Client
Artsani is a company with a varied range of articles for interior and exterior design, construction materials, household appliances, garden furniture and many others. With more than 20 years of experience, Artsani offers home improvement solutions, transforms customers’ wishes from plans into reality, and has a continuously growing range of products that support customers with competitive prices. Their passion for quality led to the creation of their own brands, such as Warroll, Wind Cool, ProfiSani, Izorool and Sanifloor.
By caring for customers, in the Artsani portfolio we find, in addition to a very varied range of products, also plenty of services, such as:
- Direct credit in the store;
- Consulting;
- Reserve and pick up – pick up in store (service intended for people who want to save time without having to look for their products in the store);
- Home delivery;
- Fidelity card;
- Mixing paints and plasters;
- Sewing and scalloping services, etc.
Context
According to a statistic produced by Statista, revenues are expected to show an annual growth rate between 2022 and 2025 of 8.64%, resulting in an estimated market volume of USD 348.30 billion by 2025. Revenues from the DIY segment are estimated to reach 271.60 billion USD in 2022.
Due to the global situation, e-commerce has grown significantly in popularity and more and more people are using the Internet to buy things. This shows us how necessary it is for a company to make efforts to differentiate itself from competitors, and one of the best ways to do this is to establish an online presence. Currently, companies that have not integrated e-commerce in their strategy, and carry out their activity only offline, lose a massive segment of customers that they cannot access, primarily because of the geographical barriers imposed by area. Also, an e-commerce platform transforms the store from one with an 8-hour schedule into one non-stop, and thus customers can place orders daily, regardless of the time.
CustomSoft was and still is an excellent partner for our e-commerce project because we felt safe, and we enjoyed their promptness, vast knowledge and excellent skills. The CustomSoft team is very friendly, and it was easy for us to work with them. They were very helpful, responsive, and attentive to details. We were always able to communicate with them, and the quality of the work done by the team meets our standards. We are convinced that we will continue to have a good long-term relationship. Furthermore, we are really satisfied with the final project and recommend CustomSoft for anything related to e-commerce.
Project Manager, Artsani
Pain Points
Some of the challenges that a DIY store faces, such as supply chain problems and losses, disappear when there is an online platform, and thus the customer can order products from the comfort of his home, without having to go to the physical store, which it gives more time for the things that really matter. This leads to the solidification of the relationship between the customer and the company and brings online the offline shopping experience.
Although the implementation of a solid e-commerce platform involves certain costs, the goal in the case of DIY stores is to simplify the ordering process for customers because not many companies use an efficient and secure e-commerce platform. The B2C sector is competitive, but there are opportunities in this field. If a company ignores customer problems, they will be dissatisfied, which will translate into a high rate of shopping cart abandonment, a high return rate, and, finally, a decrease in revenue.
Solution
After the offline success, Artsani wanted to go to the next level and decided to enter the e-commerce market. The binder that was the basis of the Artsani online store, which is addressed to customers from all over the country, is represented on one of the largest and most secure platforms in the USA, BigCommerce, an Open SaaS platform, and implemented by CustomSoft, which makes Artsani enjoy success in the offline environment, currently having 2 well-known and appreciated stores
We wanted the online experience to resemble the offline one as much as possible, that’s why we at CustomSoft identified the need to implement a customer loyalty system. The design of the platform is easy to navigate because the objective is that anyone entering the site can use it without difficulty.
The Artsani online store is a first on the Romanian market because it has the first integration with the BigCommerce platform of a Romanian payment processor, Netopia. We also made an integration with Innoship, an application used for the delivery of orders. Innoship incorporates several couriers in a single application, helping the customer to use a single platform to generate AWBs, reduce their monthly delivery costs, increase the quality of the delivery service and save time.
Implementation
The experience that CustomSoft has accumulated over time has spoken, and all the e-commerce projects implemented so far have created for us an analytical thinking, oriented towards the client and business needs. One of the challenges we faced during the implementation was the integration with the logistics application currently used by Artsani. With their help and those who developed that application, we were able to succeed in implementing the project.
Benefits
Some of the benefits Artsani now enjoys thanks to the BigCommerce platform:
- Automatic updates of the platform, new functionalities and improvements at no cost and without site downtime (periods of time when it is non-functional);
- Low total cost of ownership (TCO);
- Robust technology, rich in functionalities, easy to use, innovative;
- Over 600 verified third-party applications and over 100 API endpoints;
- Platform uptime of 99.99% (compared to the industry average of 99.5%);
- The interface is easy to customize thanks to a drag-and-drop visual editing tool;
- How to recover abandoned shopping baskets;
- Well-designed search mode;
- Built-in discount mode (Artsani can create promotions and coupons to win new customers and keep old ones);
- Omnichannel: connecting offline and online channels in a single interface;
- Pick up in store (pick up directly from the store).
BigCommerce’s contribution
From the beginning of the project, BigCommerce has been an important pillar in the good development of things. From the beginning, they held complex demo presentations, where they explained features and why the platform is suitable for our client’s business needs. They emphasised the benefits and the functionalities that are vital for the proper functioning of the Artsani online store.
The customer was pleased with the interaction and deemed is as professional. More than that, BigCommerce’s support did not stop after we started implementing the project. Whenever the CustomSoft team needed anything, they were more than happy to help in a short time. The well-established internal procedures both within BigCommerce and CustomSoft helped us to work very efficiently as a team.
Something notable in this project is that the Artsani online store is the first one in the Romanian market where an integration with the BigCommerce platform of a Romanian payment processor, Netopia, was created. This integration required active collaboration between the three parties involved in the process, which went smoothly, with no problems. Also, the BigCommerce team got involved when we needed to integrate Artsani’s ERP system.
Circling back to the beginning, the emphasis should be, firstly, on the fact that from the first demo presentation, BigCommerce managed to convince the customer to create an account and test the platform. This happened because of the manner that the information was presented, but also because of the multiple benefits that the customer will have after the implementation, such as low TCO, excellent uptime and automatic updates.