Ecommerce portal for a publishing house

Solution

From Sales Supporting Tool To Potent eCommerce Solution

Initiated as a product registration solution used to expand the pool of prospective buyers, the system evolved into the company’s primary selling tool.

As Franzis offers both tangible goods and digital downloadable products, there are two product delivery scenarios involved: the eCommerce solution handles orders for downloadable products, while the orders for physically delivered goods are handled by a third-party company. Despite the differences in payment modes and product delivery scenarios, the system ensures a unified and consistent user experience for both online business managers and company’s customers.

Separate full-featured sub-sites that are managed from a centralized content management system are used to address marketing needs when promoting sales of multiple product lines.

Front Office

Delivered by Itransition’s ecommerce portal development team, the front office functionality enables millions of online users to:

• Register cover-mount products. The system is used to augment the mailing list with email addresses of the customers who use their accounts to register cover-mount products distributed for free.
• Subscribe/unsubscribe to/from newsletters. Active subscribers’ database contains 600.000 records with an average of 9.000 web users subscribing/unsubscribing per week.
• Perform internal site search facilitating selection of products that are subsequently purchased using credit cards.
• Browse through how-to sections/learning courses, etc.

Back Office

The back office functionality available for online business managers includes:

• A full-featured centralized content management system used to organize goods in online product catalogs on several sub-sites.
• Administration features, i.e. user management, permission management, custom report generation enabling to drill into various aspects of online shops’ performance.
• Asset management. Assets may be sold, given away for free, awarded, provided for subscribers exclusively, etc. The solution provides for configuring several download-nodes independently of the core store and registration capabilities.
• Processing orders. There are 1200 orders for tangible and downloadable goods processed every week. Tangible products are stored and delivered by a third-party company.
• Marketing module providing a number of marketing tools, such as newsletters, RSS feed, etc. To generate community involvement, forum capabilities are integrated. Moreover, new advanced marketing tools are being introduced and implemented on a regular basis.

Owing to the system flexibility, productivity and reliability, the solution delivered has proved capable of yielding a high ROI and driving competitive advantage for Franzis. The company has been hitting an exponential growth curve for years after the system implementation, its turnover increased by 50% every year.