Creating A Product-Focused E-Commerce Site
Helping Norbain become a market leader
What we did
Norbain wanted a site to cement its ‘trusted advisor’ status
With 5,000+ products, intelligent search functionality was crucial
Designing a coherent site has encouraged account registrations
Already, there’s been a 260% increase in order value
The client
Norbain, a leading B2B distributor of security systems including IP, CCTV, Access Control and Intruder Detection solutions.
The problem
Norbain required a new product-focused website to help it become a market leader online with the overall goal of becoming a ‘trusted advisor’ within the sector. Its old website was dated and as a result suffered from very low sign-up rates and transactions. What’s more, with approximately 5,000 products and 2,000 accounts (with individual customer pricing for most), on a daily basis the platform had to import and serve over 2 million different pricing entries - something we needed to consider.
What we did
Our main objectives for the new platform were to redesign and combine the existing Norbain websites into a single cohesive experience. The new site needed to encourage new account registrations and provide information about the products and services Norbain offers. The main features we implemented included:
Displaying prices and allowing checkout only to logged-in account holders, prompting new registrations
Creating a new ‘project’ system which enables customers to use the platform to plan their next project and request advice about their chosen products
Ensuring that the backend system allows Norbain to perform the necessary admin tasks to manage products, create landing pages, manage adverts and more
Creating an intelligent search system that enables users to search on a variety of meta product data and easily find what they are looking for. The search suggests products as the user types and returns results from among its 5,000+ range in under 30 milliseconds.
Automating the integration with existing backend stock and the order processing system
Enabling Norbain to handle the payment and processing of orders in its own stock system offline.
In addition, we incorporated third party promotional opportunities on behalf of Norbain Media, a branch of Norbain which focuses on providing additional revenue to the company through advertising and product promotion. We did this in several clever ways:
The search system allows Norbain media to promote certain products and brands based on search terms
Customisable landing pages allow brands to have their own dedicated hub within Norbain. This promotes the brand’s messaging, featured products and associated links
A custom banner advertising system allows Norbain Media to upload and rotate advertising slots in a range of different sizes and formats. With fine control over the placement logic of adverts, individual pages, categories or products can all be targeted. This gives Norbain a wealth of choice for offering targeted advertising. Because we built the system ourselves, the adverts also display even if the visitor has ad blocking enabled!
What the client said
“Si digital are a joy to work with. They provide us with the ideal mix of creativity and technical know-how that has allowed us to launch a site that exceeded our original expectations. I have been extremely impressed with their professional attitude and their fast response times. In fact, they’re so pro-active that they often find issues before we do, and come to us with some great suggestions on how to improve the site.”
Caroline Kitchin - Marketing Manager, Norbain.
Summary
In just three months, the new Norbain platform saw a massive 260% increase in average order value, 220% increase in the number of orders and 350 new B2B accounts requested. The new platform has positioned Norbain at the digital forefront of its industry and it’s clear that B2B customers already appreciate the benefits of an easy-to-use project planning and ordering system.
