Challenges
Consistent, robust quality experience
Deliver a shopping experience that is as consistent and robust as the products Joe Welbourn and his team manufacture.
eliminate manual input
Reduce error and manhours associated with manual data input and un-integrated systems.
After years of cobbling together a variety of systems so customers could purchase products online, Carbon Marine landed INDiVO, a Shopify Partner, to design and build its new Shopify e-commerce store.
Old, manual inputs were too cumbersome to maintain
The old systems required the company to manually input them into other systems to process, ship and bill orders. This manual process was fraught with opportunities for errors plus required manhours Joe and his team felt were better expended taking care of customers and manufacturing product.
There were a number of requirements the client defined before we started the project, and some that surfaced over the course of site development. Up front was the need to streamline the pick and ship process along with implementing more frequent financial reporting. The client also wanted to be able to manage updates to the system using their own staff, as well as leverage opportunities for integration with their social media accounts.
Solution
INDiVO recommended Shopify because it’s a robust, extensible, reliable, system with enough features to satisfy at least the near-term scale-up needs of Carbon Marine.
Shopify: robust, extensible, reliable, with upscale potential
To minimize the budget, we selected the template with high visual impact, easy navigation and the desired product detail views. Once the design was approved, INDiVO created the initial site structure, setup the necessary information pages and product categories, as well as populated the first few products as examples.
The client had some high-impact photography which really helps make this site pop. Once the base system was setup, and after a short training session, the client populated the rest of the products, added some additional pictures and made a few copy adjustments. From there, the site was ready to launch.
As is common with some projects, there were two challenges uncovered along the way.
The first had to do with product variants. With the base Shopify system, you are restricted to working within no more than three variants in any one product, i.e., for push poles the three variants are length, foot-style and tip-style. The other issue was tiered pricing; the base Shopify system doesn’t allow for multiple pricing levels like retail, commercial, and wholesale. In most instances the base Shopify system is a great way to get a robust online store, that’s easy to maintain, up and running fairly quickly. However, if you have a catalog of products that require more than three variants and want the system to work with multiple classes of customers, there may be different system we’d recommend. On the pleasant surprise-side, the client was able to save on credit card processing fees.
Listen to what the owner of Carbon Marine has to say about working with INDiVO and the value of this new e-commerce site.
