The Beauty Store
The Beauty Store is an online retailer specialising in beauty products including haircare, fragrances, nail products, and more. The Beauty Store came to Philo as they knew that in order to be competitive in the international market they would need to improve their website style and functionality. They had previously engaged another software development company but found their needs were not met. Philo brought them into the digital world by building upon and linking with existing core applications.
Date:
April 2019
Technologies Utilised
php, laravel, myob exo, my sql, .net core, vue.js, elastic search, kubernetes, docker
The Challenge
The website structure that was set up by the previous development firm was not meeting industry standards and was letting The Beauty Store down. This was largely due to the integration with the stock management system MYOB EXO. Philo took over the build of the site prior to it going live in order to iron out these structural issues in the backend. Once the site went live, Philo identified a number of improvements that could be made to boost the functionality of the site and deliver a better user experience. The key challenge for Philo was creating a complex backend system which was to appear simple and user-friendly at a customer level.
Philo’s Solutions
- A top-to-bottom analysis of the core limitations in the software was carried out.
- Philo identified the key issues within the website’s architecture. These were then explained to the client in a clear, concise way, allowing them to make informed decisions about what they wanted to achieve.
- A microservices architecture was utilised to componentise the application and decouple the website from Myob EXO. Running these systems independently from the EXO server increased stability and delivered faster response times to end users.
- Connection between the systems via a message bus allowed scalable growth as demand increased. This resulted in near real-time synchronisation and a considerably higher throughput for the website.
- The enterprise-grade search 'ElasticSearch' was integrated into the solution which allowed for flexible search queries including tolerance of misspelling.
- The Beauty store had plans for many large-scale campaigns in the future including sales and special offers. To accommodate this, Philo gave the site its own Kubernetes cluster. Automatic scaling allows the web application to adapt and grow with the business.
- Once the site went live, Philo made further tweaks to the site to smooth out the user experience and ensure customers could find what they were looking for.
The Outcome
A successful build, coupled with a continued partnership, is driving the online success of The Beauty Store. Orders have increased dramatically nationally and internationally. The new, beautiful, eCommerce site now delivers a smooth user experience where buying is made easy. Due to the ‘Elastic Search’ function, customers are able to find what they are looking for as well as many related items, even if they have misspelt the product name. This function has helped customers find what they’re looking for faster thanks to a reduction in search queries and clicks. The website now performs strongly under pressure. During big sales and in the lead up to Christmas it automatically adjusts to the influx in customers visiting and buying at the same time. Overall, The Beauty Store is very pleased with the cohesive experience their customers are having, and the ease of processing orders.
Client Feedback
“Is not often you find an IT Developer that has a commercial understanding of business – and Morgan does! We changed developers mid-way through a web build, and Morgan instantly demonstrated how competent he is. He immediately demonstrated that his skill set developed on the typical Kiwi OE in the UK is far superior to the developers we encountered in NZ. Additionally, when we were told we would have to outsource parts of the build to third parties, Morgan quickly applied his skills and did the work himself! I’m extremely lucky to have found him and he is now leading our online development strategy and have no hesitation in recommending him to anyone in need of advanced IT support.” Steve Wilkins, CEO, The Beauty Store Ltd
