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Shopify Plus Partner │ Klaviyo Master Platinum Partner │ Full-Service eCommerce Agency

1. Executive Summary

This case study looks at how our agency partnered with Bere Zăganu to fix their online store and help them grow.

When we started working together under a steady 20-hour monthly retainer, the brand had great local popularity offline, but its e-commerce store was held back by technical bugs and slow, manual back-office tasks.

Our main goal was to turn their website into a smooth sales engine, aiming to significantly scale their online sales channel. By combining website fixes on Shopify with targeted Meta and Google ad campaigns, we focused on clearing out warehouse bottlenecks, fixing mobile checkout issues, and building a reliable system that can handle growth without crashing.

2. Client Profile: An Independent Craft Beer Business

Founded in 2013 near the Ciucaș Mountains in Măneciu-Ungureni, Bere Zăganu is one of the original names in the Romanian independent craft beer scene. They have built a strong reputation by sticking to 100% natural ingredients and a traditional, slow-fermentation process. 

Lately, the brewery has expanded its lineup to match changing customer tastes. While people loved the products, selling them online was a different story. The brewery’s real-world success was hitting a wall online because its digital setup was holding them back.

3. The Challenges: Operational Bottlenecks and Digital Hurdles

Behind the scenes of the online store, our agency had to tackle a mix of operational headaches and technical glitches that made it difficult to scale up marketing budgets:

  • The ERP Invoicing Wall: The biggest obstacle was an unfinished integration between Shopify and the client’s ERP software. Because these two systems didn’t talk to each other properly, the logistics team had to type out and print every single invoice by hand. This created a massive bottleneck. We had to run our paid ads with the brakes on because if we brought in too many orders at once, the warehouse team wouldn’t be able to keep up with the manual paperwork.
  • The Double SGR Tax Bug: Romania’s mandatory recycling fee (Sistem de Garanție-Returnare) caused constant technical friction. The store’s code would randomly charge the 0.50 RON fee twice whenever a customer bought a promotional package or a mixed beer bundle. This caused a lot of frustration for the back-office team, who had to manually adjust invoices and issue corrections.
  • The Mobile Conversion Gap: When we looked at the numbers, 73% of the website’s traffic came from mobile phones. However, the actual conversion rate on mobile devices was only half of what it was on desktops. People were visiting on their phones, but they were dropping off before buying because of a clunky mobile layout.
  • Discount Code Conflicts: Shopify limits stores to a set number of automatic discount codes running at the same time. Over time, the store had accumulated too many old, forgotten codes. These codes were clashing during checkout, causing errors for customers and leading to abandoned shopping carts.

4. Strategic Implementation: The Phases of Growth

To get things back on track, our agency broke the workload down into two practical phases, balancing urgent backend fixes with front-end updates to improve the shopping experience.

Phase 1: Cleaning up the Backend and Fixing the Foundation

Our first priority was to roll up our sleeves and fix the bugs that were breaking the checkout or messing up the store’s data.

  • Cleaning up the Checkout: We went into the Shopify backend and did a complete house cleaning of old, conflicting discount codes so that customers could check out without experiencing random pricing errors.
  • Untangling the SGR Tax Logic: We reworked how the store maps product packages based on weight. This change ensured the 0.50 RON recycling fee is applied accurately to the single bottles inside a bundle, while keeping non-beverage items like branded drinking cups fee-free.
  • Fixing Language Defaults: We corrected an oversight where the store defaulted to English for local Romanian buyers, switching it back to Romanian to keep the local shopping experience natural.
  • Tracking and Compliance: We installed Microsoft Clarity to record heatmaps and user sessions so we could see exactly where people got stuck. We also cleaned up the footer layout to properly organize mandatory privacy links, cookie pop-ups, and ANPC icons.

Phase 2: Optimizing the Customer Journey and Scaling Ads

Once the website stopped throwing errors, our team shifted to making the store easier to use and driving better traffic through ads.

  • Smart Upsells and Shipping Progress Bars: We integrated the Selleasy app to show relevant product recommendations. 
  • Fixing Mobile Layout Errors: Our development team tracked down a bug where the desktop site suffered from a broken layout because a mobile menu script was bleeding into larger screens. We fixed the code to keep it hidden on desktop and visible only on mobile. We also reshaped the main homepage banners into a clean, square format that fits smartphone screens perfectly.
  • Automated Email Flows: Using The Marketer, we optimized behavioral email sequences for a database of over 2,500 contacts. We set up automated welcome sequences for new subscribers, browse abandonment emails (showing people the exact beer they were looking at), and automated price-drop alerts. We also stepped in quickly to resolve an issue where Avast antivirus mistakenly flagged the email subscription confirmation links as a threat.
  • Targeted Advertising: Our marketing team created new Google and Meta campaigns specifically designed to highlight their new product lines to broader audiences.

5. Functionalities and Customization

Instead of using generic templates, our agency custom-configured several functional branches to make the website work better for the client’s day-to-day operations:

  • Storefront & UX Fixes: Reworked mobile layout settings, adapted square banners for smartphones, and ran test purchases to make sure cash-on-delivery (ramburs) checkouts work smoothly.
  • Automated Email Lifelines: Built out targeted sequences within The Marketer for cart abandonment, browsing drop-offs, and product alerts to recover lost sales automatically.
  • Tax and Checkout Rules: Fixed the backend code so that the SGR recycling fee calculates correctly on mixed bundles without duplicating itself.
  • Paid Ad Management: Ran continuous Meta and Google Ads campaigns focused on turning ad clicks into actual sales, backed by clean tracking through Google Analytics (GA4) and Google Tag Manager.

6. Conclusion: A Future-Proof Craft Brand

Our work with Bere Zăganu proves that you cannot scale a great physical product online if the underlying digital systems are fighting against you. By cleaning up checkout bugs and improving the mobile experience, we have turned their website into a much more stable and reliable storefront.