A High-End Fashion Webstore with Enhanced Product and Content Management
About the Client
The Client is known in the US for its successful presence across a variety of industries, including hospitality, omnichannel fashion retail, sports, and digital media.
From a Catalog-Only Site to a Full Luxury Ecommerce Experience
The Client was thinking of transforming its ecommerce business. At the project's start, its Magento-powered online presence was limited to an online product catalog. Visitors could view products there and either contact one of the Client's brick-and-mortar stores or purchase an item via a third-party online fashion retail platform.
The Client was looking for Magento implementation services to substantially revamp the solution. In detail, the Client required:
- An appealing design to match the luxury level it maintained.
- A handy page editor that did not require programming skills to use.
- Product information centralized for online and brick-and-mortar stores.
- The ability to run a blog and announce in-store events on the website.
Magento 2 Extended With Akeneo PIM and Pimcore CMS
INNERLUXES's team started the project with UX research of the existing website. This allowed the team to design a user-friendly web store and strike a balance between a minimalistic, clean design and an informative experience. For customer data protection, the team ensured that the web store complied with US data protection laws and industry guidelines for online merchants.
For the technical part of the solution, INNERLUXES offered to complement Magento 2 with a Product Information Management (PIM) system and a Content Management System (CMS).
Akeneo was chosen as the PIM system for the project. It allowed for efficient product management across the Client's sales channels. The team integrated Akeneo with the Client's cloud Point of Sale (POS) system and the Magento back end. As a result, the product flow worked as follows:
- A product was uploaded to the POS system and exported to Akeneo.
- In Akeneo, product managers categorized it and enriched it by adding attributes (for example, size, color, and description) and media files (for example, images and video).
- They exported the product to a Magento catalog, and it appeared on the website.
To achieve the best shopping experience, INNERLUXES's team made it possible to show the whole product catalog on the website while letting visitors know that some products were available in the Client's brick-and-mortar stores only. Depending on the configured setting in Akeneo, buyers would see either a Buy button or a Contact to Buy button.
Having analyzed the Client's content management expectations, the team decided that Magento's built-in capabilities would not suffice. Combining the ecommerce power of Magento with the content management power of Pimcore (a CMS), the team fully met the Client's requirement for a convenient, feature-rich editing tool. Pimcore manages non-catalog content, including blog posts, event announcements, support pages, and more.
INNERLUXES customized Pimcore for the Client's business, creating the necessary editables (templates of content blocks) so content managers could fill them with real content. To make sure the Client could leverage the rich functionality it received, INNERLUXES conducted user training explaining the role of each solution component.
A Sleek, Synced Store Across Online and Brick-and-Mortar
The Client fully appreciated the tailor-made solution, which covered all its requirements. Magento is now fully responsible for ecommerce tasks, Akeneo serves as a central repository for product information across sales channels, and Pimcore allows for easy creation of diverse non-catalog content. The integrated systems work in sync.
What buyers see is a classy, sleek online store that is easy to navigate and pleasant to shop in.
For a truly coherent customer experience across the Client's sales channels, INNERLUXES then integrated them with a CRM system.
Technologies and Tools
Magento Commerce 2.2, Pimcore 5.1.3, Akeneo EE 2.3.7, PHP.