CarBahn, a rising star in the automotive aftermarket, is redefining the field of car performance and tuning under the guidance of renowned engineer Steve Dinan. Tuning, for the uninitiated, is outfitting a car for maximum performance, whether for track or drag racing, generating the best fuel mileage, or a host of other outcomes. It's an art and a science, balancing benefits and costs and Steve Dinan's legacy in the field dates back to 1977. With CarBahn, Steve Dinan brings his expertise to BMW enthusiasts worldwide, offering meticulously crafted, high-quality upgrades.
With a focus on delivering high-quality aftermarket parts for both executive customers and DIY enthusiasts, the team at CarBahn was at first attracted to WooCommerce for its low cost and diversity of plugins. Soon, however, they were ready for a platform that would better help them enhance customer experience and streamline operations. They turned to Shopify to help them do just that.
CarBahn partnered with digital transformation experts Red Van to execute a swift, 10-week migration to Shopify. The results were immediate and dramatic:
- Organic traffic tripled within 30 days.
- Order count tripled.
- Average order value increased by over $200.
- Load times dropped from 9 seconds to 1 second.
- Return and cancellation rates decreased by 43%, to the lowest in the company's history.
The challenge: A fragmented digital experiment and ballooning tech debt
Before migrating to Shopify, CarBahn had reached the upper limit of how it could operate and grow on its previous platform, WooCommerce.
As Zachary Burgeson, chief marketing officer at CarBahn, puts it:
“Like any other startup, we were looking to solve a bunch of different problems all at once and keep costs low. We started with WooCommerce just out of the box and really hit that ceiling pretty quickly. It was almost like WooCommerce was dictating our business, versus us dictating our business back to them.”
This was a huge blocker when it came to growing and scaling the online business. Rather than focusing on business strategy, the team was caught up in the technical complexities of the website. A full development team was required just to upload new products. A lot of time was put in, and yet it resulted in a not particularly performative site with a nine second load time, partially due to the number of plugins they had to rely on to deliver the features they needed.
“It kept us from being able to launch new products quickly and really start to get that best-in-class web experience that our customers are really looking to have,” says Zachary.
It almost was like WooCommerce was dictating our business versus us dictating our business back to them. We needed a platform like Shopify that could really understand how we work and let us do our jobs the best way we can.
The struggle of managing multiple websites
CarBahn has two main goals for their website: to be a research hub for their customers, and to promote conversion. They aimed to push traffic to their direct-to-consumer (DTC) site, their dealer network, as well as their own appointment-based service centers. They had originally solved for this by operating three separate websites. This fragmented approach led to internal competition for traffic, diluted search engine equity, and increased workload for updates and maintenance.
“We were competing against ourselves for traffic, for information,” says Zachary. “We were updating three different websites and really taking away that search equity, I think, behind what we were putting out in the marketplace.”
Technical debt and security concerns
Fully aware of the difficulties of replatforming, the CarBahn team was also cognizant of how these difficulties increase the longer a replatforming is put off. They could already see their technical debt accumulating, and were concerned about introducing security flaws as they tried to move faster and roll out new products.
“The farther you get into your development and business growth, the harder it becomes,” says Zachary. “We were at a point in our journey where we really needed to replatform now so that we could plan for the future and future-proof the commerce side of things. We recognized that if we wanted to get to the place that we want to be from our growth trajectory, we couldn’t get there with the current stack we have. We needed to modernize quickly."
The solution: A seamless migration to a user- and customer-friendly platform
CarBahn partnered with Red Van to migrate to Shopify in 10 weeks.
Instant unification
The team consolidated their three separate websites into a single, unified domain, streamlining operations, enhancing search equity, and providing a more cohesive brand experience from the get-go. Taking advantage of apps from the Shopify app ecosystem, CarBahn integrated a store locator and dedicated pages for their 81 trusted dealers, enhancing their visibility and driving qualified leads to their locations.
Easy discovery based on exact specifications
“Just having an architecture set up for SEO was huge to us,” says Zachary. “No longer are we having to worry about H1 tags and p tags with everything coded in the right spot, where Shopify just rolled out that natively to us.”
Now that they’re telling their story through a single website, the CarBahn team has optimized the customer journey, implementing automated reminders and helpful tool tips to improve engagement and conversion rates.
Out of the gate, they’ve added new features they’d only previously dreamed about, like better and more precise vehicle fitment navigation, which allows customers to easily filter and find parts specifically designed for their cars based on year, make, and model, mirroring the natural buying behavior in the automotive aftermarket.
Confident customer journeys and seamless checkout
Similarly, the collections feature enables CarBahn to curate and tell performance stories around specific vehicles, enhancing product discovery beyond simple search results. This capability has been instrumental in guiding customers through their buying journey, reducing return rates, and increasing buyer confidence.
“We really like using the collections feature on Shopify. It helps us tell the story about a vehicle specifically," Zachary explains. “Before, we were limited to search results on the WooCommerce side. Now we can actually build out collections and curation that talk about the performance that customers can get for their cars, and then they can just get started, even if it’s as simple as changing out an air filter, all the way down to putting in a new exhaust on the vehicle.”
Those benefits to the user experience continue with a seamless checkout thanks to the addition of Shop Pay and other popular, secure, and user-friendly checkout options that today’s customers have come to expect.
“Shop has been a big unlock for us,” says Zachary. “The Shopify checkout for us is hands down one of the most clean, beneficial, easy-to-use checkout experiences. From secure browsing to easy payment processing, already authenticated sign-in and multiple payment options, it’s making the guest experience a lot tighter.”
Plug-and-play functionality
On the back end, the move to Shopify has been a game-changer.
“The CMS is really easy to use for us,” reports Zachary. “There are no longer days where I have to worry about doing style sheets, custom coding and making sure that it works. I just spend a few minutes in the application, make my marketing materials and move on with the day.”
The team can now add new products in minutes instead of days, with just the click of a button. This frees up the team to focus on unlocking new and innovative business strategies and launching new products, rather than troubleshooting on the back end.
Results: Revving the engines of growth
Since migrating to Shopify, CarBahn’s operational engines are running at prime efficiency, and customer engagement has significantly accelerated.
Turbocharged traffic and order volume
Customers now visit the website more than 20 times before making a purchase. This may be more than other retailers might expect, but for a customizer like CarBahn, it’s an indication of a high level of research and consideration—one that ultimately leads to conversion. When load times were above nine seconds, customers were lost on the homepage—long before they could make it to those customization and research tools they needed in order to feel comfortable converting.
Only 30 days post-launch, organic traffic had tripled.
Our traffic has gone up an insurmountable amount. We've had an amazing increase in our leads, whether it's through service appointments, engine inquiries, consultation requests or even just questions on what they're wanting to buy on the website.
Once customers find their store, they’ve got a much more enjoyable experience ahead of them. Average order value (AOV) increased by $200 almost instantly, a fact Zachary attributes to customers’ new and improved ability to find the right products. Order count has also tripled as a result of customers being able to find what they’re looking for.
“Whereas before, people struggled to understand where to find the right product that even fit their vehicle, what were the specifications behind it,” says Zachary, “now we're able to tell that story a lot more effectively and ultimately get the customer down the path they need to go on.”
CarBahn now boasts a 4.8-star rating on Google for customer service, and the website now reflects that expectation. Together with faster load times, the CarBahn team now generates 15x more leads through the new website thanks to native applications such as Shopify Inbox, better contact forms, and easy-to-find contact information. These leads are for service appointments, engine inquiries, consultation requests, and general product questions. Return and cancellation rates, on the other hand, have decreased by 43%, as customers are better able to research and buy into the process on an easier-to-understand website.
Operational efficiency redefined
Three-quarters of CarBahn’s website traffic is mobile, which is why load times are extra key. But with their new and improved site, the CarBahn team has felt additionally empowered to open up new channels, while also driving traffic to their dealer network and service center.
“Now that we’ve proven what we can do with a relaunch on the commerce side of things, we’ve moved into using B2B through Shopify Plus, and other tools that are at our disposal to really start to build that ecosystem out.”
On the back end, the CarBahn team can add products faster than ever and easily make website enhancements. This is important for a small team, allowing the technical team to focus on innovations that help CarBahn quickly respond to rapidly changing market demands.
Shopify enables a user like me who is both in a strategic leadership role and an individual contributor all at the same time, to really start to grow the business the way that we need to quickly.
Together, the crew at CarBahn sees Shopify and Red Van as the partners they needed to move faster, which speaks to CarBahn’s internal “we speak speed” ethos.
Open roads lie ahead
CarBahn's migration to Shopify has not only addressed their initial challenges, but has also positioned them for future growth and success in the competitive automotive industry. On Shopify, they’ll continue to reach new audiences, open new sales channels, and elevate their brand presence in the automotive aftermarket—because they can do that now, with a revved up website that speeds their customers to the finish line, and a streamlined back end that takes the burden off of their team to do it all.
Instead, they can each focus on what they do best: driving innovation with creativity and verve.
“We needed a platform like Shopify,” says Zachary, “that could really understand how we work and let us do our jobs the best way we can.”
They’re out on the open road, driving fast towards a destination of their own making. Now that’s the kind of road story we all dream of.
Watch the full video.
