|
Sebor Absinth, the distributor of Europe's
premium brand of absinthe, recognised the potential of the global
market, especially in North America. As absinthe regained its
popularity, Sebor Absinth invested in brand development, creating
a luxury product with international distribution channels.
After careful analysis of the company's business and commerce
processes, Syrox designed and built a flexible e-commerce solution
providing a multi region consumer sales channel, promotional tool
and after sales support system.
Key Features
- B2C channel for the international retail of consumer products
- Restricted product availability for multiple regions and customer
groups
- Regional price structures and shipment costs
- Upselling, incentives and promotional offers
- Automated discount loyalty schemes
- Shopping cart with automated payment processing
- Regional accounting, tax handling and order processing
- Easily updated and managed via a browser based thin client
- Automated invoicing and package notes
- Fully integrated into accounts package
Benefits
The new e-commerce website brought several key benefits to
Sebor Absinth's business strategy:
- Opened an international sale channel to new regions where absinthe
is not readily available
- Promoted brand awareness by building new media partnerships
via print and online promotions
- Provided Sebor Absinth with a promotional tool to encourage
sale by incentives and loyalty schemes
- Streamlined order processing and fulfilment reducing overheads
Background
Sebor Absinth is Europe's premium absinthe brand, produced in
the Czech Bohemian mountains from a blend of 13 herbs and the purest
alcohol, and produced to a 100 year old French/Swiss recipe. Made
famous by Vincent van Gogh, its controversial history resulted
in the prohibition of sale of the product in many countries during
the early 1900s.
With absinthe regaining its popularity, Sebor Absinth has recently
invested in brand development, creating a luxury product with international
distribution channels. It was realised that an important ingredient
to maximise the sales potential of the product was the development
of a consumer e-commence website especially targeting countries
where absinthe is not readily available. As liquor distribution
and licensing laws differ significantly from country to country,
it became apparent that Sebor Absinth required more than just a
basic e-commerce solution.
 Problem
The website was to be Sebor Absinth's new communications and sales
portal. With promotions, export and tax legislation varying from
region to region, it was clear that Sebor Absinth required a flexible
scaleable solution. The preliminary specifications included: multiple
regions, price structures, shipping methods and various conditions
of sale, whilst seamlessly integrating into the company's current
stock and fulfilment system.
A part of Sebor Absinth's new sales drive was to build partnerships
with other consumer websites and magazines, offering readers promotional
incentives and discounts. The website had to succeed in two main
roles, firstly in some regions it was to be the only sales channel
available, and in others it was to act as a promotional tool as
well as a mechanism for after sales support.
During the initial discussions Syrox was asked to look at the
current accounting and fulfilment process, as these were not totally
integrated, requiring some manual input of data. After some careful
analysis it became apparent that the e-commerce solution could
integrate with both the existing accounting and fulfilment systems
at higher level than initially thought, streamlining the whole
business process.
Solution
After the initial in-depth analysis it was clear that the final
solution had to be extremely flexible due to many layers of
complexity owing to regional legislation and pricing structures.
Syrox was able to deliver a scaleable e-commerce solution, which
fulfilled all of Sebor Absinth's requirements with the added flexibility
of incorporating other promotional and sale-generating features
when required.
 Multi-region Sales
In order to accommodate the differing requirements of sales restrictions,
import tax, shipping and handling to various parts of the world,
the solution Syrox designed needed to handle multiple regions throughout.
All aspects of product pricing, shipment costs, licensing, import
and tax legislation may be varied in the system for each region,
and new regions and pricing schemes can be introduced quickly and
easily.
Customer Accounts
An important aspect of any retail operation, and one which is
often ignored by e-commerce solutions, is that of repeat ordering.
Sebor Absinth wanted to capitalise on the customer satisfaction
and brand loyalty that frequently leads to recurrent orders, by
providing customer accounts, along with loyalty schemes and targeted
product recommendations.
By providing each customer with an username and password protected
account, where personal details, billing and delivery information,
an order history and payment details are stored, customers may
quickly make repeat orders without re-entering common information.
It was necessary to ensure that the data was captured and stored
in a way that did not infringe the terms of the Data Protection
Act, and also that key details such as credit card numbers were
not stored, as these are critical to customer confidence in the
security of the ordering process.
 Ordering
E-commerce sites often have an unclear, disjointed ordering process.
Customers are often unsure of how to proceed to the next stage
in the process, what additional information is required and which
is optional, and at what stage they are committing to the order.
With careful design, Syrox developed an e-commerce solution that
guides the customer through the ordering process with a minimum
of fuss and unnecessary stages.
An important aspect of this was the successful upselling and cross-selling
of related products. A key feature of all retail activities, the
suggestion and promotion of products that are similar to or compliment
an existing selection is a useful way of increasing order values.
For Syrox, the challenge was to implement a successful strategy
for upselling and cross-selling that did not compromise the integrity
of the ordering process, and that could be easily updated to tie
in with stock levels and promotional campaigns. By using a discrete,
informal pop-up window scheme, customers can order additional recommended
products with a single click, or dismiss or ignore the window without
affecting the ordering process.
Loyalty Schemes
The design of the website allows Sebor Absinth to utilise a number
of marketing and sales techniques, including promotional emails,
suggestive selling, magazine special offers and loyalty and referral
schemes.
A typical Sebor Absinth referral scheme works as follows: when
placing an order a customer is asked to nominate a new potential
customer. This nominated customer is then invited by email to purchase
goods at discounted rates. Customer validation checks are carried
out on delivery address and bank details to reduce the risk of
misuse of the system. Once the nominated customer has made a purchase,
the original customer is also issued a discount voucher.
When implementing a loyalty scheme, Sebor Absinth has full control
over the amount of discount given, products included in the offer,
promotion period, period of allowed use for vouchers, number of
vouchers per promotion, plus the ability to change the promotion
to a free product item rather than a discount.
Accounting and Fulfilment
Initially, it was planned that Sebor Absinth would continue to
use their existing account and fulfilment system to handle orders
from the new e-commerce website. However, Syrox identified a number
of problems with this scenario, including the requirement that
some information would have to be manually re-entered into the
accounts application, and that only daily totals would be entered
into the accounts.
Syrox developed a method to integrate the website and accounting
systems. The method included the automatic download of order details
from the website and subsequent processing and insertion of data
into the accounting application. This leads to several benefits:
- Only valid credit checked orders are entered - failed orders
are filtered out by the system
- Customer and order details are all transferred without manual
intervention
- Invoices, packing notes and receipts are all formatted and
printed automatically
- Stock levels, order totals and fulfilment details are all updated
in real time
- Customer account and order duplication is detected and handled
- Customer details are separated into a CRM system, for after
sales support, marketing and promotional purposes
Development
Syrox used standard industry strength technologies in the development
of the Sebor Absinth website, and specified a high performance
webserver in order to ensure high availability and the handling
of multiple concurrent transactions. A Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
platform with the IIS webserver and ASP scripting technologies
were used to build the site, and a MySQL database provided high
speed back end storage of customer details, orders, products and
website configuration information.
 Modular Architecture
Syrox employed an extensible code framework and page template
system to allow the website to be easily updated or modified without
additional design or layout required. In particular, the home page
features a portal layout, with many areas that can be customised
to reflect customer testimonies, featured products, special offers,
promotions and media tie-ins.
Search Engine Optimisation
A significant part of the promotion of any website is the effective
targeting of search engines. In a marketplace occupied by several
competitors, Sebor Absinth wanted to ensure that the website would
have high visibility and would be easily found by potential customers.
Syrox advised on a number of search engine optimisation strategies
and incorporated key elements into the design of
the website to improve search engine traffic. Specific challenges
were around the use of the alternative terms 'absinth' and 'absinthe'
(the Czech and French spellings of the word, respectively), increasing
Sebor Absinth's search engine ranking position, and capitalising
on the wealth of historical and factual information on the website.
|
back
to top