Gazelle Sports, the Michigan-based running specialty shop and athletic & fitness lifestyle retailer, strives to provide the best customer care, build relationships, and empower and inspire others to move. Struggling with site performance on an old Shopify code base, Gazelle Sports came to CQL inspired to make a move of its own: launching a digital brand refresh and modernizing their online shopping experience using CQL’s proprietary Shopify Plus Framework Propel.
The new website features a high-touch, modern design that maintains its inviting & inclusive community feel and focuses on Gazelle Sports’ high performance running gear. With a streamlined navigation & site taxonomy, advanced filtering, product variants that feature color swatches on shoes, and new templates for brand, product listing, product, and educational pages, the site showcases industry leading ecommerce best-practices, easier product findability for shoppers, and Gazelle Sports’ expertise in embracing active living.
With a digital brand refresh, an optimized user experience, and enhanced content management tools, Gazelle Sports is set for peak performance with their new foundation for online growth.
Selling high end running gear in a competitive retail space required a digital design that connected the Gazelle brand with its loyal customers. CQL and Gazelle Sports partnered in a creative direction exercise that inspired multiple brand board options for Gazelle Sports, integrating their brand standards, color palettes, and fonts.
The brand redesign retains Gazelle Sports’ focus on community and personal connection, while elevating the brand as a high touch, product-focused ecommerce site. With new visual graphic treatments that offer flexibility and customizability, GazelleSports.com emerged as a brand where customers know they are in the right place for finding high performance shoes and a company that cares about their performance as a runner.
To optimize the user experience and enhance rich product content, Gazelle Sports launched industry-leading best practice designs for their product listing (PLP) and product (PDP) pages. The new PLP layout features exposed left-nav visual filtering, promotes product details, and leverages Searchspring’s merchandising and new filter types (swatch, grid, or list) for easier navigation and product selection.
PDPs were combined together to allow shoppers to see an entire product line – including widths, sizes, and colors – all on one page. The updated layout amplifies key product details, including features, specs, and sustainability; showcases product expertise; offers visual swatches of the product variants; and provides easy access to supporting product and educational content via Shopify content blocks.
With the new Shopify Editor, Gazelle’s internal team can now maintain meta data and rich content in a centralized location, allowing for dynamic population of site content and a significant increase in operational efficiencies.
High-performance products require a high-performance website. CQL’s UX team crafted an effective and engaging UX strategy that communicates Gazelle Sports’ brand story and values, promotes community events and sponsorships, creates product merchandising opportunities, and carves a path for all audiences to find the right high-quality athletic gear.
With a new taxonomy, page templates, and Searchspring integration, GazelleSports.com features an optimized top navigation, search, product filtering, and content structure that increases product discoverability and site conversion.
“Gazelle Sports chose CQL based on their depth of experience in our industry, as well as their familiarity with the challenges and decisions we faced. CQL was the expert partner that designed and built the optimal solution based on our company’s current situation, while creating a robust foundation for future growth and expansion.”
ETHAN TREBER
Ecommerce Manager
GAZELLE SPORTS
