LA Police Gear is More Equipped to Serve Customers with BigCommerce

Discover how customisable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.

Case Study Device Laptop LAPG

67%

increase in conversion rate

14%

increase in revenue

14%

increase in average order value

Performance metrics compare data from August 12 - September 12, 2023 to data from September 13 - October 13, 2023.

Supporting and protecting through top-notch gear.

In 2001, Sean Frank — police officer at the time — was tired of having low quality and expensive gear that couldn’t keep up with the demands of being on duty. This led him to establish LA Police Gear, which has grown into a leading police equipment supplier known for its fast shipping, excellent customer service, and affordable prices.

As the company has evolved, it has expanded its product options to cater not only to those in the police force, but anyone in need of quality workwear, tactical gear, or outdoor equipment. In addition, it's recently tapped into the B2B space to further grow its customer base.

While LA Police Gear has transformed from a one-man show to a thriving business, the company ran into a few speed bumps to get where it is today — particularly with its ecommerce platform. Thankfully, after struggling to find a platform that was compatible with its growth, the company found BigCommerce.

CHALLENGE

Finding an ecommerce solution that can perform all necessary duties.

Frank built LA Police Gear with one main goal in mind — to be the top destination for any tactical gear or equipment an officer could need while on duty. To achieve this, he knew the company needed an ecommerce solution that would put them on the path toward success.

LA Police Gear’s first online store was built on Yahoo. However, the platform’s outdated back-end created difficulties connecting to its internal systems, limiting its ability to scale.

As a result, the company migrated to Magento in 2017. However, it experienced even more challenges with this on-premise platform.

“Magento was not a good platform for us. It was very expensive, very buggy, and had lots of downtime — and that was not good for business. We lost a lot of customer confidence at that time,” explained Ryan Batenhorst, Operations Manager at LA Police Gear.

The company feared the impact that continuing to host its site on Magento would have on the business, so the team went back to search for an ecommerce platform that was stable, affordable, and user-friendly. Shortly after, they found BigCommerce and began migrating the site.

“We were only on Magento for about a year — not even a year maybe — before we made the switch to BigCommerce. It was really important for us to get on a stable platform that was not as expensive as Magento, but also easy for us to use and modify and just kind of give us that stable base that we can rely on,” said Batenhorst.

While the company has seen significant growth since moving to BigCommerce, it recently redesigned its site to better align with the needs of the team and improve the user experience. After being recommended to Groove Commerce and seeing the agency’s expertise in developing on BigCommerce, LA Police Gear knew its site was in safe hands.

“After meeting with Groove, we thought they were the best fit for the job. They're very professional and seemed extremely knowledgeable about BigCommerce. Overall they are just really great to work with,” remarked Batenhorst.

“It was really important for us to get on a stable platform that was not as expensive as Magento, but also easy for us to use and modify and just kind of give us that stable base that we can rely on.”

Ryan Batenhorst Operations Manager, LA Police Gear

SOLUTION

Designing a site to be proud of.

With the redesign of its site, LA Police Gear was looking for a few key updates.

For one, the team wanted a dynamic theme that allowed them to easily make modifications without requiring assistance from a developer — eliminating hard-coded elements created by their previous agency. On top of this, they wanted to improve Core Web Vitals by fixing issues such as the site’s slow page load speed.

Groove understood the task at hand and knew the best option would be to rebuild the site on the agency’s Velocity framework. This framework is built with a custom theme, Page Builder widgets, and specialised apps designed to already embody a company’s branding, creating a personalised plug-and-play online store for customers.

“With Velocity, we design custom widgets that inherit all of the styles for a customer’s online store, so they don't have to worry about updating styles or headers or anything like that. They can just focus on content and merchandising,” explained Justin Bright, Director of Technology and DevOps Engineering at Groove Commerce.

Through the redesign, Groove created a more intuitive navigation menu and strategically placed products to encourage upsells — improving the site's Core Web Vitals scoring.

“We now have a very stable and fast platform that provides a good customer experience and has nice little touches on it that are really clean,” said Batenhorst.

In addition, Groove enhanced the back-end experience for LA Police Gear employees by eliminating hard-coded elements and redesigning them as Page Builder widgets.

“Groove's new theme is very plug-and-play and easy to use since it just utilises Page Builder. That's made it very easy for us to change things on our own,” remarked Batenhorst.

Growing the business through powerful features.

As LA Police Gear has worked to grow its business, it's taken advantage of the different BigCommerce functionalities available to it — one being Feedonomics.

LA Police Gear uses an omnichannel strategy to promote and sell its products through different channels. With Feedonomics, the company can easily manage its different channels and feeds all through its BigCommerce account.

By centrally managing these different channels through one back-end, the company has saved ample amounts of time and resources when it comes to feed management, as well as grown its business.

“Feedonomics has enabled us to grow the channels that we've integrated. Specifically, our ads perform very well. Having a stable feed is important for that, as well as our channels. For our email marketing, it's enabled us to custom tailor any of our emails for welcome campaigns or win-back campaigns directly to that customer,” explained Batenhorst.

In addition to Feedonomics, LA Police Gear incorporates B2B Edition so it can acquire more business customers. By incorporating this functionality, LA Police Gear has access to a variety of features specially designed to grow this area of the business.

“With B2B Edition, we wanted to have the capability to offer purchase orders within the BigCommerce platform, which is not something we could previously do. Some of our competitors do quite a lot of business on the B2B side, and we think we're kind of missing out on some of that. So we're trying to break into that a little bit more and we think B2B Edition will help us do that,” said Batenhorst.

Creating a better experience with features and apps.

To improve the experience of both shoppers and those on the back-end team, LA Police Gear implements a variety of apps.

The company has seen great success from Yotpo, which allows customers to leave product reviews on the website and earn reward points. By providing reward points, LA Police Gear has built a loyal customer base that just keeps growing.

In addition, the company incorporates Groove Commerce’s Metafields Editor app, which allows it to create custom product metafields through a user-friendly interface. This has improved the site’s SEO, making it more accessible to shoppers.

When it comes to apps that simplify back-office tasks, LA Police Gear has a few favourites. One of these includes NoFraud — which automatically detects fraudulent purchases — and another is Advanced Shipping Manager — which creates a seamless and efficient shipping process.

“The BigCommerce apps have been really nice. There are a number of options available and there's always new and exciting things coming out on that front,” remarked Batenhorst.

“The BigCommerce apps have been really nice. There are a number of options available and there's always new and exciting things coming out on that front.”

Ryan Batenhorst Operations Manager, LA Police Gear

“With B2B Edition, we wanted to have the capability to offer purchase orders within the BigCommerce platform, which is not something we could previously do.”

RYAN BATENHORST, OPERATIONS MANAGER, LA POLICE GEAR

Case Study Device Tablet LAPG

RESULTS

Alleviating worries and creating growth through a reliable platform.

Since moving to BigCommerce, LA Police Gear has not only been given the peace of mind of having a reliable site but also experienced impressive growth — especially since the launch of its redesigned store.

Just one month after the overhauled site went live, LA Police Gear noticed a 14% increase in revenue and a 67% increase in conversion rate.

In addition to this, the company improved its Core Web Vitals scoring. Immediately after launching on the Velocity framework, the company’s First Input Delay score improved by 7%, indicating a boost in the site’s page speed.

“BigCommerce has definitely let us be less worried about the site. We can focus on growth and positive things instead of just fixes for a broken website or trying to keep things afloat,” explained Batenhorst.

“BigCommerce has definitely let us be less worried about the site. We can focus on growth and positive things instead of just fixes for a broken website or trying to keep things afloat.”

Ryan Batenhorst Operations Manager, LA Police Gear

LOOKING AHEAD

Continuing to serve new and existing customers.

LA Police Gear’s perseverance to be the best in its industry is clearly demonstrated through the care and effort it puts into its ecommerce site.

As we look at what the future has in store for this thriving brand, we can expect to see it grow its foothold in the B2B market. In addition, the company plans to dive further into tools like Feedonomics by setting up a channel for Walmart.

Through BigCommerce’s easy-to-use and reliable platform, Grade A support team, and trusted agency partner — Groove Commerce — LA Police Gear knows the sky’s the limit when it comes to its online success. 

“The BigCommerce team has always been really great to work with. Whether I've had to reach out to support or any of our account reps that we've had, everybody's been very helpful and knowledgeable. That's definitely a highlight of working with BigCommerce,” remarked Batenhorst.

“The BigCommerce team has always been really great to work with.”

Ryan Batenhorst Operations Manager, LA Police Gear

Published: February 2024

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