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Case Study Apparel Company

About the Customer

The client is an American manufacturer of high end urban clothing in United States. They carry the newest body styles from today’s leading European fashion market.

Business Situation

The current Web site was simply an apparel display site without online shopping and automation of back end process. The client realized the importance of re-launching their Web site which would not only increase the sales, but also the ability to change content easily with the back-end system to attract more visitors to the Web site.

The Objective

The main objective of this project was to create a feature rich B2C website to sell apparels across different countries. The client envisioned the website to act as a user-friendly and interactive application, which would support a host of functionalities. The proposed website was meant to help customers across the globe to browse apparels, purchase apparels online and download catalog. All-in-all, the website needed to be a Sell-by-Itself and full-fledged electronic commerce system.

Challenges

Since the application aimed to be different from other general ecommerce sites, there were a variety of other features that warranted addition to the system. Some of these included:

• Display of Apparel products by categories
• Real time Inventory Information
• Comprehensive Catalog
• Multiple Payment Methods
• Fast and Accurate Search

Enter DCKAP Inc

Keeping in mind DCKAP’s proven capabilities and success ratio in the creation of e-commerce Web solutions and catalogs, the customer decided to award this project to DCKAP. DCKAP then conducted an in-depth study of the business need of the customer as part of the initial analysis phase of this web application project. This helped immensely in chalking out a plan for the Web site development process.

DCKAP’s Analysis

A comprehensive study and analysis of the client’s business requirements brought DCKAP the entire features and functionalities of the system.

DCKAP's Data Model

Based on the business requirements, the data modeling team at DCKAP designed the database schema for the web application front-end and back-end.

DCKAP’s Solution

There are two main levels of users associated with the Web site, namely:

• General Users
• Administrator

The associated development phases were as follows:

• Intuitive Web based System for General Users
• Administration (back-end) module for Administrator

Intuitive Web based System for General Users

a. Product Categorization

The display of apparel product by categories, ease the shoppers quickly navigate to the page they want. The display of product images loading at appropriate times results in more sales. It gives the shopper the experience that are purchasing in a physical retail outlet.

b. Real Time Inventory Information

The comprehensive display of inventory information enables the customer to know the availability of apparel color-wise and style wise. The backend system was integrated with a third party inventory system and the inventory changes every 15 minutes, which ensures display of the latest stock inventory available to the customers.

c. Comprehensive Catalog

The catalog facilitates shoppers to navigate between products and analyze product information in a single file. The users are given the ability to download catalog in PDF format. Catalog will help the shoppers to quickly locate the products they seek within a few seconds.

Multiple Payment Methods

The different mode of payments available results in successful online shopping experience for customers. The rich interactive Web site makes the navigation easier and user friendly ensuring repetitive purchases and permanent customer base.

d. Fast Accurate Search

Once shoppers arrive on the site, they can search the items using comprehensive and accurate search feature. The search is done within the entire database leaving no item that matches the keyword.

So if a visitor searches for "poly cotton shirt", the search will show all the available poly cotton shirts styles in various categories.

Administration (back-end) module

DCKAP offers the ability to categorize products by product category. Product categories may also contain subcategories enabling administrators to manage their products in as much detail as possible. Because products and product categories are associated to a particular vendor, it is important to manage product category and sub category.

The back end module includes host of functionalities like

• Manage product categories
• Manage sub categories
• Manage product properties
• Manage products
• Manage colors
• Manage sizes
• Manage news
• Approve customers

Technology Stack

Scripting Language: PHP

Database: MySQL

Benefits

Increase in Revenue

After the implementation of B2C Web site/application developed by DCKAP, Next Level Apparel has doubled its revenue.

Increases Information Accessibility

The availability of real-time inventory data on the Web site allows sales people and shoppers to view real time inventory levels color wise and style wise.

Real time Inventory Management hampers losing a customer because of an item being out of stock. The sales staff can upgrade or downgrade the inventory level.

Decrease in IT Cost

It is easy to update product, product properties and self manage the Web site within seconds, thus reducing IT costs.

B2C Web site developed by DCKAP is surely not the sole reason for the increase of revenue and it’s growth, but it has SURELY been a major driving force behind the same.