e-Commerce / Custom Development / Integration
General
Vassos Eliades Ltd is one of the biggest trading companies in Cyprus. Its main activities are the importation, sale and distribution of consumer goods through all the trade channels of the market. The range of products distributed is wide, ranging from foodstuffs, alcoholic beverages, mass market consumer goods, luxury watches, jewellery and accessories as well as fitness equipment. Vassos Eliades Ltd is trusted by the largest multinational companies in the world to handle their brands in the Cyprus market and has been the agent of Swiss food giant NESTLÉ for the island of Cyprus since the inception of the company in 1933.
Vassos Eliades was looking for an agency to implement a refreshing and innovative e-Commerce solution for the Nespresso brand. Lightblack was honoured to be that agency. This is the exact case study of it.
Objectives
The initial objectives were:
- Create an online shop according to the brand’s standards
- Design and implement a custom theme for the shop following the brand’s strict guidelines
- Enhance the user experience by following specific guidelines
- Implement custom modules to allow the company to present products and promotions in certain ways
- Integrate the shop with the company’s ERP system for product, stock and order synchronization
- Hosting installation and maintenance with the maximum percentage of availability
The Challenge
First of all the brand had strict guidelines and the project demanded a lot of customization. Our initial challenge was whether we would implement this as a custom solution or use a ready-made e-Commerce platform to build on.
The second major challenge was to create a theme to match the lengthy brand guides and adjust to all screen sizes.
The last challenge was to make the system fast, robust and easy to use as part of the demanding user experience.
The Solution
The best option was Megento 2 to be the platform of development. The reason behind this decision was that Magento is high availability and professional eCommerce solution, with an active community and thousands of ready-made eCommerce-specific plugins. It has been the platform for thousands of online stores and it is considered the leader in large and demanding stores.
A custom theme was implemented with a responsive mobile-first approach. A one-page checkout was introduced, which lifted user experience and satisfaction while increasing conversion rate and decreasing abandoned cart rate. Along with the customization of some purchased plugins, we implemented 2 new plugins, one to bare the specific requirements of the company and one to achieve the integration between the store and the ERP.
Finally, we optimized and deployed the solution on one of the fastest and most reliable providers ensuring speed, high availability and brand guideline compliance.
The Result
The result of the first year of operations was unexpected and overwhelming and so Vassos Eliades Ltd could not be happier. The store’s visitors were increased by 90%, the store’s sales were increased by 85% and the monthly engagement by 61%. More importantly, we managed to increase the number of revisiting and re-ordering as it was the brand’s goal from the beginning.
We were delighted to nominate Nespresso – Vassos Eliades Ltd E-shop in Cyprus in the categories of Best E-shop/Marketplace and Best Customer Experience for which we received Gold awards for the project of implementing the new Nespresso online store.
