Cordings
Industries
Website
https://cordings.co.uk/Design + Build
Skywire have worked with Cordings since 2011 - continuously designing, upgrading, developing and optimising their website to improve customer experience (UX) and conversion rate optimisation (CRO).
Skywire developed the website on Magento and continuously work to optimise the site for speed, and develop an even faster site in the eyes of Google for SEO related growth opportunities.
This has included CLS, TBT, LCP focused optimisations which have seen their speed scores lift substantially.
Skywire's experts also provided ongoing strategic advice, digital marketing, email campaigns, CRM programmes, and SEO optimisation.
As part of our extensive and storied partnership with Cordings, Skywire ensure that we are continuously delivering exponential revenue and growth, improved customer service and technical innovation.
Email Marketing
Skywire manages and optimises Cording’s email strategies and designs, adapting to new trends, and visual opportunities when they come to keep the active Cordings consumer engaged with the brand through all 12 months of the year.
Finding new CRM opportunities
With the world of third party data making it harder and harder to acquire new customers through digital channels.
We set out to help Cordings raise the bar for a channel that continues to show fantastic opportunities for retail brands. Skywire helped Cordings launch and relaunch a number of automated flows through Klaviyo.
During the first 6 months revenue through automated flows increased 40% YoY across Welcome, Abandoned Cart, Abandoned Browse, Win-back Flows.
THE CORDINGS DETAIL
This section celebrates the rich history and distinctive design elements of Cordings' iconic core collection, which have helped shape British Country style.
Each piece is meticulously crafted, with a focus on its unique characteristics - emphasising exceptional attention to detail, comfort, functionality, and the superior craftsmanship that defines every garment.
A faster, cleaner path to purchase
The brief was straightforward: the checkout experience hadn't kept pace with how people shop today.
It was built for a different era: functional, but creating unnecessary friction at the most critical point in the customer journey.
The task was a ground-up redesign of the checkout flow within their existing Magento platform.
No replatforming. No wholesale tech change. Just a sharper, more considered experience that met 2025 expectations.
Where was Cordings' checkout losing people?
Before any design work started, we mapped the checkout as it stood: step by step, device by device.
A few patterns became clear immediately.
Conversion Rate on Desktop was falling across the year and we could see they were dropping out during the checkout experience, specifically after the email sign-in section.
The flow had too many form fields to complete. And the overall UX carried none of the brand's inherent quality. A heritage brand with those price points demands trust at every touchpoint. A checkout that feels clunky or uncertain (even subconsciously) is a checkout that loses sales.
What did Skywire change?
The redesign focused on three areas: flow reduction, payment modernisation, and cross-device consistency.
- Streamlined step flow: We reduced the number of distinct checkout stages, keeping the customer moving forward without unnecessary interruption or backtracking.
- Express payment options: By surfacing modern payment methods at the right moment, we were able to reduce friction for repeat and mobile shoppers.
- Mobile-first rethink: The layout and interaction model to perform on smaller screens, where a significant share of Cordings' customers are shopping.
- Visual alignment with the brand: The checkout now feels like Cordings - measured, clear, and confident rather than like an off-the-shelf template.
Critically, everything was built within Magento's existing infrastructure. The goal was maximising impact whilst dealing with the platform constraints, and to ship something that Cordings could own and maintain going forward.
What were the results?
- Mobile Conversion Rate: +8.9%
- Desktop Conversion Rate: 1.2% (recovering the regular drops we had seen across the year)
The redesigned checkout aligns with how Cordings' customers actually shop - considered, unhurried, and full of trust. All the relevant information at all the stages of the funnel.
What this tells us about ecommerce for heritage brands
There's a persistent assumption in heritage retail that modern UX and brand integrity are in tension; that a slicker, faster checkout somehow dilutes the brand and experience.
From our years of experience, we'd like to emphasise: it really doesn't.
Cordings' customers are discerning, and they're used to good things working well. A checkout that stutters, confuses, or loses them on mobile isn't a charming touchpoint with the brand, it's incongruous with the rest of the brand experience.
UX design that is both beautiful and thoughtful often reinforces premium positioning rather than undermining it.
Clear navigation, fast-loading pages, intuitive filtering, and a seamless checkout communicate confidence and competence. They tell customers that the same attention to detail applied to the tailoring, fabrics, and in-store experience has also been applied online, and this all plays a part in defining the luxury experience.
