Case Study: Online Store for Automotive Aftermarket Parts

Present Business Profile:

RJC Auto Web Innovations LLC is an established e-commerce company that provides full line of automotive parts, tools and provides business link between aftermarket distributors, professional mechanics as well as do-it-yourself whizzes. TheAutoPartshop.com is a multi brand e-commerce portal, providing 70 different vehicle makes. It is one of the leading online e-commerce stores for auto parts with over 3, 60,000 monthly visitors. TheAutoPartshop.com has more than 3 million auto parts. This site provides vast range of aftermarket parts varying in price and quality for nearly all the cars on the road. TheAutoPartsShop.com also provides remanufactured as well as OEM automotive parts.

Key Challenges:

As a newly established company, the client required complete web solutions right from the scratch, i.e. to design an e-commerce website, develop its back-end with database integration and ultimately improve its online presence.

• Website Designing
• Database Integration
• Order Management
• Inventory Management
• Catalogue Management

• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Promotions
• Content Development
• Improve Online Presence

• Website Management
• Customer Support
• Testing and Updation

Website Development Life Cycle:

In web development life cycle, each stage holds its own significance. There is no stage that you can say as least important because if we fail in even one stage of the project, the overall outcome of the project will be inadequate. And to make sure that every stage of SDLC gets executed successfully, we have expert analysts, designers, testers, online marketers and developers to make that possible.

Analysis:

To meet up with the client's requirement, it is very imperative to get a clear idea of client's requirement. Our analysts did encyclopedic research on client's requirements as improper or a sluggish analysis leads to inconsistencies in the final product.

Our team of proficient analysts thoroughly studied client's requirements by spending ample time in project requirements, and made sure that they don't leave any aspect untouched. Our analysts went deep into the project scope and feasibility to match up client's expectation and provide best possible solution. They measured each and every functional, nonfunctional, technical, operational and transitional requirement. Our adroit analysts had a regular interaction with client to determine their expectations by providing visual representations, creating mappings between loose ends, defining boundaries of the system.

Designing:

Key Challenges:

At True Vision Technologies, we understand that in a present competitive scenario, a website is what reflects the quality of business being carried out, making designing an important aspect in online business. TheAutoPartShop.com wanted a professional site; a website that would reflect the company's ethics. Not just we created a sheen and a professional site, we made sure that it lacks nowhere in the functionalities and user friendliness.

Image Optimization:

In order to provide a comprehensive view, our deft designers created a customized Action Script using Adobe Photoshop to perform image optimization. The script was built such that the result image does not lose its size ratio and information.

User Friendly and Logical Navigation:

A solidly impactful design was prepared which was enhanced compared to any search provision on such portals. Meaningful and convenient navigation has been provided as per the Navigation scheme.

Easier Search:

Entire search process and fetching of data was made lightning faster with help of development and database integration skills. Searching for a part was made extremely effective using optimum use of database integration and various design elements. Suggested results with matching character strings were implemented to enhance the search process.

Our team of proficient analysts thoroughly studied client's requirements by spending ample time in project requirements, and made sure that they don't leave any aspect untouched. Our analysts went deep into the project scope and feasibility to match up client's expectation and provide best possible solution. They measured each and every functional, nonfunctional, technical, operational and transitional requirement. Our adroit analysts had a regular interaction with client to determine their expectations by providing visual representations, creating mappings between loose ends, defining boundaries of the system.

Database Designing:

Key Challenges:

• Daily monitoring and updates feeding to the database.
• Monthly report and invoice generation of database activities.
• Database creation and catalogue management with more than 3 million automotive parts.
• Synchronization of all the parts with their makes and models, part numbers and categories, distributors, manufacturers was required.
• Scalable Database
• Integration of multiple Database
• Efficient access of over 3 million data in Database
• Rebate Maintenance
• Data feed Integration

To meet the challenges and to avail high-speed and consistent performance, we created a Database using SQL 2008 based on Catalogue Enhancement Standards (ACES) and merged details using unique part number.

• Vehicle Configuration Database (VCdb)
• Parts Categorization Database (PCdb)
• Qualifier Database (Qdb)

Database being the key factor of any e-commerce website, keen attention was provided in database creation and management. With TheAutoPartsShop.com, an extremely large amount of database with more than 3 million automotive parts and various other fields was to be created. Catalogue creation of this project took state-of-the-art resources and tremendous skills working with database.

• The database integration was prepared very precisely so that it tracks the user's requirement correctly and maps the right product. Our Database designers have integrated multiple tables to make a search more efficient, we have also created an alternative or substitute for the product, which can be interchanged in place of the part being searched.
• Monthly invoice summarizing orders for each stake holder in this ecommerce initiative is received and is matched with the database automatically. With help of this facility in database, monthly sales can be easily tracked. All the items and their available and missing fields are tracked time to time.
• All the Promotional Activities for nline Marketing are managed and incorporated with database. It handles Data feed Integration and shipping policies.
• Rebate maintenance of parts as instructed by manufacturer is managed and integrated with database consistently. Such offers are verified very much in the product field and are shown on product page automatically.
• Based on various timely sales and invoice dynamic report generation was created. All the items and their available and missing fields are tracked time to time. Report Generation is done for the inspected records and the database is updated based on the requirements generated from reports. Reports for various timely sales and invoice directories can also be generated and maintained.
• One important task of database with e-commerce portal is to be in sync with order processing, invoice management and integration of pricing and shipping logics.
• Database Maintenance: To run such a huge database successfully is as much challenging as to create it. Maintenance of such a complex database was made easy with expert interventions in the stage of creation itself.

The 4 Pillars of E-Commerce

Order Management System:

• A meticulous Order Management System was designed in order to simplify the complex order processing.
• Our database designers simplified the order generation by creating an inclusive order management system.
• Exclusive customer search is designed to cut down the complexity and to make the search efficient.
• Order search is facilitated to find particular data among all current and past sale records.
• Report archive was made available for the historic sale data.
• Tracking for an order was made easy by providing filtered functionalities.
• Order tracking was made easy by providing categorization based on priority, date and product status.
• Dynamic fraud detection functionality was developed in order to detect the scams and hoax entries.
• One important task of database with e-commerce portal is to be in sync with order processing, invoice management and integration of pricing and shipping logics. All of these are updated and managed by our database administrator on daily basis with help of site admin using which orders can be tracked and worked upon at any moment.
• Verifying an order is a tedious and time consuming process, to cut down manual work of verifying the orders, a unique feature of multiple order verification was developed.
• Dynamic functionalities were designed to calculate the charges and discount.
• Log details were facilitated for synchronizing order progression.
• Product tracking was provided for keeping an eye on product delivery.

Catalog Management System:

• Our database experts synchronized existing database with the data received from multiple distributors in formats like XML, XLS, TXT as well as various Microsoft Access file formats.
• A professional catalogue of 120 GB was created with detailed information about products.
• A fully dynamic catalogue was created to minimize the manual work and to get precisely updated information.
• To make a catalogue more impactful and efficient, dynamic catalogue was created to keep it up to date.

Price Management System:

• Price management is essential part of any e-commerce site and hence it is very crucial to have a price management system that efficiently handles daily price feeds.
• We created efficacious software to manage daily feeds provided by the distributors.
• A fully dynamic functionality was created by our adroit database designers to manage the price and warehouse details.

Inventory Management System:

• There's nothing more disastrous to an ecommerce business than having too much or not enough inventory to support customer demand.
• Overstock situations can kill your bottom line and out-of-stock situations lose potential customers. To overcome this problem, our database experts created a strong inventory management solution to handle the inward and outward inventory in most efficient way and sync data between distributors and data warehouses.

Testing:

• In order to accomplish a bug-free site, testing is very indispensable. Our expert testers, who have a vast experience in this field, tested the final website to ensure the quality of software. They made sure that the site is fully functioned and has no bugs. Data retrieval in the site is done seamlessly.
• To achieve a bug free site that can be handled without any interruption, our expert testers verified all data Entry, Reports file transfer, and Security issues. Our skilled testers set up the test strategy to check all the aspects of systems like; System test, Performance Test, Security testing, Automated test, Stress and volume test, Recovery test, Documentation test, beta test and user acceptance test.
• They made sure that the end product is deliverable and has no issues left. In this phase, they decide about the exit criteria; when to stop testing and what will be the criteria to decide that this system is fully tested.
• In this phase, they decide about all the dependencies affecting this system like, Personal dependencies, software dependencies, Hardware dependencies and test data and database. In this phase, the risk factor affecting the system is tested like, Schedule, Technical, Management, Personal and Requirements.

Implementation:

Implementation is the stage that gets most attention, as it is the longest and most expensive phase in the software development. Not just that we implemented the auto parts project successfully, but we also had a formal post-implementation review to check on system functionalities, and ensured that no major or minor changes remained unnoticed.

Online Marketing:

One of the vital challenges to meet the client's requirement included the implementation of effective online marketing strategies. The project required the help of niche experts, online marketing team and search engine experts to improve the site's visibility and make the business profitable by driving potential customers.

Key Challenges:

• Improve online presence
• Implementing paid campaigns to drive more sales
• Build quality content to earn links
• Converting visitors to potential buyers

Our Approach:

Search Engine Optimization:

The search engine experts at True Vision Technologies with their visionary insights, suggested at the initial development process itself to design and optimize the site by keeping actual visitors in mind and not the search engine bots. This resulted in complete new research methodologies to discover potential keywords, site navigation and other on-page optimization requirements.

Quality Content Development & Link Earning

The search engine experts at True Vision Technologies with their visionary insights, suggested at the initial development process itself to design and optimize the site by keeping actual visitors in mind and not the search engine bots. This resulted in complete new research methodologies to discover potential keywords, site navigation and other on-page optimization requirements.

Informative Blog

• Our content development team created an informative blog to maintain the content development process on a daily basis. With automotive niche experts, the blog was created with a purpose of providing promotional offers for products, auto news and information for do-it-yourself end users.

AutoPedia – Automotive Encyclopedia

• In order to fulfill client's requirements, our SEO experts came up with a brilliant concept of AutoPedia for the automotive novice and enthusiast, The AutoPedia is filled with information right from the conventional systems used on early automobiles, all the way to modern high-tech cars. Interesting facts and phenomenon related to automotive mechanics, makes reading the AutoPedia out of the ordinary. AutoPedia provides crucial and descriptive information on automotive systems and auto parts. The free-to-read AutoPedia is filled with intensive research and expert suggestions to provide highly useful content for car lovers.
• We designed AutoPedia to enrich visitors with knowledge that ultimately helped in buying the right product for their vehicle. Sole reason for creating AutoPedia was to educate the visitor about the car functioning.
• Graphical images and explanation of all the car system and parts were prepared to accompany the explanation in textual form and to build clear understanding.

Preparation of Informative Videos

• Exclusive channel for TheAutoPartsShop.com was published on a dedicated YouTube channel. Authentic videos were created to support the graphical and textual information on automotive systems and their operations.

Social Media & Online Campaigns

To maximize the reach of the content, it was important to establish certain social media channels were interactions between the customers and the business can be made. It was also crucial to develop campaigns to promote the Autopedia. To accomplish the requirements-

• Social Media Integration for sites like Google+, Twitter and Facebook was done.
• Our social media marketing team ensured to be social with the customers with official Facebook Fan Page and Google+ Page.
• Scholarship programs were exclusively designed in order to motivate automotive enthusiasts to share their knowledge and get financial aids, which ultimately helped building a community of interested information seekers.
• Our online marketers created social media events to share the knowledge and to interact with the audience in order to answer their queries.
• Webinars were arranged for educational purposes to reach the audience across the globe.

Paid Campaigns

• Various Promotional Data Feeds for comparison shopping markets like Google Product Search, Price Grabber, Shopping.com, Yahoo! Store and Bing etc. were integrated with existing database of respective product.
• Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns were created and optimized for consistently improving the ROI (Return On Investment).

Outcome

• Presently, the project TheAutoPartsShop.com has reached to measurable success with a monthly visitors traffic of more than 360,000.
• Social Media channels have flourished with new users joining the community in masses on a daily basis.
• Substantial growth in organic traffic from major search engines as well as through referral channels.
• Exponential growth in YouTube video views and subscribers.
• Increased blog readership with social mentions.