Original Style

Digital transformation project for a leading B2B UK tile manufacturer.

Client Link

originalstyle.com

Services Used

BACKGROUND.

Having already launched sites for leading business in the UK tile sector, including Fired Earth, Claybrook Studio and The Yorkshire Tile Company, Absolute were a natural choice for Original Style to approach for their digital transformation project.

The business has previously operated a content site built on Umbraco and wanted to move to a transactional eCommerce platform for their B2B clients. As Adobe Silver Solution Partners we were able to undertake a feasibility study and on the back of this discovery, we proposed a Magento 2 Open Source site (due to the majority of their discounting rules being provided by the ERP - Business Central).

BRIEF.

Original Style have been a successful tile manufacturer and distributor producing tiles in Exeter, Devon since 1986, but until now they have not been able to fully showcase their extensive product range online or promote their partners and dedicated showrooms. They wanted Absolute's help to change this.

HOW WE HELPED.

We started off with undertaking a comprehensive UI planning phase which translated into creating a bespoke design and front end for the site.

This phase included two bespoke product page templates (based on manual and api driven product data), plus showroom specific pages (again api driven) to showcase the businesses eight UK Showrooms, plus their partner & retailer showroom pages. This enabled Original Style to showcase 3000+ products across 3 storefronts: UK, US & EU.

In order to allow maximum flexibility for the in-house marketing team, we set about creating a flexible navigation structure, supplemented by a series of widgets that allow the client to easily add, update and customise as required. In addition, the site needed to integrate with the clients PIM (Product Information Management) system to manage and populate their data easily.

In addition to the design & build process, we also had to integrate the clients PIM so that real time data could be shared with the new site and other existing channels.

The Technical Bit

Absolute acted as technical lead and offered guidance to the clients in-house development team, regarding the information architecture of the tech stack. This resulted in several bespoke api endpoints being created to display Showroom specific data from a third party (PIM) to display within Magento.

In addition, Original Style had a specific request to show heavy pricing customisation, e.g. multiple price points to display either by unit, Sq. Metre, Linear metre or sometimes both! This meant the pricing attributes had to be shown in a number of places, PLP & PDP as well as within two types of bespoke product pages, manually added VFT (Virtual Products) as well as api driven (configurable & simple products).

Last but no means least, Absolute created over 400 bespoke SEO friendly Configurable urls to show both parent and child products alike by injecting both colour and size variables into the url product structure e.g https://www.originalstyle.com//ci-000268_residence_botanical_fruit_on_papyrus.html?colour=pear-on-papyrus, plus we redirected over 15,000 URLs in order to maintain SEO continuity for the new site.

The flexibility that M2 Open Source offers allows for a seamless integration of product data, plus beautifully designed content pages, whilst also showcasing the overall strength of Original Style as they continue to grow as a business.

The Absolute & Original Style digital transformation partnership is set to go from strength to strength, with phase two of the plan already in motion, we plan to add B2C functionality to the site.