A modern and efficient B2B business is set free from an archaic ecommerce website.
Buisklem.nl is a company that sells fittings and parts to construction industries in the Benelux area (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg). Their products are used in building greenhouses, roadside banner (a very different style than the United States), fencing and more.
Their B2B experience was less than ideal. The website was cumbersome to update. The codebase was compiled in .NET and the previous developer had moved on. While the website was still functional, it looked like a relic from the early 2000’s, and indeed it was.
A reasonable percentage of their traffic comes from mobile while construction workers are in the field. Unfortunately, these people were met with a desktop version of the website crammed onto their small mobile phone—not an ideal customer experience!
Here is how their mobile site looked after the migration. As you can see, it is now usable and helps someone in the field quickly find the product that they are looking for.
Buisklem made the decision to step forward onto Magento—a platform that is readily customized and is an excellent platform on which to build a beautiful customer experience.
This project was not without some interesting aspects. We, at SwiftOtter, had the opportunity to work through these challenges and build a solution that met or exceeded the expectations.
Buisklem’s pricing model is complex. There are at least six data sources used to determine a product’s price. Because pricing is set per customer, Magento’s price calculation system had to be discarded. Tier pricing works for customer groups. Cart price rules works for customer groups. You get the point—while Magento’s pricing system is granular, it’s not granular enough for Buisklem.
In replacing the pricing calculation system, we still needed to keep performance in mind. Pages are cached, and the rendered price would be saved in that cache—rendering an incorrect price for all future customers. We could have just disabled the cache, but that would slow down a user’s experience. Instead, we built a system to load in prices after the page has been rendered. Pages load lightning-fast and prices come right behind it.
Buisklem uses the Unit4 ERP. A .NET developer built an export tool to convert Unit4 data into XML. We built an import process to load these XML files and translate them into Magento entities (customers, orders, products and pricing information).
These XML files are very large and must be imported with good efficiency.
Due to how Buisklem handles billing, we needed to customize the checkout process. For example, the billing address as loaded through the Data Import cannot be changed. Purchase order numbers are no longer required.
Buisklem’s product catalog is exported to a PDF. This result will be slightly modified and then sent to a printer for distribution to their business client base. We built a system to save products to a PDF.
While the old site was functional, it wasn't easy to navigate. The search functionality was limited to basic queries.
On the new site, and once logged in (not pictured) users are presented with a list of products that they have recently purchased and a list of their favorite products. This reduces the number of clicks necessary to find the most frequently ordered products. Additionally, the new site leverages the powerful Algolia platform to provide relevant search results.
Happy customers come back more often.
Buisklem put significant sweat equity into polishing product details. SwiftOtter built the website. After the website was almost perfect (remember, perfection is the enemy of done), we received the go-ahead to flip the switch. We reviewed the site one more time… and then asked our hosting partner, MageMojo, to turn on the new site.
And that fateful day was December 13. Except that it wasn’t fateful. Buisklem’s sales have seen significant increases! We have continued adding features at a relatively rapid pace (something that wasn’t possible before). They are on a modern and streamlined platform that is optimized for success.
