Based in Bourne Lincolnshire, Brosch Direct has been one of the UK’s leading suppliers of Healthcare and Janitorial consumables and equipment for over 30 years. They support a wide range of customers; from individuals and small businesses like vets, doctors surgeries, dentists and care homes, right through to large healthcare providers and organisations like the NHS.

One of the Brosch Direct aims is to provide the best possible customer experience through every sales channel. As such, a focus on the online experience was high on the list for 2020, with a new and improved Brosch Direct website that is innovative, feature rich and user friendly.

Taking into account feedback from their customer research and operational teams, the new website, designed and built by KiwiCommerce on Magento 2, provides Brosch Direct customers a whole range of options designed to enrich the overall Brosch Direct experience. These include being able to;

  • Manage their spend online using budget controls
  • Access and manage their invoices
  • Order and apply for credit online
  • Leave product reviews
  • Search the new knowledge hub for top tips
  • Visit the blog for the latest product and industry news

Challenge

Slow, not making the most of the space available and some images were not rendering correctly

Solution

When planning a new website it’s important to identify pain points that your business has been experiencing so solutions can be designed and integrated into the new website to overcome these.

During the consultation process, KiwiCommerce worked with Brosch Direct to fully understand their entire business operation, spending days on site with each team so that any pain points with the old website and even the physical warehouse operation could be identified; leading to innovative website solutions being suggested and developed. This collaborative effort allowed KiwiCommece to create not only a first class online experience for Brosch Direct’s customers at the front end, but also a functional, supportive and operationally improved back end for the warehouse staff as well as for those managing the website.

Issues identified and resolved

  1. PREVIOUS ISSUE – INACCURATE STOCK LEVELS – The old Brosch Direct website did not have accurate stock information, meaning sometimes a customer would complete an order and then need to be contacted by the team at Brosch to inform them the item was not in stock. This is frustrating for the customer who believes they have secured the item they need, potentially causing negative brand association and also requires a large amount of administration and customer service time to resolve. RESOLUTION – The new Brosch Direct website manages and displays the stock levels of the entire product catalogue in real time. Now, if a product is out of stock at the time of ordering, the customer is immediately informed and can choose if they wish to continue with their online order and have the item delivered once it’s back in stock, or they can choose an alternative product that is in stock. Alternative suggestions are generated and estimated delivery dates are given so the customer can make an informed decision.

    Badges: CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, USABILITY, REDUCING ADMIN TIME, REAL TIME REPORTING
  2. PREVIOUS ISSUE – DELIVERY/TRACKING INFORMATION NOT PROVIDED – The Old Brosch Direct website did not provide tracking information to customers who made online orders, meaning it was sometimes necessary for customers to chase their orders. Not being able to track items without the inconvenience of a phone call to Brosch Direct was an issue leading to negative brand association.Also, as well as causing uncertainty for customers, having to field calls and track items on their behalf was an unnecessary demand on the customer services and administration teams.

    RESOLUTION – The new Brosch Direct website provides email updates on the status of each order as the status changes and is directly linked to the delivery service providers used, meaning delivery tracking information is provided to customers when the order is processed. Customers can then access their account at any time in order to track their orders, see order status and self serve, removing the need for administration time and any uncertainty

    BADGES: CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, REDUCING ADMIN TIME, SELF SERVICE
  3. PREVIOUS ISSUE – BULK DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE BUT NOT SHOWN – The old website advised customers that bulk discounts were available, however they then had to contact Brosch Direct to find out what the discounts were.

    RESOLUTION – The new site shows bulk prices which are calculated automatically, so the customer can easily see the extra savings they could make as they increase the quantity of items in their basket. This is great at encouraging extra sales, as well as for usability. The website also removes the need for the Brosch Direct team to spend time calculating and discussing bulk discounts with customers.

    BADGES: USABILITY, REDUCING ADMIN TIME, ENCOURAGES ADDITIONAL SALES
  4. PREVIOUS ISSUE – FAVOURITE PRODUCTS NOT SAVED- Previously, if a customer wanted to order a specific set of items regularly they would need to search the site for each item and add them to the basket as if it was their first time using the site.

    RESOLUTION – The new site allows customers to create and edit their own order lists, so if there are a number of items that are ordered regularly, these can be saved into an order list and the list simply added to the basket to save the customer searching for their favourite products and adding them to the cart one at a time.

    BADGES: USABILITY, ENCOURAGES ADDITIONAL SALES, CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Timescales and additional requirements

We asked Terry Price, Digital Project Manager at Brosch Direct about the timelines and any additional requirements that have affected the go live date of the new Brosch Direct website:

Questions: How long the process has taken and was this time as planned? Has anything affected the timeline? Have additional requirements been added and how have these been dealt with?

Terry: “Initially the project was due to take 6-12 months but we have had a requirement to change the scope a number of times along the way to either address new business opportunities or to react to unforeseeable challenges within our ERP system. Kiwi have been nothing short of amazing, reacting quickly to new requests, providing robust and elegant solutions to complex problems and being patient and understanding whilst we moved the goalposts with alarming frequency at times. Of course the pandemic has also impacted our schedule but again Kiwi have been great putting the work on hold during our furlough and picking it straight back up again.”

Bespoke functionality, tailored to Brosch Direct’s requirements

A summary of the new technology, integrations and bespoke aspects delivered by KiwiCommerce
Brosch Direct now have a robust, fast website with clean code and a number of custom extensions serving the complex needs of their customer base. There is now a bespoke advanced pricing module, a restricted product extension to help the teams manage the frequency of orders for stock which is sensitive to over purchasing (such as PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic), plus a custom FREE GIFT extension which allows Brosch to configure how many of a particular SKU are ordered before a variable free gift is offered.

Conversion increased: 80%
Load time: 1.5s