How a manufacturer has cleaned up his e-business act
Scoop
Want to keep your corporate facility spic and span but unsure what equipment and products to use and where to buy them? No problem! Floorcare.com has all the answers for you. A leader in the commercial sanitary supply industry, floorcare.com’s parent, Mastercraft USA, has long been offering a comprehensive selection of competitively-priced cleaning machines and supplies to industry contractors and wholesalers around the country.
With floorcare.com, the company has now launched a new “factory-direct” initiative, adding expert, personalized consulting to its core offering and addressing end-users, such as building managers, cleaning companies, and more. Floorcare.com is based on a brand-new, state-of-the-art ecommerce site, developed and designed by ECommerce Partners.
Story
A true business pioneer, Mastercraft USA maintained a catalogue website from the early days of the Internet. In 2006, the manufacturer even added an ecommerce site, featuring some, if not all, of its products. But while the site performed well at the time, it was based on an outdated ecommerce platform and no longer produced the desired results. There were a number of technical and performance issues.
The site’s marketing and branding also needed to be revamped. What’s more: it lacked scalability. As a result, conversion rates and online revenues were lagging. In 2012, Mastercraft decided on a complete overhaul of its ebusiness to effectively address end-users and maintain a continuous business relationship with them. The manufacturer contracted ECommerce Partners, and floorcare.com started taking shape.
Solutions
ECommerce Partners set out to create an advanced online presence that would offer an excellent shopping experience for vendors and end-users alike, grow online sales and firmly establish floorcare.com as the industry’s go-to source for commercial cleaning equipment and supplies. ECommerce Partners started the project with a systematic strategy phase to help the client successfully transition from a manufacturer-only business model to a more comprehensive one that included selling to end-users. To that end, ECommerce Partners provided extensive research and planning, and developed an advanced information architecture through their proven ERS (Ecommerce Requirement Specifications) and SDC (SEO Development Component) methodologies.
As for the implementation, the agency suggested a phased approach and rapidly proceeded with phase one. It included developing a new site from scratch, providing ecommerce web design, crafting custom solutions, and integrating 3rd Party applications. Special attention was placed on optimizing the user experience with an attractive interface, advanced information architecture, and a special emphasis on usability. As a result, visitors now enjoy intuitive site navigation with advanced search and auto complete functionalities, individual product zooms, product reviews, a secure shopping cart solution, advanced payment processing, and efficient shipping and fulfilment processes. Administrators benefit from unlimited catalogue management, detailed analytics, site traffic and sales reports and advanced features for marketing and promotion.
Services
ECommerce Partners has provided the following services:
- Ecommerce Strategy
- Ecommerce Solutions
- Ecommerce Web Design
- 3rd Party Application Integration
- User Interface Design
- User Experience
- Usability
- Graphic Design
- ERS (Ecommerce Requirements Specifications)
- SDC (SEO Development Component)
- Search Engine Methodology
- Ecommerce Development Module for Custom Cart Features
- Unlimited Catalogue Management
- Secure Shopping Cart
- Promotion & Marketing
- Payment Processing
- Shipping & Fulfillment
- Detailed Site Traffic & Sales Reports
- Product Zoom Feature
- Analytics
- Product Review
“When it came to ordering cleaning equipment and supplies, most companies used to rely on dedicated third-party vendors. But lately, more and more prefer to take charge themselves. For us it was important to extend our business model to cater to both our trusted vendor partners and our end users, with whom we hope to build a continuous, mutually beneficial relationship. We contacted our interactive agency, ECommerce Partners, and asked them to build a new website that would seamlessly support our goals. ECommerce Partners came through for us, instantly understanding our new business model and translating it into an advanced, sophisticated online presence.”