The Challenge

Virtualbike already had a commerce website based on a combination of static HTML pages and Actinic, a proprietary eCommerce solution. This had been online for three years and was starting to look dated. The key problems were that it was not regularly updated and lacked the interactivity of the best commerce sites.

Alongside the revamp, Tony also wanted new functionality to drive customers to the website. Most important was to take control of email campaigns. The existing solution relied on a database of customers controlled by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to which Tony didn't have access. Also required was a simple way to post news stories to the website to keep the customer base up to date with developments on the new bike frame.

There were also other constraints on the design of the site. Tony had a considerable background in eCommerce and wanted to avoid a flash based site because they are not indexed by search engines. He also wanted a site which could be easily extended with new functionality.

Finally, he needed a solution that would integrate with the company's merchant account and PROTX, the credit card processing vendor.

When Tony contacted the National B2B Centre, he hoped we would be able to assist with the creation of a new website which would meet all of these requirements. As work got underway the requirements became considerably more urgent following Virtualbike's Internet Service Provider suffering a viral attack. As a result, the company's existing commerce site suffered downtime and started to lose its customer base.

The Solution

The National B2B Centre, in conjunction with Open Advantage offered the company its unique website consulting service. Experienced consultants from the centre introduced Tony to an open source Content Management System (CMS) toolset called PostNuke, which allowed Tony to implement a new interactive front end to the website. The consultants assisted Tony in implementing a new look and feel that he had designed for the website. Training from the consultants in using PostNuke's web-based management interface quickly enabled Tony to manage the website, including creating and editing content, adding new news stories and sending out email campaigns.

The commerce section of the website was revamped using another open source product, osCommerce. This is a fully fledged commerce solution incorporating products database, payment and shipping, bestsellers listings, special offers and customer reviews. It even has full search capability and dynamic generation of the shop front to give a vibrant appearance. The urgent requirement to get the site up and running meant the work was outsourced to an external conmany, who implemented the look and feel of the commerce site and performed the technical configuration. They also quickly got Tony up to speed with osCommerce's web-based administration system so that he could maintain his complete product catalogue on the new site.

The solution has turned out to be very cost effective for Virtualbike. All of the software used was Open Source; therefore no licensing costs were incurred. This removed the need to pay for a new revision of Actinic catalogue at a cost of £370. The ongoing costs will also be low because Tony has full control over the website and can make all of the changes to content and catalogue himself without having to pay an external organisation.

The Results

Virtualbike had a revamped website up and running within two months of deciding to revise it. The decision to use osCommerce as the commerce solution meant that the revamped catalogue was up and running with a new ISP in less than one week following the virus attack. A concerted effort with email campaigns and special offers has meant that much of the loyal customer base has now returned to buying goods from Virtualbike following the virus attack.

A combination of advice from the B2B Centre consultants and high quality Open Source software has meant search engine performance of the revamped site has been high. The website is now ranked highly for many of the products it sells, and Tony has reported an increase in the number of new customers since deploying the revised website.

Conclusion

Following training from the consultants, Tony said that "The website solution is easy to use. I can quickly add new news stories about the super-lightweight bike frame development, an integral part of the long-term business strategy for Virtualbike. I can also easily add products with rules for sizes and colour combinations. The solution has many neat features such as automatic resizing of images and the ability to zoom in for customers to get a better look at the product".

Tony intends to take the new website even further: "The solution has proven very innovative; for example, I intend to broaden the worldwide appeal of Virtualbike by using the multi-language support". However, he cautioned "osCommerce and PostNuke are great tools which are easy to administer on a day to day basis, having external support long-term is vital in case things go wrong or you want to enhance the websites functionality".

Overall, Tony said that the consultancy from The National B2B Centre has enabled Virtualbike to "Build a more interactive site that looks world class. The Open Source software has allowed Virtualbike to trade at another level, one that previously only the big players could achieve".