ECOMZOOM #7: How Persell streamline B2B Store with Shopify Development

About Persell Company

Persell, as a company, represents various local and international companies, focusing exclusively on delivering high-quality products to business customers, and companies within the Benelux. Committed to offering customers only the best, Persell proudly serves as a trusted distributor of many leading brands, ranging from books to coffee machines and home decoration, such as teNeues coffee table books, Loft architecture, and design books, DecoBook book stands, Sjöstrand coffee machines and Terroso vases and lamps.

At Persell, product quality and customer satisfaction are at the center. Their collections of products are carefully curated to meet the specific needs of B2B clients. Customers benefit from purchasing directly from Persell, ensuring the best possible conditions. The company also welcomes collaborations with potential resellers interested in joining them to grow and succeed together.

Why & How Percell Came to BSS Commerce

Coming to BSS Commerce, Persell shared that they want to expand their online presence and enhance their website. They are eager to embark on a new phase of growth and strengthen their activities in this area. Thus, they looked for an experienced partner who had strong expertise in building eCommerce websites, particularly B2B online stores. And they found and decided to cooperate with BSS Commerce to develop their new eCommerce store as BSS Commerce stands out as the trusted Shopify store development agency with more than 11 years of working in the eCommerce industry.

Here was what Persell shared with us:

“Our online activities are not that strong yet but we will change this. We will need some advice to build a strong good working B2B shop.”

Project Objectives & Scope

Project Objectives

The primary objective of Persell’s Shopify development project with BSS Commerce was to build a Shopify website tailored for B2B clients, aiming to consolidate sales and achieve high site performance. Our mission was to provide the optimal solution that met all of Persell’s requirements while maintaining cost-effectiveness.

The clear goal that Persell had shared with us:

"BSS Commerce took the responsibility to provide a full service to build this new website for Persell, ranging from consulting, designing the website interface, and implementing solutions to finish building the new Persell online store in time."

Project Scope

Here are more details of the requirements that Persell wanted to have on their new Shopify store:

1. Reorder: To show an expedited order history list that reflects the past orders of customers. This is very handy for retailers when ordering products. When they start their order, if they could choose to add the products from the history list in their shopping cart, that would speed up the order process and significantly enhance the convenience of reordering for the client’s retail partners.
2. Customize payment display per customer: After the customer creates an account, the admin will determine the payment method for each customer, which means they can only see some of the available payments that the admin wants them to see.
3. Different free shipping thresholds for European countries: Show free shipping message.
4. Backorder and preorder: Allows customers to place orders for these products even though they are not in stock at the moment. When a customer orders products, the order must be split into directly available products and products that are currently not available, which are then shipped and charged separately.
5. Hide price and require login to see all products & prices: When the customer is logged in, they see their purchase price and the suggested retail price, which can be applied with discounts. If someone visits the webshop without being logged in, they see the recommended retail price and a button register.
6. B2B registration form: Several typical B2B fields needed to be included in the default registration form such as delivery address, invoice address, VAT number, etc.
7. Automatic discount based on customer tags/segments: A client that belongs to a certain group should after logging see his discount and new price (after discount) automatically on the product page and get the discount in the checkout automatically.

The Solution BSS Commerce Provided

Working as the comprehensive Shopify service provider, BSS Commerce handled all the work from initiating projects from the ground up to guaranteeing a smooth client experience. We seamlessly incorporated the ideas from the initial concept through to the final implementation, crafting every aspect of the website to reflect the client’s vision. The output is a completed eCommerce website that not only met but went beyond client expectations. Our dedication was to ensure that each component of the website operates perfectly, offering a great user experience.

To meet all requirement requests from Persell, we made use of multiple resources, including theme features, code customizations, and 3rd-party solutions. The new Persell’s Shopify website was developed with the Eurus theme and expanded the B2B required features by using the Shopify B2B app from BSS Commerce.

Why is it the Eurus theme? The theme comes with many available features for speed, cart & checkout, marketing & conversion, merchandising, product discovery, and so on. Thanks to these theme features, it saves customers a lot of costs by not having to use many 3rd-party apps to fulfill the client’s requirements. Also, it reduces potential conflicts that may occur when using different 3rd party products and services. Moreover, the Eurus theme is fully compatible with BSS Commerce’s Shopify B2B Wholesale Solution app, giving a smooth integration and excellent functioning.

Check the details of solutions that BSS Commerce has provided in the sections below:

1. Reorder: This is a built-in feature of the theme Eurus, so the development team took advantage of the theme and no customization was needed.

2. Different free shipping thresholds for European countries: This feature can be supported using the free shipping rule by default Shopiffy and the free shipping bar of the Eurus theme.

• Different shipping zones: Netherlands (domestic) and other European countries

• Free shipping bar that is inherited from the Eurus theme. The free shipping in the image below is applied for the purchase from €250.

• Free shipping message reminding of buying more to get free shipping

• Enabling, and disabling the free shipping bar, or changing the order amount for free shipping are easy in the backend with the intuitive interface of the Eurus theme.

3. Hide price and require login to buy products: We implemented theme code customizations to hide the products with specific tags, hide the purchasing price for all customers, and show a custom popup for login so it’s more convenient for the customer journey.

• Hide products with specific tags: This restricts non-logged-in customers and tagged customers from viewing hidden products or collections.

• Hide purchasing prices for all customers: This functionality restricts all customers from viewing purchasing prices. To view the real purchasing prices, they need to log in to the website.
• Require login to buy products: With this feature, only customers who logged in to the online store can add products to their cart and proceed with the buying process.

• Custom login popup: Customers who go to the detailed product page and want to check the price of the item, need to log in first to view it. However, the site will not take them elsewhere to do that action, there is a popup that was custom-made by the BSS Commerce development team, allowing customers to log in to their account right on the product viewing page. No forth and back movements to save time for customers to shop, thereby, increasing customer shopping experience.

4. B2B registration and custom discount by customer group features: To meet all of these two requirements, BSS Commerce proposed to use the B2B Wholesale Solution app. The app vendor had done a splendid job of helping the development team integrate and fix the conflict issues that occurred throughout the store development process. Also, it worked well with our custom code for the hide product and hide price feature.

The Development Process

During the project, BSS Commerce and Persell had close collaboration & communication and worked effectively together to finish the project on time with a high-quality outcome, which was the crucial condition that made the success for the whole project. Various tools were used for convenient communication and smooth project management such as WhatsApp, Google Meet, Trello, and Google Drive.

Since both the client and development team are familiar with using technology and tools to support the work, the working process between the two was seamless.

Throughout the project development, BSS Commerce always stayed focused, enthusiastic, and dedicated to getting the work done on time and with the highest quality, meeting all requirements of the client. Thus, no controversial issues arose during the project implementation.

BSS Commerce carefully covered each stage of the new Persell Shopify website development, from discovery and design to implementation, testing, and delivery. The process begins with a thorough discovery phase, where we delve deep into understanding the client’s brand identity, target audience, and objectives. It all started with an in-depth discovery phase to gain a thorough understanding of the client’s brand identity, their target audience, and their overarching goals. Then the design consulting phase when the development team proposed and discussed with the client the new website design and solutions for their required features. Going after were the solution implementation and testing phases. After all was done, the website was delivered and went live.

Throughout the execution, there have been various new requirements and modifications to the website, resulting in a longer-than-usual timeframe for a Shopify project. This extended duration was at the beginning of the design discussion and the initial stages of UAT. It’s because Persell wanted to focus on the design style and quality of the project to see if they fit their needs, so in the Design Consulting and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and Improvement phases, they reviewed carefully, section by section, function by function. Therefore, it took a bit more time for this phase.

The Challenge Overcome and Lesson Learned

With each project, we all did and learned lots of things to improve our services. In this Persell Shopify case study, we learned lessons in doing and controlling the project.

• Different working hours between clients and development team: The difference in both parties’ time zones is 5 hours, which at first posed some difficulties and delayed in communications. However, the team quickly familiarized with it and was ready to support within the accepted response time.
• Control the project timeline: Throughout the project, we faced challenges due to both the development team and the client having periods of unavailability because of business operations/vacation and personal schedules. This has somewhat impacted the project’s timeline. However, our team has been highly committed, standing by and providing support to expedite the acceptance process as much as possible.
• Regular communication: Additionally, there were some unclear aspects regarding the scope of work, which caused interruptions in our progress. Nonetheless, we remained persistent and engaged in thorough discussions with the client to clarify all matters. Our client was very understanding and cooperative, truly embodying the qualities of ideal clients, which allowed us to resolve everything swiftly.

Conclusion

Through the new Persell Shopify website development, BSS Commerce Shopify once again proves their expertise in building eCommerce websites, especially with B2B websites like Persell. Be the next BSS Commerce client to together leverage your eCommerce website to get high returns!