eCommerce + Shopware 6
A new eCommerce platform for revenue growth
ikarus is a leading German retailer of designer furniture, lighting, and interior design elements. They wanted a makeover of their online store to adapt to the current customer requirements. The company also needed to freely expand their product range, which their past shop didn’t allow. They received an online store that perfectly matched their expectations.
Service
eCommerce
Scope
Discovery phase
Product development
Maintenance
QA
Vertical
Trade
ikarus was founded in 1993 by Volker Hohmann and is one of Germany’s most recognizable designer furniture, lighting, and interior design retailers.
For many years, its activity was based on a catalog sales model with two brick-and-mortar stores in Frankfurt and Stuttgart. The now-iconic ikarus catalog first appeared in newsstands in 1994. From an initial print run of 100,000, the print run grew to 650,000. The catalog is still very popular today.
In 1997, ikarus set up its first online store, so it was one of the first dispatch dealers with its own homepage. From an initially small selection of products at that time, now the complete assortment of more than 20,000 products is available online and can be ordered immediately.
With dynamically changing customer needs and a goal to expand and improve their online store, the ikarus team needed to set up something that would meet their customers’ high expectations. They needed a new eCommerce platform that would scale quickly, support different languages, and allow for undisturbed future growth.
ikarus asked Divante for help with that because the company needed a partner who could ensure transparency in the process and deliver the project in an ultra-short timeframe.
The project started in October 2021. The previous ikarus store was based on Magento. Since we were given a free hand to approach the technology, we decided to start from scratch and began with a scoping session.
Defining the challenges and changing the approach to the tech
Due to the requirements, the Divante team suggested moving to Shopware 6. Why Shopware? We chose this technology because of the speed of implementation, the simplicity of the solution, and because it matched the client’s requirements perfectly.
We could also already define the biggest difficulties and challenges. They included the integration of the newly built platform with custom solutions on the customer side and with other already existing external systems.
Full transparency in action
The project started with workshops along with an analysis of the existing store. We successfully specified the needs, requirements, and sales offer. Next, for three to four weeks, we prepared the documentation and defined the introduction of new solutions. Then came the implementation period.
Throughout this time, the most crucial thing was to maintain transparency and guarantee that the client would be taken care of according to their needs. The implementation took place in two-week sprints. Each one was finished with a demo presentation to keep the client up to date at every stage.
After every iteration, we provided a report with the budget, hours worked, and planned goals to complete by the next iteration. The creative process took a substantive approach, and the client became an engaged part of the team.
Testing phase
In February, we moved on to the testing phase. During this stage, the client made a lot of comments about functionality and design. They wanted to refine the front-end layer and work on the communication with external systems, especially with the marketing platform. In the meantime, the team was reduced in order to not lose efficiency and to stay progressive.
The store was launched in May when everything was done and ready for release.
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If they can’t find it, they can’t buy it
For users at ikarus, search is at the epicenter on the path to purchase and the main input to “talk” to the online store. Making use of the long-lasting technology partnership with Findologic, Divante took care of implementing their search platform.
- Divante made use of Findologic's native Shopware 6 Plugin that acts as an API. With the speed of implementation critical for this project, Shopware and Divante were able to connect its users with a best-of-breed product discovery platform in no time.
- While using the latest version of Assisted Suggest, users are directly inspired and guided with product recommendations as soon as they interact with ikarus’ search bar. Since the online store is completely mobile-first, users also benefit from the frictionless suggest overlay on smartphones, including native voice assistance.
- Did-you-mean functionality was implemented, so unsuccessful searches are avoided just because a customer made a typo.
- Findologic’s filter navigation now delivers more manageable results and a slicker, less clunky interface on all devices. Users directly benefit from seamless connection to the most relevant products, with fewer touchpoints, instead of scrolling through endless results.
