RETAIL & B2C SOLUTIONS
Koodo Mobile
Staying competitive means online investments. Learn how we turned Koodo's site into an online selling machine.
Project highlights
Consumer habits and needs are continuously evolving. B2C and online retailers need to be able to adapt quickly.
Digital commerce is no longer a luxury, it is a tool that retailers need to be able to survive and grow in the B2C sector. To gain market share and differentiate themselves in crowded online spaces, businesses should focus on digital innovation to overcome challenges like:
- Customer and business intelligence; improve your data flow to make better business decisions.
- Streamline fulfillment and shipping processes; increased efficiency and transparency for better customer service.
- Stock and inventory management; unifying data across all sales channels to provide real-time information to employees and customers.
Our work with Koodo Mobile has evolved over the years, but the one goal that has remained constant is continuous innovation and the desire to provide the best ecommerce experience possible to their clients. Read on to find out how it all got started.
Background
Koodo Mobile meets ecommerce.
A national industry leader in the telecommunications world, Koodo Mobile, has been working with Acro Commerce since 2013.
While the Acro Commerce team has planned, executed and launched thousands of lines of code for Koodo in many aspects related to web development throughout years of sprints, their main goal has always been what Acro Commerce does best: ecommerce.
Improving the commerce experience for their online customers wasn’t just a small tweak for Koodo; they didn’t need “finesse,” an “updated platform,” or some lipstick on an “outdated solution.” The fact was that they didn't even have an ecommerce solution for selling their products online, to begin with.
Objective
Bring the customer experience up to standard and continuously innovate to make it best-in-class.
When your client is already a national competitor in the mobility sales space with a big list of customers, you need to execute seamlessly. You don’t interrupt service flow while giving them what they need: The ability to purchase phones and plans online. Consumers expect every website on the planet to have commerce/purchasing functionality. How do you manage this giant task with elegance and accuracy when there’s already a massive user base at hand? This is the challenge to be solved.
What we had to work with
Customers would go through the entire checkout process of selecting their phones and plans to find out that they couldn't purchase their products online at the end of the flow. Once they completed selecting and configuring their device and plans, they wouldn't have the option to purchase; instead, they would have the option to print off their order and find the closest Koodo store that could fulfill their order.
While connecting commerce functionality to their site was the main goal, there were some other opportunity areas Koodo had to accomplish throughout the project as well that needed immediate correction:
- Unresponsive website — Mobile-friendly isn’t an option anymore; it has to be part of the plan.
- The website was not accessible — All users needed equal access to the site, regardless of physical ability.
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Performance issues — They desperately needed to speed up the site page load times.
Solution
Building a new site with the user experience, customer journey and commerce options a thriving telecom needs.
With a lot of hard work from our dedicated Koodo development and project management team, we were able to connect ecommerce functionality to a new, updated website and fix all the secondary customer and operational gaps.
Custom ecommerce
Selling a mobile device in combination with a plan is a complex ordeal, riddled with conditions and edge cases.
Acro Commerce took a site that was creating a bad user experience due to a poor checkout flow, or in this case — a site that had no checkout — and added commerce functionality.
This included:
- Ensuring phones and plans were compatible with one another when customers purchased.
- Ensure the site was personalized to show different rates, plans and phones depending on which province someone might be shopping from.
- Include functionality that supports the Koodo customer loyalty program incentives.
While this wasn’t an easy task, it handed Koodo the ability to give their customers what they wanted finally — the ability to purchase and manage their phones online without speaking to a representative.
Custom modules
Every business has different goals and functionality they need out of their website. A boxed ecommerce solution just doesn’t hit the mark on a tool this large or this complex. Most of the time, this will require custom development to supplement the business rules. Below are some of the custom modules we developed for Koodo to create a great user experience for their customers.
- Koodo Cart — Functionality allows only one phone and one plan in the cart and makes sure the plan and phone are compatible. There would be nothing more disappointing than setting up your new phone and plan online, only to find out after the fact that you mixed and matched a combo that doesn’t work, much like an 80’s prom outfit.
- Region Management — Allows Koodo to show different plans, phones, and prices based on their province. We don’t want customers in BC being charged Quebec tax rates, and neither do you!
- Koodo Plans — Gives Koodo the ability to sell plans, which are essentially products, with no up-front cost, but still need a monthly price attached to them.
Becoming accessible
Ontario, where Koodo is headquartered, has the most stringent national website accessibility standards, and breaching these terms comes with a hefty fine. Making a complex web tool available to all users, regardless of ability, without sacrificing design or experience takes a skilled team, endless testing, multiple iterations and patience.
If you’re interested in learning more about the do's and don’ts to pass accessibility testing, check out our detailed blog post here on the topic.
Going responsive
It was a bit ironic asking customers to purchase a mobile device on a non-responsive site, so we have fixed this fundamental necessity and have given Koodo more leverage for creating a great user experience and turning their site into a selling machine — no matter the device at hand.
Decreasing page load times
Page load times can be a fickle undertaking. Through streamlined use of modern CSS and HTML5 practices, a custom-configured server and a balancing act of caching remedies, Koodo offers their customers the fastest experience possible for the tasks at hand.
Outcome
Giving customers what they want.
When you’re dealing with a net-new ecommerce experience on this scale, it can be misleading to quantify your achievements with percentages and stats to put a positive bow on the end of a case study.
So what truths can we tell you? Since 2013, Koodo and Acro Commerce have worked hand in hand with a full-time devoted programming and management team. They pump out two full sprint cycles each month, with features launching bi-weekly.
With thousands of visitors every month, Koodo needed the ability to convert users online. Rather than make assumptions about their drop-off rates, or hoping customers were taking their online interest to the nearest store, Koodo needed a sales funnel they could analyze, test, and manage directly. They now move at the edge of ecommerce technology, instead of pushing papers and waiting in line at mall kiosks.
Project features