Category Archives: Fashion & Accessories

Development of Omni-Channel Retail solution & PWA on Magento 2 in Health and Beauty Domain

About the Customer

Our customer is a leading producer and supplier of the finest perfumes (Eastern and Western) and home fragrances in the Middle East.
 

Business Challenge

The website of the customer faced several technical glitches during promotional activities. It also lacked a streamlined approach for SCM (Source Code Management) and displayed inaccuracies in the usage of SCM & CI/CD tools.

The customer desired to update the existing sales platform and enhance their product portfolio. The primary requirement was to develop an intuitive and user-friendly website with high performance attributes.
 

Embitel Solution

Our experienced Magento 2 consultants assisted the customer in the analysis phase and developed a plan to enhance the overall performance of the website.

The ecommerce store received a fresh design and PWA application using Magento 2 Commerce Cloud Edition version 2.3.4.

ScandiPWA, a Magento-first, read-to-use theme, was used for a seamless, fuss-free PWA implementation on Magento 2.

Migration of Customer Details, Catalog (Categories, Products, Attributes) and Sales Orders from the current system was also done.

Key highlights of our solution include:

• Logistics Service Provider (LSP) integration of Labaih, Safe Arrival, Ajeek and SMSA Express.
• Merchant Services Provider (PSP) integration of Payfort, STC Pay, Payfort (Apple Pay).
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP Integration.
• Integrations for Communication – Helpdesk and Chat.
• Majority of users access the website through mobile devices and hence, the business desired a mobile-friendly solution. We suggested using PWA as the Mobile-First approach. Thus, using PWA features like Add to Home Screen, Push Notifications & Offline Access and a Mobile-First UI, the CX was increased manyfold, leading to repeat purchase and high conversion ratio.
• Headless Magento was implemented for faster and highly scalable commerce solution.
• Omni-channel strategy was implemented, allowing retail stores spread across the Middle East to act as fulfillment centers.

Embitel Impact

• The customer’s website benefitted in multiple ways by leveraging a modern enterprise digital platform.
• The website was able to handle traffic and order surges during promotional events.
• Uniform and consistent Scandi PWA application was set up.
• The website was configured in both English and Arabic languages.
• The online store could be integrated with multiple social media channels, SMS modules and shipping & payment platforms.
• The user experience on the website was enhanced multifold, as navigation was easier and product search/discovery was streamlined.
• The home page, content pages, and product description pages had a clean and modern design, as per the project requirements.

Tools and Technologies

• Magento Cloud based ecommerce capability
• Scandi PWA for Progressive Web App (PWA) implementation
• Magento Security Scan Tool for monitoring the site security
• Visual Studio Code as code editor

A High-touch E-store Makeover for a Multi-Brand Retailer

About the Customer

The customer is one of the largest multi-brand retail groups, with headquarters in Asia.
The group has supermarket chains and various retail subsidiaries catering to diverse business segments including lifestyle, fashion, footwear, food products and home improvement.

Business Challenge:

The multi-brand retail group had launched e-stores as part of its digital transformation strategy to enable e-selling of its wide range of product offerings.

1. All these online retail stores, under the parent group, were initially hosted on the Hybris platform. However, the cost associated with e-store maintenance was very high.

2. Additionally, the e-store was not able to handle the peak time traffic, with lengthy bouts of server downtime.

Over time, they felt the need for a more robust and cost-effective platform to run their e-commerce stores.

The client had collaborated with Embitel in the past for a digital commerce solution development. Based on the familiarity and trust gained during this collaboration, the retailer decided to entrust the task of this e-store makeover to Embitel.
 

Embitel Solution:

Embitel’s digital commerce consultants performed a detailed analysis of the existing e-store to identify the underlying performance issues and their root cause. To begin with, as per the client’s suggestion, the Embitel team started the platform makeover for the client’s flagship fashion online store.

The plan was to check the feasibility of the platform makeover and replicate the process in subsidiary ecommerce stores, only if the results were desirable.

1. Analysis: The team realised that the existing e-store framework required some critical feature enhancements and performance optimisation to seamlessly support the customer’s business goals.
2. Performance Optimization: The team optimized the platform to overcome the peak time performance issue. They identified the underlying issue with the backend framework and re-programmed it. This helped in bringing it down to zero server downtime due to peak time load, especially during seasonal sales.
3. E-commerce Integrations: The e-commerce store was integrated with key third-party applications including SAP (for order processing), PayU & PayPal- payment gateways, and Microsoft CRM for order data management, Customer Hub- Customer data management.
4. Migration of Subsidiary E-stores: Following the first phase of the project release, the customer observed a massive improvement in their e-store growth and performance. Hence, they decided to migrate the other subsidiary e-stores to this custom-designed framework on PHP.Embitel team successfully managed the migration of all the online retail stores from Hybris to custom PHP-based platform.
5. Mobile App Development: Our ecommerce mobile development team also developed a highly responsive and scalable mobile app for their fashion & groceries stores targeting a specific consumer group.
6. Customization: With the successful migration of their retail stores, the client requested Embitel to handle the migration of their Multi-Vendor Hyperlocal website. The team gathered the requirements for the project and successfully migrated the multi-vendor store, along with some framework customization. To cater to the need for accurate information about orders and stock availability, the backend was based on Back Order Processing (BOP).

Embitel Impact:

1. After migrating to the custom framework, our client’s e-store saw a massive improvement in performance, even during the peak hours.
2. The e-stores marked a record increase in revenue from online shopping post migration.
3. The client was able to successfully achieve their primary digital transformation goals – better and smoother customer experience, better brand reachability, increased sales & sustainable growth.

Tools and Technologies:

• Web Application framework: Zend (based on PHP) & BOP
• Frontend: Yii web application framework
• Mobile API Development: Slim Microframework
• Work management: JIRA (Agile methodology)

Hybris Ecommerce Website Development for Multi-Brand Retail Giant (B2C)

As part of this project, we developed the end-to-end ecommerce portal (catering to a specific geography) on the latest version of Hybris. Highlights of the solution are:

• Payment Gateway integration – CC Avenue
• Custom Promotions creation; Created promotions that are not available out of box in Hybris
• CS-cockpit customization (triggering the OMS calls from CS cockpit)
• Designed and developed the complete My Account Module
• OMS integration (Some part of integration with sterling commerce)
• Custom My account (enabling the fast pay ~ one step checkout
• Adapting the pages’ CSS for responsive design

Tailorman

A revolutionary custom luxury menswear online store, who delivers ‘made to measure’ personalized garments for an unparalleled shopping experience. Tailorman collaborated with Embitel as their technology consultant to implement complex ecommerce functionalities to ensure that customers are able to save multiple measurements and website design and UI delivers a pleasant shopping experience.

Unique Features :

• Made to Measure products.
• Partially Bespoke productss
• Navigation & Filters
• Integration with SAP
• Opentaps ERP integrated
• Product Import Scripts
• Save Multiple Measurements

Embitel Impact:

• Embitel solution involved customizing the Magento Enterprise Edition implementation to achieve these goals. It included the following processes and integrations:
• UI Design: Design of web and responsive versions for requirement framework
• Theme Development: Creation of Magento responsive theme based on client approved design
• E-Store Customization: Store features and options customized to client requirements
• Payment Gateway Integration: Integration of payment systems
• SAP Integration: Integration with SAP to track orders and inventory
• Web Engage Integration: Improved customer engagement and insights
• Email Integration: Mail Chimp integration for email campaigns
• Analytics & Social Media Integration: Google Analytics & Social Media platform integration
• Integration with External Tools: Magento Quote to cart plug-in
• SMS Integration: Order and dispatch confirmation via SMS
• Logistics tracking: Ability to track orders and shipment

Lush

Lush is a hand make cosmetics company. LUSH makes effective products out of fresh fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics, without animal ingredients. They believe in writing the quantitative ingredient list on the outside. Today they have 580+ shops globally. They hand-make our cosmetics in UK, Italy, Canada, South America and Japan, in our own production facilities, so every product available in the shops or sent to our customers by mail is as fresh as it can possibly be, because fresh products work better and use fewer preservatives.

Objective:

• To provide a platform for buying hand make products from manufactures
• An user friendly store with quick browse through different products and e-cataloging

Our Role:

• Understanding of the Brand, style and its current & future requirements for online catalogue
• Evaluation of open source tools for cost effective solutions
• Define, Discuss & Decide on Navigation structure
• Design that meets the customer expectation in terms of Brand & Style
• Prototype development for better understanding on the requirement
• E-catalogue implementation and content updation
• Payment modes integration(Check, Cell and online(CC-avenue) modes)
• Shipment method based on area wise
• Creating of entertainment zone for hand-make cosmetics
• Involvement of client in every stage of the project

Our Solution:

• Based on the client’s current & future needs as understood after the requirement gathering, embitel proposed to implement a content management & e-catalogue system. To make it cost effective, few popular open source tools were evaluated
• The evaluation was based on few criteria such as popularity, usability (back-end), security, performance, features, community support etc.
• Improved navigation for the product catalogue
• Provision to archive previous seasons catalogues
• Integrated with 3 payment modes
  1. Cc-avenue Payment(Online)
  2. Check Payment
  3. Cell Payment
• Product Shipment based on area wise
• To provide all these services very friendly manner in the website

Client Benefits:

• Quick turn-around time
• A Flexible & Scalable solution
• User friendly and attractive web pages
• Easy maintenance of user
• The web page can be maintained even by a person who is not technically very sound.
• The administrator can easily manage Catalogue.
• The administrator can easily manage the account details of various members with ease.
• The administrator can easily generate reports from the portal.
• The administrator can easily maintain payment as well as shipment configuration
• Displaying content based on user relevance such as geography & interest.

Sakhi Fashions

Sakhi is the popular destination for online shopping of Indian ethnic wear – specially Indian designer sarees. The apparel house is committed towards modern Indian woman who continue to wear their heritage dress with pride. They operate through stores in Bangalore and Hyderabad with Sakhi’s Sarees and Salwars, which combine excellent materials like Kanchivaram, Chiffon, Cotton, Crêpe, Georgette, Lace etc. Also traditional crafts such as Applique, Badla, Chamki (Sequins), Cut Work, Embroidery track pants, shorts, sweatshirts, sweaters, jackets and much more.

Objectives:

• To redesign the entire existing website according to brand guidelines and identified themes
• An enhanced user interface with easy navigation through products to shop quickly and checkout seamlessly
• Redefining the website layout starting from header to footer for home page to inner pages to considering best look and feel options
• Addition of custom features like in-store pick up based on different store locations, express checkout and few non-functional requirements, everything on a very optimized note for faster delivery

Our Role:

• Understanding the existing architecture, listing of changes identified and suggesting additional changes required after a detail auditing of the website
• Consulting on various available platforms for exploring re-platforming option foreseeing business growth plans and scalability issues on the existing platform
• Selecting and migrating to an advance platform for better feature, functionality, scalability options
• Design, development, customizations of the website on Magento platform and final deployment
• Development of custom module like “made to measure” for product customization/combination option for customers

Client Benefits:

• Expert ecommerce consultation, helping discover the true potential of a fashion portal and implementing the best focusing client’s business interest
• An advance online store rich in its look and feel, customized features, optimized performance
• Migrating the existing data and huge efforts spend on online marketing onto the new platform seamlessly thereby saving from lot extra efforts and spents
• A highly capable and responsive development team to ensure all requests are processed in least possible time