Our eCommerce nous is a key tool for this Kiwi powerhouse

The Requirement / Brief

The leading supplier of construction equipment, site supplies and concrete tools in New Zealand, Powerpac Group contacted Kook in need of website integration with Ostendo – openly disclosing that they were seeking several quotes.

In initial discussions about their needs, it became obvious that other providers had quoted only for the base platform and not for the custom module programming they would require. Kook had a quote for everything to Powerpac within 48 hours and, in due course, we were chosen to handle the project due to our Ostendo integration experience, flexible approach and focus on providing the best possible solution.

The solution

A New Zealand agency had just finished the company’s rebrand, which we faithfully applied to Powerpac’s new eCommerce site, which we built in Kook’s Web Management System (WMS), an ASP/NET CMS, with full integration with Ostendo ERP and accounting in the backend.

Given Powerpac’s client base had traditionally ordered equipment offline predominantly, our major consideration for the website was ensuring easy and intuitive navigation.

The Outcome

Powerpac’s mobile responsive website perfectly meets their needs, providing customers with an easy-to-navigate online ordering process whether utilising a desktop or mobile device, while also meeting business process management requirements through the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration with Ostendo.

Powerpac’s marketing manager Steve Hart was delighted with the outcome, saying: “We chose Kook because you had previous experience with Ostendo (thank your website SEO for that lead!) and your approach was flexible and focussed on what would work best for us. Other companies had more features out of the box, but their approach was very much 'this is what you get' and we felt they would be too restrictive to work with.”

Details

We employed the Hierarchies module in Ostendo to drive the website category structure and installed a MegaMenu – a drop-down interface triggered by hovering over the main menu, providing navigation links to dozens of pages grouped into specific categories. Knowing that a well-structured mega-menu in instances of large product catalogues provided considerable UX advantages over a regular dropdown menu – enabling customers to see all available options without having to scroll – it was essential to spend time getting the organisation of navigation categories right.

Other major design considerations around Powerpac’s large and varied product range revolved around the fact their clients often bought multiple items from different categories and a lot of orders were repeat customers. With this in mind, we ensured the search bar and “View cart” icon remained ‘stuck’ to the top of the screen as users moved around the website, making sure that customers were always only one step away from finding a specific product or initiating the checkout process.

In addition to the eCommerce functionality and Ostendo integration, the site outlines the Powerpac Group’s six-point customer promise, includes positive customer feedback and showcases a gallery of equipment being used on-site via an Instagram feed (all useful confidence triggers), enables customers to download catalogues and features articles of interest to their target market in a blog section.

A Zendesk chat module offers customers live support, quick enquiry forms are included on various pages and an enquiry button is also incorporated into the product pages to ensure customers can quickly and easily get answers to any questions they have about particular items.

If you want to know how Kook can help your business grow, talk to us today.

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