Home Outlet Builds a Seamless Shopping Experience with BigCommerce

Discover how customisable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.

case-study-device-laptop-merchant-home-outlet

22%

increase in purchases

19%

increase in users

17%

increase in sessions

Performance metrics compare data from August 28th, 2023 - November 28th, 2023 to March 9, 2024 - June 9th, 2024.

Laying the groundwork for a thriving brand.

Since 1885, E.C. Barton has supplied shoppers with quality building materials — from lumber to shingles — and unmatched customer service. Over the years, additional brands have launched under E.C. Barton, such as Home Outlet, which offers everything from bathroom to kitchen home improvement products at the guaranteed lowest price. 

Home Outlet prides itself in catering to a wide range of customers — from construction professionals to your average homeowner. Since its launch, the brand has built a robust brick-and-mortar presence that consists of over 100 stores and continues to grow by an additional five stores each year. 

To reach more customers, the brand built an ecommerce website with the hopes of creating a top-tier shopping experience for those who prefer to buy online.

However, Home Outlet quickly realised its ecommerce solution came with a variety of challenges that kept it from growing online sales. The company knew that to expand this side of the business, it needed to find a new ecommerce platform.

CHALLENGE

Hosting on a platform that negatively impacts the user journey.

After noticing that many shoppers prefer to buy online, Home Outlet realised it was time to establish an online presence to cater to these consumers. This led the company to build its online store on Drupal. However, this platform presented several challenges that kept Home Outlet from providing customers with an exceptional shopping experience.

“We had quite a few issues with the previous platform. When it came down to it, we wanted to provide an effortless shopping experience for our customers. There were a lot of nuances when it came to the old website that just kind of made it a little glitchy for our customers,” explained Shannon Russell, Ecommerce Manager at Home Outlet.

The company specifically ran into issues regarding its Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS) feature. Since all of Home Outlet’s online orders are BOPIS, it’s essential that customers can easily select a pickup location without encountering any difficulties.

On top of this, the company experienced challenges connecting to third-party apps and its ERP. As these factors added up, Home Outlet knew it was time for a change.

After shopping around for different ecommerce platforms, Home Outlet found BigCommerce. 

“The availability for us to work with a lot of different applications and create customisations was a big reason why we chose BigCommerce,” said Russell.

The Home Outlet team knew their expectations for the re-platformed site and decided to work with one of BigCommerce’s Elite agency partners to transform their ideas into reality. After some research, they found Mira Commerce and knew the agency would create the site they envisioned.

“We would not have been able to do this without Mira Commerce. They've just been a great asset for our organisation to get us up and running,” remarked Russell.

“The availability for us to work with a lot of different applications and create customisations was a big reason why we chose BigCommerce.”

Shannon Russell, Ecommerce Manager, Home Outlet

SOLUTION

Improving the experience for shoppers and the team with customisations.

A key reason Home Outlet migrated from Drupal was to create a world-class shopping experience for online customers. As part of this, Home Outlet needed the BOPIS and “shopping by store” features rebuilt to provide a top-notch user journey.

Mira Commerce understood the task at hand and created a custom feature that easily allows users to choose the location where they’d like to pick up their online order.

“This feature was 100% customised. We fetch the location list using GraphQL and it’s saved in the user session. That specifies a location that the inventory has to be deducted from. The location also fetches live stock directly from Home Outlet’s ERP prior to processing a customer’s checkout. Metafields are also used for keeping custom prices per location,” explained Crystal Stevens, Client Success Manager at Mira Commerce.

On top of this, Mira Commerce went the extra mile and created a custom checkout process with Signifyd that triggers potential fraudulent transactions to shoppers, online store managers, and in-store personnel. This allows orders to be put on hold for manual review before being picked up in-store — minimising back-end tasks regarding checking for fraudulent orders and improving the BOPIS connectivity.

Since re-launching the store with Mira Commerce’s BOPIS feature, Home Outlet customers can effortlessly select the store location they want to pick up their order from without experiencing glitches or difficulties.

“This feature has created a seamless experience that lets shoppers place the order online and when they pick it up in-store, they have curbside service. They pull up, our partners are ready to load things for them, and it gives us a chance to demonstrate the customer service we're known for,” explained Russell.

Additionally, Mira Commerce created a manual cart customisation that allows Home Outlet’s customer service associates to create an online shopping cart on behalf of the shopper and then send it to them for review and an easy checkout experience.

“Mira Commerce created this feature so that if a customer wants a whole kitchen, the Home Outlet partner can build the entire cart of all of the different items that the customer needs, put them in what we call a manual cart, send that link over to the customer, and all the customer has to do is enter their credit card information and pay,” explained Russell.

Scaling the business through a user-friendly interface.

Due to BigCommerce’s user-friendly interface, Home Outlet has improved its ability to promote its online store.

“With the old platform, we had internal challenges as far as collaboration. As marketers, we didn't really have the knowledge that we needed to use the platform very extensively. That was definitely an issue because we needed the help of our Ecommerce Team and developers to do things that should have been pretty simple,” explained Danial Reed, VP of Marketing at Home Outlet.

Since launching on BigCommerce, Home Outlet’s Marketing Team has used the platform’s many tools to promote the site and help generate online business.

“We've kind of let the Marketing Team go, which has been great because they're great at what they do. We don't want to be a stopgap for them, and BigCommerce lets us get them set up and let them go. This week, we're running our first online-only promo, which was all geared up by the Marketing Team,” said Reed.

In addition to running online promotions, Home Outlet has grown its marketing efforts by incorporating blog content that educates consumers. Customers are shown relevant content based on their product searches, which helps inform them on whether a product is the right choice — generating sales and minimising returns.

On top of this, the re-platformed site fully embodies the company’s branding in a sleek and modern way, providing an aesthetically pleasing shopping experience unique to Home Outlet. With BigCommerce’s design capabilities, the company effortlessly incorporated promotional features throughout the site, such as the customer sign-up button. Implementing this functionality has helped collect more customer data for marketing initiatives designed to grow the business.

Automating tasks with integrations and apps to maximise team efficiency.

A significant issue Home Outlet faced on its old platform was connecting to its ERP, Bistrack Epicor. With the help of Mira Commerce, the company successfully integrated it into BigCommerce.

“We used Jitterbit for the integration, and the criteria for selecting Jitterbit was having both the BisTrack connector and the BigCommerce connector. All the flows are done through that, starting from products and finishing with the orders and order statuses,” explained Stevens.

With the successful integration of Home Outlet’s ERP, team efficiency has drastically improved since it automatically communicates data with the different features incorporated throughout the site.

“Mira Commerce was instrumental in connecting our ERP system and making sure that everything talks and communicates,” remarked Russell.

The company also integrates several third-party apps designed to further enhance the customer experience and alleviate back-office tasks. A few of Home Outlet’s favourites include Algolia — which creates an intuitive search experience for shoppers — and Avalara — which manages taxes. 

“We use Avalara when it comes to taxes and tax codes. The app was easy to integrate and we had the freedom to make tweaks to it in order to make it right for our business,” explained Russell.

Agency Partner: 

Tech Stack:

“Mira Commerce was instrumental in connecting our ERP system and making sure that everything talks and communicates.”

Shannon Russell, Ecommerce Manager, Home Outlet

“We've kind of let the Marketing Team go, which has been great because they're great at what they do. We don't want to be a stopgap for them, and BigCommerce lets us get them set up and let them go.”

Danial Reed, VP of Marketing, Home Outlet

case-study-device-tablet-merchant-home-outlet

RESULTS

Exceeding customer expectations.

Since migrating to BigCommerce, Home Outlet has significantly improved the online experience provided to shoppers and attracted new customers.

“Having a new platform and a better experience for our customers has been a great thing for us to work toward the past year. We’re already seeing great results and a better experience for our customers,” remarked Russell.

With the success Home Outlet has seen since migrating platforms, Seconds and Surplus, another brand under the E.C. Barton umbrella, is looking to re-platform to BigCommerce with the help of Mira Commerce.

“We are now looking to convert our Seconds and Surplus brand to BigCommerce. Mira Commerce is on that project, and we're excited because they know our business, and it's been great working with them,” explained Russell.

“Having a new platform and a better experience for our customers has been a great thing for us to work toward the past year. We’re already seeing great results and a better experience for our customers.”

Shannon Russell, Ecommerce Manager, Home Outlet

LOOKING AHEAD

Continuing to make shoppers the heart of its business.

It’s safe to say Home Outlet made the right decision in choosing BigCommerce. Since migrating platforms, this customer-centric brand has been able to focus its efforts on perfecting the user journey for its shoppers.

As we look into the future, we expect the company to continue with this mindset as it ventures into offering shipping to online customers.

“We are not currently doing shipping, and the next frontier for us is to really get into the world of shipping when it comes to ecommerce,” said Russell.

With the help of BigCommerce and Mira Commerce, Home Outlet knows the potential for online growth is limitless.

“Everyone at BigCommerce has been super supportive. So we're just excited that as our company grows, we will continue to grow our ecommerce business with BigCommerce and Mira Commerce,” explained Russell.

“Everyone at BigCommerce has been super supportive. So we're just excited that as our company grows, we will continue to grow our ecommerce business with BigCommerce and Mira Commerce.”

Shannon Russell, Ecommerce Manager, Home Outlet

Published: June 2024

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