Renowned art institutions the world over rely on selling products―such as prints, stationery, books and toys―as a means of earning revenue and raising their profile. With a global shift towards online retail, institutions need to set up Web stores to cater to evolving customer preferences.
Here is how Mindtree helped a leading US-based educational institution devoted to modern art ramp up its online store for greater performance; and ultimately revenue.
The challenge
The customer had tried to integrate various external systems with its online store for almost a decade without success. Faced with growing customer demand, the institution wanted a partner with deep e-commerce capabilities to ramp up its online store. Lending urgency to this need were the following factors:
- The existing online store did not have any integration with systems such as order management and inventory. Orders were transferred to other systems every day taking more than 24 hours to process each one
- Payments were processed offline due to which credit card information could not be authenticated in real time. This resulted in loss of orders in cases where users made a typo while entering credit card details
- The existing online store presented a very poor user experience especially in the payment process, member acquisitions and online donations
- The online store was not capable of identifying fraudulent transactions
Our solution
Mindtree had been working with the educational institution since 2000, which gave the customer confidence in our ability to overhaul its online store. Highlights of our three-phase solution include:
Real-time integration
- Integration of the online store with the order management system and membership systems
- Online payments through gift card system and Paymentech instituted
- Full-fledged gift registry created
- Customer Service Representative Tool built to improve service
- Web Services developed to integrate with kiosks and scanners
- Complete end-to-end testing conducted
Online store redesign
- Site content navigation improved to allow for richer content
- Better search results delivered through custom development and integration with Omniture search
- Integration with the donation system completed
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) conducted
- Integration with external tools like Power Reviews and Certona completed
- Performance and endurance testing conducted
- Fraud order assessment functionality put in
Phone orders
Tight integration of phone orders with e-commerce system ensured.
Business impact
- An increase in member acquisition and conversions
- 200% year-on-year revenue increase from the online store
- 2X new sessions and product page views
- Improved customer support through a Customer Service Representative Tool
- Fewer lost sales via higher stability during peak times
- Detailed reporting to improve marketing efforts
- Enhanced fraud prevention
Awards and recognition
- Official honoree for Best Visual Design in the Function Category of the Webby Awards
- ‘Outstanding Excellence’ award from the Web Marketing Association's WebAwards
- ‘The roll-out of the online store has been exceptional in terms of reliability, scalability and quality of the deliverables’.
- Chief Information Officer
