Network Webcams
An award-winning ecommerce site for a leading security solutions supplier
Moving an established ecommerce business across to the latest Cloud technology
Background
Network Webcams is one of the UK’s leading providers of surveillance cameras and security solutions. Established in 2004, their existing ecommerce website was 19 years old and creaking at the seams. They needed to migrate to a new platform, but with 80% of their revenue derived from the existing website and a lot of reliance on historical SEO traffic, the risks were huge!
The business challenge
This project was vital to underpin the growth plans of the business. The new platform had to be 'future-proofed' and capable of adapting with the needs of the business, with an emphasis on supporting B2B sales.
They had selected Big Commerce, one of the leading cloud ecommerce platforms, perfect for mid-size organisations requiring an enterprise level, scalable solution.
The project had the following primary goals:
- Improving the online B2B sales process
- Enhance the user experience and increase core sales
- Provide the foundations for improving search performance
How we approached the project
Transitioning the business across to a new platform required thorough planning. We ran our Discovery Sprint with stakeholders at Network Webcams, focusing on user experience and overcoming the technical and content migration challenges.
The route to market was complex, spanning five customer types across private and public sectors, so the site architecture, navigation and signposting needed detailed planning.
Developing detailed user journeys enabled us to define the front-end requirements accurately so we could identify a design theme that would accommodate all the user requirements and complex product pages.
After 19 years of keeping the same ecommerce platform alive, we knew it was time to modernise. Quba overhauled the site and its architecture and provided an updated design in keeping with our brand. We now have a flexible and capable site on a platform that enables our plans for the future of the website and improvements in how we serve our customers. After 20 years in business, we have a platform for real growth that we are happy with.
Overcoming the big challenges
Upgrading from a 19 year old legacy website to a Cloud solution required a giant leap forward in technology. There was a vast amount of product data and marketing content to migrate that was critical to search rankings, so we worked closely with their SEO agency to ensure this was achieved with minimal impact.
A big challenge was migrating 19 years of historical data into BigCommerce. The existing database structure had been changed several times and had a vast number of custom fields that did not lend themselves to the structure available in BigCommerce.
We developed code to import four different types of data, along with complex business rules that had also changed over time.
We took into consideration the launch process (they did not want the store to be offline for a lengthy period) by creating a full and delta import, meaning we could import only new orders on the day of launch.
The outcome
Launching a completely new business critical ecommerce website is a big challenge, given how engrained the existing website solution was within the business.
A year after launch there has been a steady increase in sales value and average order value.
This project won the award for Best deployment of an ecommerce platform at the UK Dev awards, recognising the huge leap forward in technology and complexity of the migration.
Let’s move you forward
Are your digital experiences holding you back in some way, or do you need to propel the business forward, quickly?
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