It’s been a big year for Fluid Commerce. We set our 2021 targets for ambitious growth and we’ve delivered in every area of the business. From new clients joining us to growing the size of our team, our web development and performance marketing services have been bigger, bolder and more exciting than ever before.
But it’s not all been about the work – with more of us working from home than ever before, we’ve thrown ourselves into keeping the culture of Fluid alive and relevant to what our team needs.
Read on to discover our retrospective of 2021. And, I’ll take this opportunity now to say a big thanks to all of our staff, clients and partners who have joined us on this whirlwind of a year. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to an even bigger year in 2022!
35 New Clients
In 2021 we won 35 new clients across our services – a huge 52% increase on the number of clients we welcomed to Fluid in 2020. Our wins included six Magento 2 projects, nine PPC clients, eight Amazon Advertising contracts and no less than ten Paid Social clients.
14 New Team Members
Fluid is getting bigger by the minute! This year our team expanded with 14 new members of staff joining us across the departments. New members included: Magento developers, Head of Digital Performance, Digital Account Director, Senior UX Designer, Ecommerce Support Manager, Account Manager, Amazon Strategist, Paid Social Executive and a Paid Search Executive.
PWA launch for Lakeland Leather
Launched in November 2021, the progressive web app we developed for Lakeland Leather is already an impressive 1.7 times faster than before. Build with PWA Studio from Adobe Commerce, the site for the luxury leather fashion brand is the first of many more to come from Fluid Commerce.
4 Awards
We’re an award-winning company, and our talents were recognised again this year with another clutch of awards. Our highlights included a win at the UK Biddable Media Awards for Best Use of Facebook/Instagram – a fantastic achievement for our Paid Social service, which launched at the end of 2020.
Our hat trick at the UK Ecommerce Awards was also hugely exciting. We won B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year, DIY Beauty, Health & Well Being Ecommerce Website of the Year, and Beauty, Health & Well Being Ecommerce Website of the Year for luxury skincare retailer Augustinus Bader.
Find out more about our award-winning work for Augustinus Bader here
2122 Miles for Charity
Giving back is important to us, and finding a way to do it to get the whole team involved has been a lot of fun this year. We kicked off our charity endeavours with the 100 Mile Challenge in February, with our team each clocking up 100 miles on foot before the month’s end.
Later on in the year, we introduced the UK to Ukraine group challenge, with our team working together to walk, run, swim or cycle the distance between our Manchester HQ and Kyviv, where a number of our world-class team of developers live.
Between us we managed to cover over 2122 miles in 2021, raising money for a variety of charities chosen by the team.
Benefits Package Launched
In January, our team sat down (virtually) to figure out what our team really needed and wanted from Fluid. As a result, we launched an entirely new benefits and perks package, which includes increased holidays, an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), retail discounts and permanent commitment to remote and flexi-time working hours.
Find out more on our Careers page.
4 Industry Reports
In 2020 we launched our ecommerce reports, analysing four sectors to discover which brands were leading the way for ecommerce excellence, and how, and in 2021 we continued with the tradition.
This year, we were able to compare the brands’ performance to 2020 to see how retailers had reacted to the impact of the pandemic.
Discover the reports for Home & Garden, Health & Beauty and Jewellery & Accessories.
New Commitment to Sustainability
This year, we took the opportunity to review and update our approach to sustainability. We introduced recycling bins into the office, and moved all of our merchandise to eco-friendly alternatives such as organic cotton tote bags, reusable aluminium water bottles and sugar-cane pens.
This is just the start and we will continually look for new ways to reduce our impact on the environment in 2022.
2 Webinars
With in-person events not always an option in 2021, we turned to webinars to share our knowledge, co-hosted with our wonderful partners.
The first was with Yotpo, How to Drive Sales With User Generated Content, and the second was with PureClarity, How to create the instore experience online.
10 Lunch and Learns
We love to learn, and we love to work with our partners. And this year we managed to squeeze in 10 ‘lunch’n’learns’ with our tech partners, who use the lunchtime slot to guide us through their solutions and latest innovations. They’re also kind enough to answer any questions we may have so we can deepen our understanding of their platforms in order to find the right match for our clients.
Joining us for lunch in 2021 were: Shipstation, Yotpo, Linnworks, Klevu, PureClarity, DNA Payments, Loyalty Lion, Brightpearl, Reviews.io and PureClarity.
2022: We’re Ready For You
With ambitious growth plans queued up and exciting projects about to begin, big things are coming for the new year. Keep up to date by following us on social or signing up to our newsletter (links below).
If you need any advice or ideas for how to grow your business in 2022, get in touch with our ecommerce consultants. We’re at the ready to help you drive sales through Adobe Commerce website development, PPC, Paid Social and Amazon Marketing.