ExpressMed is an online retailer offering competitive prices and speedy delivery for health and wellness products from many of the industry’s most trusted brands.
Services & Technology
"The Codal team is great to work with. They’re highly responsive and transparent, and they get things done the first time without needing additional clarification. Because of Codal, we were able to launch our new site on time and on budget. This is how business should be done."
Arne Brandon
CEO of ExpressMedThe Challenge
To maintain its competitive edge and accelerate growth in the online health and wellness space, ExpressMed needed to modernize its eCommerce tech stack, revamp its customer experience, and streamline product management for a catalog of over 8,500 products.
The business’ legacy eCommerce platform was clunky and expensive, the online store was difficult to navigate, and the system for managing product information across multiple channels—including their DTC site, Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, and Target—required significant time and manual effort. To eliminate these issues and secure its spot as a leading online health and wellness retailer, ExpressMed required a more engaging and scalable eCommerce experience.
Discovery
Codal began gathering requirements from the ExpressMed team, learning about the company’s existing tech stack and workflows, who their customers are, and how they manage and merchandise products. Since ExpressMed partnered with Codal in the middle of a top-to-bottom rebranding, it was important for the new DTC website to not only improve the customer experience, but also tell the right story.
The company’s legacy eCommerce platform required frequent and expensive upgrades, and the process of editing the site was arduous. To establish a more flexible, cost-effective approach, the team decided to migrate to Shopify Plus. Our job was to lead this migration by replicating certain functionalities, removing workflow bottlenecks, and maximizing the value of Shopify’s built-in capabilities.
To begin mapping out the new customer journey, we analyzed data from Google Analytics, interviewed key stakeholders, and conducted research to determine best practices for the new site’s taxonomy and flow. Many customers prefer to purchase products with their FSA or HSA card, but only certain products are eligible. Thus, a secondary DTC site was needed—one that would exclusively merchandise FSA- and HSA-eligible products.
As a brand accelerator, ExpressMed lists products for hundreds of top-name health and wellness companies—including Attends, Mira, ConvaTec, Exsens, Booby Tape, GenePro, Otofonix, Skineez, Soapsox, Think Smarter Products, and Limerick—on their DTC site, and through other online retailers like Amazon, Ebay, Walmart, and Target.
Without a product information management (PIM) solution, ExpressMed was relying on an outdated, homegrown ERP system—inherited from a previous sister company—to manage a catalog of over 8,500 products. This amounted to thousands of flat files on spreadsheets, and a heavily manual process for pushing product information updates across multiple channels. Whenever a manufacturer would send new product information, that data needed to be manually updated for every site that was listing the product. With such a large number of products to manage and the business growing fast, this process quickly became unsustainable.
To centralize all product data and enable swift cross-channel updates from a single location, we recommended the cutting-edge PIM solution, Salsify. Having already collaborated with Salsify on a number of PIM implementations, we knew it was the right tool for fixing ExpressMed’s product data management inefficiencies, and that it would be a key building block in the company’s long-term growth and digital shelf success.
Development
Codal migrated ExpressMed to Shopify Plus, providing a more intuitive approach to the management and tracking of their eCommerce website. By consolidating workflows to a single dashboard, replicating certain processes and automating others, and training the internal team on Shopify best practices, we cut down the amount of cost and effort associated with editing the site. This means admins can modify site features and functionality—in response to new business strategies, customer expectations, or industry trends—without requiring hours, days, or weeks of coding work from developers.
On the front end, we redesigned the DTC site’s UX/UI to facilitate a more simple and engaging path to purchase. This required redefining product categories, implementing advanced on-site search and filtering functionality, simplifying the checkout flow, and better highlighting promotions and top-selling products.
To help confirm ExpressMed as a trusted, transparent leader in the health and wellness space, our redesign put customer reviews front and center—providing over 8,500 reviews, which can be accessed via the main navigation. We also prioritized the key aspects of the service—free shipping, the option to save 5% by setting up recurring orders, and the opportunity to earn rewards for further savings—by keeping that messaging on the top of every page.
Based on data analysis, interviews, and competitive research, we designed a new product detail page (PDP) that eliminates friction and encourages higher customer retention. The new PDPs give customers the option of making a one-time purchase, or setting up AutoShip—a subscription service that allows buyers to automatically replenish their health supplies every one to 12 weeks, while also saving money. Here, we built a feature that enables customers to create a subscription with their own customized plan, without ever having to leave the PDP. The new PDP also displays product reviews, the product’s manufacturer, SKU number, and how many units are still in stock.
All of these UX/UI elements were replicated on FSA Market, an ExpressMed microsite that exclusively sells FSA- and HSA-eligible products. Leveraging built-in Shopify Plus functionality, we were able to develop a fast, compliant checkout system that accepts FSA and HSA cards as payment.
Providing accurate and up-to-date product information on the front end—without requiring significant manual work from the internal team—wouldn’t have been possible without a powerful PIM solution. The Salsify implementation enabled complete product data synchronization across all ExpressMed channels, from the main DTC site, to FSA Market, to third-party online retailers and marketplaces—each dictating their own data formatting requirements. By adding Salsify onto the tech stack, flat files and spreadsheets were replaced by a centralized, intuitive dashboard, where the internal team can deploy product updates across all channels in just a few clicks.
The Result
ExpressMed continues to grow in the online health and wellness space, selling more products, gaining more subscribers, and expanding its network of partner brands. Codal modernized the business’ eCommerce experience with a superior tech stack and customer journey, which will continue to support and amplify this growth moving forward.
In just a few months, our team:
Lowered ExpressMed’s cost of ownership by migrating the business to Shopify Plus.
Enhanced the customer experience with data-driven UX/UI design, resulting in more conversions and sales on the DTC website, fewer fees paid to third-party retailers like Amazon, and greater profitability for the business overall.
Launched FSA Market, an online store that allows customers to purchase healthcare products with their FSA or HSA card.
Integrated Salsify’s PIM to help the team manage massive amounts of product data across ExpressMed and FSA Market, enabling faster and more efficient updates.
These key transformations lay the foundation for unstoppable growth. Codal continues to work with ExpressMed, providing proactive site maintenance and conversion rate optimization strategies. Our team is proud to work alongside ExpressMed, as they improve people’s lives by providing an innovative, simple approach to discovering and buying critical health and wellness products.
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