The success of Norwegian home supply and improvement retailer Megaflis stems from an idea so simple, yet so very hard to implement. Founded in Oslo in 1997, the company early on learned how to master the craft of negotiating large quantities high quality products, directly from manufacturer, thereby removing the middleman to cut prices significantly for the end consumer. Hence, the success lies in that the customer do not have to look for discounts or campaigns as prices are always the lowest possible.
The company boasts 21 magnificent stores across Norway with over 600 employees who tirelessly work to provide better in-store and online shopping experiences. In 2020, Megaflis had revenues of more than 2 billion NOK.
While the pandemic brought inconveniences to all of us, it certainly did not seem to stop us from shopping online for home supplies. However, from the retailer’s perspective, creating a delightful customer experience for online shoppers has proven to be a tough nut to crack.
One of the bigger challenges facing Megaflis was managing an increasingly growing assortment. While the physical stores have some 8,000 products available, the online version of the business offers close to 19,000. So, when searching for a new e-commerce platform, scalability was of high priority.
Creating a great online shopping experience selling home supply and improvement products online is hard. Some aspects of the in-store customer experience are easily lost, such as getting inspiration and a feel for material, colour, texture, patterns, etc. A key success factor for Megaflis is how they have managed to create outstanding in-store customer experiences, something that they now wanted to recreate online.
Another challenge was how to make the online shopping experience relevant to each visitor while simultaneously handle potential scalability issues that comes with a growing number of products and customers. Despite years of building experience in e-commerce, it was clear that a platform shift needed to take place to better handle all these aspects.
In mid 2020, the Megaflis team consulted commerce solution provider Avensia about the possibilities of taking e-commerce to the next level. At this point, it was clear that the current solution (a combination of Magento, Nosto, and Algolia) would not meet future requirements regarding stability, scalability, and personalisation.
The commerce solution presented to Megaflis was centered around EPIserver, framed by Avensia’s Nitro Storefront, and with Voyado Elevate providing key web store functionality utilizing AI for personalized search, navigation, and recommendations.
“We were pleased to find that now we had a complete, proven, and easily implemented online business package to support our future growth,” said Frank Jonassen, Head of IT at Megaflis.
screenshot of MegaFlis search
In addition, Elevate has enabled the merchandisers at Megaflis to get full control over promotion and demotion, pinning of products as well as personalization of product listings, something that will be further developed in the months to come.
The implementation took six months to complete, and the new solution was launched on time, in March of 2021, only underlining Megaflis’ conviction of the importance of selecting solid partners.
“Voyado provides us with a continuously developing platform, backed by AI, to guide, advise, and inspire our customers. It allows us to improve shopping experiences and to systematically do A/B-testing for optimising our product exposure,” Frank Jonassen continues.
With Voyado Elevate implemented, Megaflis feel that they are in a much stronger position to take on the future in terms of online commerce. Looking at the post-launch results of online sales (second quarter of 2021), Megaflis sees a significant increase in both conversion rate as average order value increasing equally as much.
“We are very pleased with the results of our new modern platform. The increased performance, more relevant search results, and higher quality of product images combined have increased our conversion rate and revenue”,” said Frank Jonassen.
screenshot of MegaFlis product recommendations
Looking ahead, the team at Megaflis are convinced that Elevate provides a radically better foundation for further developing personalized and relevant experiences across different channels including email marketing, campaigns, newsletters, and physical stores.
“It feels great to have a modern and solid platform in place. It will support our future efforts. With Elevate we are not limited in our ambitions,” Frank Jonassen concludes.
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