eCommerce & Brick-and-Mortar Experiences Drive Revenue

With 28 years in the Panamanian market and almost 2,000 employees, Do it Center now has 25 locations thanks to the loyalty of its customers — and more are on the way.

As part of their 2018 planning, Do it Center decided that it was time to optimize their online store’s user experience (UX). Up until this point the business had been using an out-of-the-box eCommerce solution but its rigidness was seriously hindering online sales.

Since their eCommerce platform at the time lacked an intuitive experience, Do it Center had their work cut out for them. Their goal was to update their website so that every aspect of the site would support a holistic customer experience while nurturing customers through the sales funnel.

The team at Do it Center knew that brick-and-mortar and online retail could no longer be viewed separately, as the modern customer now views retail from a singular perspective. In order to remain relevant, Do it Center needed to develop a powerful, holistic, and convenient omnichannel experience for its customers.

Just one year ago, Do it Center’s web application was considered a “Frankenstein” by the company’s newly appointed Chief Innovation Officer (CIO), Elias Manopla. The platform was held together by a concoction of integrations that together resulted in a clunky, nonsensical user experience.

Though Do it Center’s CIO was able to understand how an enhanced eCommerce experience would help the business, he was also aware that effectively selling goods online requires a level of digital maturity that his team’s solution lacked. Due to the rudimentary nature of their existing solution, the business was operating with a platform that had:

Managing the platform was technically impossible, as Do it Center’s team had to depend entirely on their external development vendor for all tweaks, fixes, and updates. This included basic tasks like changing prices, modifying product descriptions, and replacing images. The dependence on a third party made it impossible for Do it Center to make quick changes that would enable them to provide better experiences for their customers.

For example, Do it Center was unable to capitalize on last year’s Black Friday event with online marketing and promotions, as they had no way of creating deals for the holiday. This meant that Do it Center missed out on a huge amount of online sales during one of the most popular shopping days of the year.

In addition to a less-than-optimized UX, Do it Center’s previous eCommerce platform was incapable of capturing the metrics that mattered most to the business.

While the leadership team at Do it Center had analytics, the only thing being measured was website traffic. Additional coding issues prevented their team from measuring other important marketing KPIs such as time on site and bounce rates. All data had to be pulled manually, which left room for human error.

Since their website was considered to be ineffective at the time, Do it Center’s marketing team invested very little in digital marketing. While the company’s brick and mortar business was booming, the CIO knew that he couldn’t drive customers to a platform that so poorly reflected the brand.

Do it Center needed to move beyond the technological limitations that reflected a poor customer and user experience. With the right solution in place the business would be able to provide the customer-facing front end experience that its clients had grown to expect, allowing the company to secure a much larger wallet share.

Do it Center required a solution that would enable them to have a centralized order and inventory management system, so that they could efficiently fulfill orders from all of their sales channels — including brick-and-mortar stores — and utilize historical customer data to provide personalized offers online.

For the retailer to enhance the experiences that customers were having both on and offline, every part of their previous eCommerce solution had to be scrapped.

After partnering with Koombea, Do it Center now has a complete eCommerce platform powered by Shopify that permits business optimization and improved efficiencies as well as deepened customer engagement and satisfaction.

Shopify enables Do it Center to remain at the foreground of their competitive market by allowing them to remain flexible and agile.

A prime example of a quick time-to-market moving the needle forward was when Do it Center found itself in a head-to-head race with a competitor to bring two powerful eCommerce features to their platforms — Product Subscriptions that would allow customers to have products routinely delivered to their door, and a Gift Table feature that engaged couples could use to create lists of gifts that guests could then buy for wedding presents.

For example, Do it Center was unable to capitalize on last year’s Black Friday event with online marketing and promotions, as they had no way of creating deals for the holiday. This meant that Do it Center missed out on a huge amount of online sales during one of the most popular shopping days of the year.

Ken Monyal, writer for RetailerWire.com claims, “In brick and mortar retail, ‘clicks’ can be seen as the number of steps a shopper must go through to move from product desire to ownership.”

Today, thanks to the flexibility and power of Shopify, Do it Center is able to provide an intuitive and efficient experience for its customers, limiting the number of ‘steps’ necessary for them to purchase.

With a Shopify eCommerce solution in place, Do It Center is now able to:

Do it Center has been able to marry the experiences being had by customers both on and offline. Doing so has allowed them to bring their eCommerce business to the standards of their customers, who have grown to only tolerate a slick UI with new and enhanced features.

The retailer’s current eCommerce platform now includes core business functions integrated into one single solution. The platform enables better collaboration across departments, optimizes operational processes, and provides real-time data visibility across the entire organization.

Today, one solution cohesively drives the following business functions:

Plus, Do it Center is able to develop game-changing features and bring them to market with unprecedented speed:

Customers can purchase a product online and pick it up in a store (this was impossible in the past since Do it Center had no visibility into their inventory).

Insight: 75% of their online transactions are from people that would rather pick up the product at a physical store instead of having it delivered to them.

They can now leverage insights like this to optimize experiences.

Upon launching their new eCommerce platform six months ago, Do it Center simply relied on organic website traffic. Despite recently starting to test paid advertising, they are already seeing significant growth thanks to their improved, multi-channel UX.