Managing multiple web sites can be a difficult task for businesses, especially when each site is different in appearance and branding. While this task certainly can be addressed with the right technology and expertise, a variety of challenges can emerge when striving to create a consistent experience across all divisions.
Plow & Hearth, a retailer specializing in indoor and outdoor living products, sought an e-Commerce solution that was nimble enough to manage its six separate home and garden web sites. After researching multiple vendors, the retailer selected SaaS e-Commerce platform ShopVisible, which fit its online business needs, according to Plow & Hearth Director of Commerce Brianne Forst.
“We wanted a company that really specialized in the marketing suite of tools behind the platform, not just providing a platform,” Forst said. “What we really found in ShopVisible is that they did a great job of being able to really build out the platform, first and foremost. They are continually rolling out releases with different marketing tools and different opportunities, and those are incredibly useful.”
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The five other brands under the Plow & Hearth umbrella include HearthSong, Magic Cabin, Problem Solvers, Reuseit and Wind & Weather. At the recommendation of ShopVisible, digital agency Look-Listen helped restructure the design and wireframes of the Plow & Hearth sites. The restructure included updating banners, footers and product detail pages that were aesthetically different for each individual site. However, the overall structure of each site was the same, so Plow & Hearth developers could easily manage and update the sites.
“The great news is that it gives us the ability to present a different design aspect, look and feel to the customer, but it gives us a little bit more simplicity in having the wireframe inherently be the same for our developers to get in and manage,” Forst said. “It’s given us the best of both worlds in the way that it’s structured.”
The retailer’s back-end system and e-Commerce platform were written in older programming languages, complicating the web site management process. The integration of ShopVisible with these systems has enabled Plow & Hearth to write out APIs, implement pixels and tagging at a quicker rate, and most importantly, limit lines of coding necessary to update the site.
“A really great opportunity in partnering with [ShopVisible] is to not just have a one-size-fits-all structure that we have to conform to,” Forst said. They really worked with us to make sure that they can plug and play with our systems. It was a challenge to design some of the nuances of our older systems, but I was really pleased that they were able to do it adeptly.”
ShopVisible also ensured that each individual brand had the correct inventory, pricing, ratings and other important data from a variety of sources, including PayPal, Google, eBay and the retailer’s marketing software from ExactTarget. The solution incorporates the Google Commerce Search engine for internal site searches, including category searches, ratings, price sort and product rankings.
“One of the things we love about Plow & Hearth is that they’re really looking to innovate, they’re very smart marketers and they’re looking to push into a lot of new territory for multichannel commerce,” said Sean Cook, CEO of ShopVisible. “Those are the best kinds of clients for us, because they help us forge our road map, and they help us figure out the cool, new, innovative things that we’re going to do that’s going to push us all forward to help our businesses succeed.”
