Background

Sosandar was founded in 2016 as a new destination for women's clothing, fusing shopping with exclusive daily fashion news and style advice. Created by women, for women.

Having operated the original site on Magento 1 for several years, Sosandar were very happy with the Magento platform and the features it provided.

But with the end of life date for Magento 1 approaching, they decided the time was right to make the switch to Magento 2.

The Solution

The Magento 1 site had provided a solid base for the first couple of years trading but with the business expanding the new site presented an opportunity to add some new functionality to facilitate accelerated growth.

Interjar went through an extensive scoping process with the Sosandar team to decide on the enhancements for the new site and developed a Magento 2 site with the following features:

  • Bespoke front end theme
  • Data migration (both product and customer)
  • Advanced Enterprise Level Search (Elastic Suite)
  • Wordpress Integration
  • VIP Membership Extension
  • Backend integration with 3rd party ERP to streamline order and inventory management
  • Automating the refund process with custom development to tie in with all payment gateways
  • Marketing Prospects Extension to allow segmentation of customers according to sign up preferences
  • Extended back in stock notifications - so customers and guests can register to be notified when an item comes back into stock.
  • Shop the look
  • Real time stock
  • Dotmailer
  • Mention Me affiliate marketing
  • Brochure sign ups

Sosandar saw an immediate boost to conversions and sales after launch and the streamlined back office processes have improved internal efficiencies greatly.

Data Migration

We migrated all data from the clients Magento 1 across to the new Magento 2 site including:

  • Core Trade Data - Including customer, sales, reports & promotional rules
  • Core Catalog Data - Including products, categories, attributes & attribute sets
  • Core CMS Data - Including CMS pages, static blocks & widgets
  • Core Configuration Data - Including contact information, payment gateway setup, etc
  • Incremental Trade Data - Updates of new trade data throughout the development to ensure that the final launch of the M2 site remains in parity with trade data to that of the Magento 1 site
  • 3rd Party Data - Modification and migration of data saved in custom sources across the equivalent source in Magento 2. An example of this was the migration of “Gift Card” data, facilitated by a 3rd party extension in Magento 1, but migrated across to a different 3rd party extension used in Magento 2

Advanced Enterprise Level Search

A requirement from the client was to provide a search facility that provided quick and accurate results, but also provide them with additional features to manipulate the results and product positioning. Our solution included:

  • Virtual Categories - Offers the admin user the ability to automatically assign products to categories depending on conditional factors.
  • Search Optimizations - Allows for the fine tuning of how certain products should be promoted within search results. These can be as simple as “boosting” in stock products to the top of results, or adding some complex conditions to boost particular groups of products. The results of the changes can be visually shown to the admin user before publishing the changes
  • Category Visual Merchandising - Allows the admin user to drag and drop visually the position of products in each category
  • Search Terms Merchandising - Presents the admin user with a visualisaton of search results, and allows them to resort the results by dragging and dropping products in the admin users chosen positions
  • Products, Categories & Attributes autocomplete - Quick results displayed to customers, with an advanced AI integration that displays identified products as the customer types

Warehouse Integration

In order to streamline fulfilment and cut out any human error, Sosandar required a direct integration with their warehouse.

We built out a complete integration suite that facilitated:

  • Stock Balance Imports - sent daily to ensure stocks between Magento and the Warehouse were in full parity
  • Stock Incremental Imports - these are routinely throughout the day, adjusting stock where new items have been logged in the warehouse, or sold through other channels
  • Order Exports - Batches of orders are exported every five minutes to the warehouse. The system records the exports in logs, so that they can quickly be found in the admin, should this be required for reconciliation
  • Order Update Imports - after the warehouse packs and ships orders, the system returns an update and ships the order in Magento, whilst also adding a tracking number and link to the correct courier

Automated Refunds

Within the fashion industry, return rates are uniformly higher than any other industry, customers tend to purchase different sizes of the same item, and return those that don't fit. One of the problems identified here, was the resource required to automate those refunds.

Solution:

  • Warehouse Integration - the system retrieves all information from the warehouse regarding items from orders that have been returned by a customer
  • The information is queued according to a time period set by the admin user
  • On reaching the time period, the credit memo is created, and the refund is triggered through the payment gateway that was used for the original purchase

Unlimited Delivery Pass

A requirement of the retailer, was to provide an opportunity for customers to join an exclude club for a small annual fee that provided free shipping.

Solution:

  • Customers who are not already part of the club, are presented with an option at the checkout, to purchase an annual pass for the free delivery
  • If the customer has just added the pass to their basket, or if they have previously purchased the pass, they are presented with an exclusive shipping option at the checkout
  • After a set period of time, the pass elapses and the customer is invited to purchase a renewal

Extended Back To Stock Notification

The client often experienced high demand on certain products when they were featured on popular morning TV shows. During these times, it was quite common for items to sell out very quickly. It became evident that the client was missing out on an opportunity to capture details of customers who were unlucky to have missed out on the product, and also, to manage them effectively.

Solution:

  • Back To Stock Signup - Any “out of item”, including those part of a configurable product when selected by a swatch or dropdown, would present a section that allowed a customer to enter their email address, and be added to an alert queue for when the item was restocked
  • Real Time Stock - Due to the varnish caching included in the core of Magento 2, at high traffic period, it was often the case that customers were presented with an “in stock” product, but were unable to add it to bag, and became frustrated. In this situation too, there would be no option presented to the customer to sign up for a “back to stock alert”. We built out the functionality to dynamically retrieve live stock information, which ensured that not only were customers were presented with the correct information, but, when the item was out of stock, they also had the immediate chance to sign up for alerts
  • Customisable Send Rates - Admin user can specify what percentage of users should be notified about items that are restocked. For example, for every 10 items that are restocked, 20 subscribers should be notified. This avoids the situation where the product is flooded with visitors, and the items sell out immediately again, missing the opportunity to avoid disappointment
  • Customisable Send Times - To suit the clients demographic, we added the option for the admin user to specify times of the day that emails should be sent to subscribers to advise that the item has been restocked. Popular times of day tended to be around the morning commute and later in the evening. When a subscriber had been sent an email, they remained in the queue until they purchased, but rotated to the back of the queue to ensure that they weren’t sent a further email until all other subscribers had been notified.

Marketing Prospects

With the addition of Magento 2 new seamless checkout, that encouraged guest checkout for speed, whilst also enabling a quick option to log in, the client required a way to securely save customer data for easy retrieval, management, and segmentation.

Brochure Sign Up

This client made great use of mailed brochures in an omni channel presence. With the introduction of GDPR, there was a requirement to carefully manage the subscription preferences of customers and guests alike.

The client wanted an option for simple signup process for mail drop brochures, and equally an option for customers to remove themselves from the maillist.

Solution:

  • Sign Up Page - A complete page available for all guest and registered customers, that allows them to sign for the brochure. The page contains a form which allows capture of all address details
  • Manage Subscription From Customer Account - A separate section is available in a customer account page that enables them to subscribe, unsubscribe, and amend their address details to be used for the mailed brochure
  • Admin Reporting - A new grid is available in the admin of the store, for the administrator to filter and export data for use in any 3rd party system

Shop The Look

Out of the box, Magento offers the opportunity for customers to purchase “add-on” products in a single click at the point of purchase on a product page, but this only works for simple products.

The client wanted an option for a customer to be able to purchase a complete outfit from a single page, so whilst viewing a skirt for example, the customer would be presented with the matching shoes, top, and clutch bag.

As this client, almost exclusively sells items through the use of configurable products, the standard related product option didn’t match their requirements.

The solution was to build an extension that displayed configurable swatches on related products to the customer, so that they could customise their add-on products without having to leave the same page, and thus, increasing AOV.

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