Omnichannel retailer extends premium in-store experience online with Sitecore

The Tile Shop is a leading specialty retailer of man-made and natural stone tiles and related materials and accessories in the US. The company offers a wide selection of high-quality products, exclusive designs, knowledgeable staff, and exceptional customer service across 142 stores in 31 states. Its mission is to help people make their homes beautiful. “Feeling excited about your home has an amazing impact,” says Christopher Davis, Chief Information Officer, The Tile Shop. “We deliver a premium in-store customer experience and are translating that experience online.”

The Tile Shop has 5,000 different tile types and colors manufactured or sourced from 40 countries. While people usually need to see and touch tile products, the journey to a perfect kitchen or bathroom often starts online. The challenge was extending the in-store experience to the web, enabling omnichannel marketing, and growing an ecommerce business. The Tile Shop had a legacy environment comprising separate, siloed business applications, while marketing had to rely on development resources to post and update web content which was not effective in the fast-moving retail space.

Collaborating with Sitecore partner Altudo and utilizing a tailored success plan with the Sitecore360 service package, The Tile Shop migrated from Sitecore XP to a newly developed headless, composable ecommerce architecture using Sitecore XM Cloud, Sitecore OrderCloud and Sitecore Discover. The new, decoupled Sitecore architecture is agile and uses the best applications and components, including integrating with the company’s ERP system for access to transactional and master data.

With Sitecore, the company has implemented a scalable, robust pre-order capture system that supports high traffic volumes, flexible product content, and innovative merchandising strategies. Always-on accessible ecommerce capabilities increase self-service capabilities while removing disjointed customer interactions and inefficient operational processes.

With its Sitecore foundation, The Tile Shop plans to roll out additional customer experience improvements and more omnichannel features allowing a customer to start a transaction online and complete it in store. They also aim to use Sitecore to target new audiences, expanding from B2C and B2B customers fitting out homes to also reach dealers, distributors, and third-party stores and showrooms, and commercial buildings, hospitals, and schools.

Sitecore has delivered a modernized ecommerce platform for faster time to market and increased scalability and has enabled commerce anywhere by providing an omnichannel customer experience which is helping The Tile Shop increase market share.

The moment Tile Shop launched its new website, page loads were five times faster — from 14 seconds to 2.7 seconds, with another 50% faster load times expected in the future. This improvement is expected to deliver more conversions.

With content controlled and managed effectively by marketers, the business can increase engagement with relevant, useful information like new tile assortments, customer stories, and how-to articles about installing or grouting tiles, as well as how to use the latest trends such as Zellige mosaics.

Bringing all this content together improves search optimization, traffic, and conversions. Headless architecture helps The Tile Shop to quickly adapt to market changes and consumer demands, enabling rapid deployment of engaging experiences and seamless integration between digital and physical sales channels.

Sitecore helps The Tile Shop quickly tailor content for different audiences, and Sitecore OrderCloud enables the business to pivot between different audience experiences without needing a development resource. A B2B customer may want product, cost, and quantities whereas a retail consumer likely wants a look-and-feel shopping experience. With Sitecore, The Tile Shop can now create content and experiences up to 50% faster than it could before.