made from the dirt the fabric is grown in, to the third-generation print shop they’ve partnered with. Owned by a service-disabled veteran and law-enforcement family, Freedom Fatigues’ patriotism and commitment to the American economy are unparalleled, even in the patriotic apparel space.

We connected with Freedom Fatigues in 2022 for some minor website improvements and bonded over our mutual love for country. This was our third project with Freedom Fatigues, the most significant to date.

Their SEO vendor recommended a website upgrade from their previous Shopify site to improve their site speed and the ability to optimize for search. They were also looking to increase conversion of their organic and paid traffic.

Their previous Shopify site utilized many apps from the Shopify marketplace, was built on old web technology, and generally required more work than necessary to continually optimize and keep performant.

Furthermore, their previous site did not accurately communicate their brand story, nor did it impress on visitors the quality of their products. Some refinement of brand messaging and visual language was needed.

Solution

We recommended Freedom Fatigues take a holistic view of its brand and recent growth, and look at Shopify’s latest development in custom storefronts - Shopify Hydrogen.

We took Freedom Fatigues through our brand discovery process, learning about Chris & Ryann’s story, how their brand came to be, and the values, ideals, and mission that are foundational to Freedom Fatigues’ brand.

Then we researched competitors in the space, and other brands to create our initial mood boards and feature ideas for the new site. This kicked off our design process, where we developed a visual language and aesthetic that elevated the Freedom Fatigues brand and spoke to the quality of their products.

We did an evaluation of Hydrogen from a technical perspective, ensuring it was a mature enough framework to be used in a high-volume store. At the time, Hydrogen v2 was only a few weeks old. We looked at all their Shopify apps and found a significant number we could eliminate with Hydrogen.

After a few rounds of minor design revisions, we got to work developing their new site.

Their team also wanted to implement re: do Returns into the new site. re:do had never worked with Hydrogen before, so we worked with re: do’s CTO to build a Hydrogen implementation. We built custom implementations for Loox and Klaviyo as well. We are currently working through implementation of Rebuy.

Results

Freedom Fatigues saw a significant jump in key metrics following the launch of their new site. We attribute this to primarily the perception of the quality of their brand, website speed, and improvements to the overall user experience.

We worked closely with their SEO team to ensure the missing features from their previous site were high priority when building the new site; one example being Search Engine Listing Images.

The new site allowed them to remove 10 subscription apps from their Shopify stack, leverage deeper integrations with their customer engagement platform, and create richer content to further reinforce the brand.

The following 14 days after launching the Hydrogen store, Freedom Fatigues saw the following:

• overall revenue increased by 57%
• conversion increased by 22%
• total orders increased by 66%.
• search traffic increased by 59%

The project achieved ROI in 5 days.

About webprism

At webprism, we help brands set themselves apart from the market. Our multi-faceted approach to ecommerce design and marketing helps our clients authentically engage with their customers, and find their super-fans.

Client testimonial

We originally began working with Webprism and Devin specifically to help increase the speed of our existing website. We had installed numerous apps in order to get the functionality we desired, but this resulted in a clunky website that was affecting user experience, SEO ranking, and ultimately conversion rate. While Devin was able to greatly increase the performance and speed of the site, we knew a new build was in our future. After much deliberation, we decided it was time to make the investment and bring the site up to date.

With the new build, we wanted to better tell our story, communicate the quality of our products, and increase SEO ranking as well as enhance user experience. We had many custom features we wanted to see in the new site and lofty goals in terms of performance (speed, core web vitals, etc), and Devin and his team hit them all. In the 30 days post launch compared to the same timeframe the previous year, we saw total sales increase 239%, conversion rate increase 75%, total orders increase 235%, and store sessions increase by 114%. Almost immediately post launch, we also saw product thumbnail images appear in organic Google search results - something we did not experience previously and which was a goal of ours to achieve.

Devin and his team have been nothing but professional, responsive, and results-driven. They are quick to answer questions and respond to emails/phone calls. Communication is never an issue, and their customer service is always on point. We had a lot of custom requests, and the team was always willing to think outside of the box to make our vision a reality.

— Ryann Vargo, COO of Freedom Fatigues