nopCommerce Archives | ISDK - eCommerce development, omnichannel solutions, CRM-marketing

Mar

Prompt support of a customer with a nopCommerce e-store

eCommerceadmin

Customer

A store selling rolling bearings

LC-Wälzlager is a German company specializing in rolling bearings. They sell products of European manufacturers as well as produce customer-specific bearings themselves. The company also offers its customers professional technical support.

LC-Wälzlager already had its online shop based on nopCommerce, however, there were some issues:

it wasn’t optimized for mobile devices
the site theme was outdated, which made the store look unattractive
the site was lacking good graphical content: pictures of products, catching banners

They were also missing ongoing support from the previous site developer.

The company came across our profile and decided to contact us. They liked our availability and prompt responses from our German team. We helped LC-Wälzlager to fix a crucial problem on their website even before the contract was ready and signed. Besides, we offered flexible support conditions, so they were able to choose the service package that suited them best.

To meet the customer’s goals and requirements, the following was done:

A completely new site on nopCommerce was deployed
A new site theme was installed and customized
All the data (catalog and text data) was transferred from the previous site
Additional custom functionality was also transferred and adapted for the new site
Creation of some stylish graphical materials (banners, slides)

To test the site and show the outcome to the client before rolling the solution out to the main website, we started with the staging site and deployed all the functionality there.

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The customer also asked for further store support. During that, we helped the company to set up SSL, adjusted search options, and introduced some other useful features.

When creating an online store, we always start with a staging site, so that clients could examine how the store functions and approve when they are happy with everything. After that, we transfer the functionality developed to the official site. This minimizes bugs and helps to make all the settings and changes in a secure environment.

We also offer flexible conditions for further site support based on a ‘Team as a service’ approach. A client purchases a package of service hours. We then provide an estimate for what can be done within this package.

Along the project run or website support, we regularly inform the client about the work progress and remaining hours. This helps customers keep track of their budgets quite easily.

Jul

iOS app with Apple in-app subscriptions and purchases

eCommerceadmin

Customer

A shop selling handmade artisan products

GlobeIn, an online store of handcrafted artisan products uses 2 business models:

a membership-based shop with monthly in-app subscriptions allowing users to access the unique sales, and
subscription boxes with a separate payment model based on the set of the goods delivered to the client every month.

An app for subscription boxes was already created (view the case), following that, the company decided to create a version of the app for the shop as well.

The idea was to attract users with Facebook ads and direct them to the right version of the app depending on which ad it was, for subscription boxes, or the store.

To access the store, one needs to become a member. Users also should be able to become members and use the store without registering.

To get an idea, what the store looks like, before paying the membership fee, a user should be able to try a demo version of the store.

The membership and the purchases within the app should be paid using StoreKit framework for iOS In-App purchases. Ads Facebook and AdWords traffic to be handled by Adjust device fingerprinting technology.

To meet the customer requirements, the following was done:

Redirect from a Facebook ad to the iOS store
- Adjust is used to redirect users from Facebook ads to a corresponding version of the app
- The Fingerprint of the device is stored on the Adjust server and is used to remember the “users-app” pair and open the same version of the app next time

Preview of the store
- A demo store directing to the membership registration page once the user clicks on checkout
Membership registration
- To register their membership and download the app, users need to enter their Apple ID
- To pay the membership fee, the Apple wallet is used. For in-store purchases, the official Apple StoreKit framework is applied
- In case a user doesn’t want to register to use the store, (s)he can click “Not now” button on the sign-up page (the membership fee must be paid anyway). A “ghost” account connected to the user’s subscription is being created. When this user will decide to register, the membership subscription will be reconnected to the current e-mail.
A store app with features of the webstore

iOS application that replicates website features:

Purchase and checkout flow:
- Payment methods: Credit Cards, PayPal, and ApplePay
- Braintree technology to accept credit cards payments
- Automatic address detection at the checkout
Account functionality
- Buy items in the store
- Track shipment
- View order history
- View/update settings and billing details
- Restore purchases
- Change account data: username, password, shipping address

To track app performance and marketing metrics, the following tools were incorporated into the app:

Appsee – an app analytics platform enabling user recordings, touch heatmaps, and extensive user journey tracking to understand the reasons behind the user behavior.
Mixpanel – an analytics platform for the mobile and web, supporting businesses to study consumer behavior.
Adjust – analytics, measurement, and fraud prevention solutions for mobile app marketers.
Snowplow – a data delivery platform that collects and operationalizes behavioral data at scale.
Customer’s own server analytics

View in Apple Store

Jun

Subscription boxes iOS app set up for marketing campaigns

eCommerceadmin

Customer

A shop selling handmade artisan products

GlobeIn is an online store of handcrafted artisan products that also offers subscription-based curated boxes.

With a website already in place, the company decided to create an iOS app to increase the number of subscribers.

The founders wanted to check their assumption that sales in the app would be higher than on the website. The main task for the app was to clearly and in a very attractive way convey the main value of the subscription to users so that they would opt for it.

The company was also planning to actively use the app for its marketing campaigns. Thus, another important requirement was to implement analytic tools to measure traffic and track user journeys and overall user activity. The client wanted to use these analytics to find ways to increase conversion rates.

For the app to fulfill its main goal, the following was done:

Account’s interface with very simple and quick access to its sections and subscription upgrade benefits
Various upselling feature, including an engaging onboarding process aiming to motivate users to spend extra on upgrading their subscription and/or purchasing add-ons
User feature to manage subscription settings like box theme and some others (1-10 days of each month)
User feature to redeem subscription exchanging the box for the credits in order to buy add-on items instead
VIP sales (12-18 days of each month) for extra funds

To track app performance and marketing metrics, the following tools were incorporated into the app:

Appsee – an app analytics platform enabling user recordings, touch heatmaps, and extensive user journey tracking to understand the reasons behind the user behavior.
Mixpanel – an analytics platform for the mobile and web, supporting businesses to study consumer behavior.
Adjust – analytics, measurement, and fraud prevention solutions for mobile app marketers.
Snowplow – a data delivery platform that collects and operationalizes behavioral data at scale.
Customer’s own server analytics

Features of this iOS mobile application:

Subscription description start screen (for new users)
Subscription purchase and checkout flow:
- Payment methods: Credit Cards, PayPal, and ApplePay
- Braintree technology to accept credit cards payments
- Automatic address detection at the checkout. This functionality is estimated to increase the conversion by 4%
New subscriber’s welcoming flow (5 steps)
- Congratulation screen, “Thank you for subscribing”, Step 1…Step 5, conclusive “Thanks screen”
“My subscription” account functionality
- Choose box theme
- Track monthly shipment
- Upgrade to higher subscription tiers
- Collect credits and redeem boxes (exchange for credits)
- Within a given period, buy add-on items in the internal store (not Artisan Shop):
  - Pick any add-ons (items) from an internal catalog: Jewelry, Accessories, Home, Kitchen, Beauty, Food
  - Items will be added into the monthly shipment along with the regular box
- Participate in monthly VIP sales
- View order history tracking
- View/update settings and billing details
- View subscription timeline of the current month
Zendesk chat incorporated into the app

Other functionality or static content incorporated into the app but implemented using incorporated web view or external browser links:

Artisan shop and its order history tracking
Maven reward points
Subscription purchase and checkout flow
Help and FAQ information
“Impact” public files

View in Apple Store

Mar

nopCommerce multi-store for a book publisher

eCommerceadmin

Customer

One of the largest Russian publishing houses specializing in literature for school education

The company already had an online store for individuals, which was integrated with corporate systems: Bookkeeping system and Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

New business development plans required creating an online store for legal entities and public educational institutions. Product range and prices in this store were supposed to be different from the ones on the main site, tier pricing functionality was also needed to be implemented. Another requirement was that users of this site – various companies and organizations – needed a different type of authorization.

In addition to the main task, some issues with the existing repository needed to be solved: code branches required accurate merging as the proper procedure for deploying them to the test and production stages has been violated.

First of all, the repository issue was solved by analyzing each of the code branches and comparing it to static and dynamic (dll) content of deployed solutions on test and production sites.

Second, to complete the main task, ISDK tuned nopCommerce ’multi-store’ functionality. This is an inbuilt feature of all nopCommerce-based shops, which allows to host more than one frontend store on different domains yet manage them all from a single administration panel and have a single database.

Tier prices were also set up. Tier prices allows to offer discounted prices when customers buy bigger amounts of a product. In nopCommerce, it is possible to set up tier prices for different stores and different customer roles.

A separate virtual store for organizations was set up
Different price lists were created. The lists contain different prices depending on a client type and role
Bookkeeping system and Microsoft Dynamics integrations were updated accordingly

Feb

nopCommerce-upgrade-case-featured-400-200

nopCommerce Upgrade to .NET CORE

eCommerceadmin

Customer

Theater and stage equipment supplier

STEFCO is one of the leaders on the Russian market of theater and stage equipment supply, equipment for entertainment and sporting events. It works with the best manufacturers, such as Harlequin, Tuchler, Gerriets, Milos, ShowLED, Chain Master and others. The company delivers the facilities and does the installation.

Stefco was looking for ways to increase its profits and expand sales. As a part of this plan, the decision was to upgrade the company’s web-store to the latest 4.10 nopCommerce version supporting .NET Core with further intention to migrate the shop to Linux hosting.

STEFCO had a few requirements to the new site:

Improvement of the admin area (more user-friendly with better responsive design)
A possibility to migrate to Linux hosting in future
Better in-store pickup support
Performance optimisation

While planning the upgrade, two significant challenges were identified:

nopCommerce source code and database of the existing site (on nopCommerce 3.70 version) was considerably modified, which made it impossible to upgrade using the normal process
Custom plugins required additional modifications to be compatible with the new version of nopCommerce

See the website: STEFCO >>

ISDK team analyzed the store version used before to find out nopCommerce source code changes. Third-party plugins were checked as well. The areas that required an action to be taken were identified, the following activities needed to be performed:

Implement custom SQL scripts to make a copy of the database without custom modifications
Move all customizations from nopCommerce source code to custom plugins
Review and update existing custom plugins to support the new version of nopCommerce
Perform regular upgrade process from updated 3.70 setup to 4.10 using upgrade scripts
Change custom theme and plugins configuration settings after upgrade to reflect changes in nopCommerce platform and to use new features available in new versions of the theme and plugins

The challenges that were initially discovered, were successfully solved and the transition from 3.70 to 4.10 went very smoothly. While performing the upgrade, all data and settings were persisted and traffic loss was minimal. The requirements outlined by STEFCO were met, the store is now also ready for future migration to Linux hosting.
This case reflects well-known issues related to the nopCommerce source code and database customization that cause difficulties with a regular upgrade process and require extra activities before starting an upgrade. At the same time, it demonstrates how using built-in nopCommerce plugin system can be successfully used for such customizations.

Jan

High-traffic eCommerce webstore Harman.club

eCommerce, Integrationadmin

Customer

GLOBAL AUDIO AND INFOTAINMENT SYSTEM PRODUCER

Harman is one of the biggest players in the audio and infotainment systems industry. Its mass market and professional audio equipment is well known for crystal clear and realistic sound, which became a standard for the whole audio industry. The company includes several brands such as JBL, AKG, Harman Kardon and other.

With the goal of revenues and customer loyalty increase, Harman’s Russian regional office decided to improve their online store. Redesign and enhancements implementation along with scaling up Internet and CRM marketing tools were required.

See the website: harman.club >>

Work on the website consisted of the following main areas.
Introduction of new marketing tools to increase sales, conversion, and general customer brand loyalty:

Integration with Google Merchant Center
Launch of Criteo retargeting campaigns
Integration with a leading CPA network
Site visitors interaction tracking and transferring data to CRM
Widening of the website operations and discount offers
Integration with leading Russian shipping provider PickPoint

SEO optimization:

UI/UX website modifications, adding tags and meta information
Mobile site version optimization
Site loading time improvement (desktop, and mobile view, Google Insights)

See the website: harman.club >>

open harman.club See customer feedback

Apr

E-Commerce Omni-Channel

eCommerce, Integration, Mobile, UI-designadmin

Customer

GLOBAL PRODUCER OF WELL-BALANCED NUTRITION, WEIGHT CONTROL AND BEAUTY GOODS

Herbalife, a worldwide-known producer of nutrition, weight control, and beauty goods, together with Filuet Group, its logistic partner, expands into Eastern and Western Europe.

Entering CIS and Baltic countries’ markets, the customer wanted to introduce a new strategy for market expansion, which proposed an intense use of modern e-Commerce tools. They wanted to create a system of sales channels that would include a single web-store for all new business regions, mobile applications for popular platforms (iOS и Android), and a network of automated self-service kiosks (touch screen terminals). All solution components were supposed to use a single data source as well as centralized content administration tools, and configuration settings pool.

The planned online operations needed to be fully integrated with the existing offline business process of orders processing and delivery.

See customer feedback

The Omnichannel solution required a combination of several external and internal corporate tools, integration with Herbalife ERP system and Filuet Group logistic applications. nopCommerce, a leading Microsoft .NET based solution, was chosen as an e-commerce platform as its plugin-extendable architecture using Dependency Injection pattern provides almost unlimited system integration capabilities.

The following tasks were completed within the project:

design and development of an online-store;
design and development of mobile applications delivering full cart and order sync with the online-store;
integration of the e-commerce channel with the existing offline architecture of order processing, pricing, warehouse stock tracking etc.;
Filuet Group shipping widget embedding;
integration with payment systems, addition of new payment methods using online banking;
integration of e-commerce with vending channels (kiosks, automated sales stores);
implementation of chat bots for customer support.

The system is fully hosted on Microsoft Azure using one of the standard cloud service plans which ensures good stress resistance. This helps the system to show adequate performance: in peak times the site auditory might go up to a few thousands.

Herbalife users got a completely integrated shopping environment. This allowed to increase the number of customers and the average sum of their orders significantly. Customers now can access their carts from all devices, order history is centralized and shows all orders, including offline. For example, an order can be put together in the mobile application while final checkout can be done later via web-store personal account or vice-versa.

The company saw increased customer loyalty, boost in sales revenue and endless opportunities of using marketing technologies – retargeting, upselling, cross-selling, CRM marketing etc.