Launching an online B2B sales portal for a specialty retailer’s wholesale clients.
DEMDACO needed to implement an intuitive and efficient B2B sales portal, tailored to the goals and requirements of its wholesale clients. Leveraging the BigCommerce platform, Codal built a portal that’s customizable and easily maintained, helping DEMDACO provide a B2B experience that drives client engagement and sales.
Founded in 1997, DEMDACO is a specialty retailer that offers a hand-selected collection of art, fashion apparel, jewelry, homegoods, holiday decor, and other high-quality, aesthetically pleasing products.
After initially partnering with Codal to optimize and maintain its eCommerce site, it became clear that a separate portal was necessary to meet the unique needs of DEMDACO’s wholesale clients. While B2B clients were successfully ordering from DEMDACO’s singular eCommerce site, there was no functionality for these buyers to monitor their orders, track shipments, pay invoices, and more. As a result, wholesalers were following up on this information with DEMDACO reps outside of the eCommerce site, resulting in significant manual customer support work and a frustrating buyer experience.
Our first step was to understand the path to purchase for DEMDACO’s B2B clients. We conducted an in-depth audit of the typical buyer journey, from the customer’s first visit, to the checkout process. By dissecting DEMDACO’s conversion funnel, we were better prepared to implement an intuitive B2B portal.
After our design team completed its analysis of DEMDACO’s user flow, we worked together to define all required pages—architecting the navigational structure, and organizing the layout and presentation of content. The messaging on DEMDACO’s existing B2C site was geared towards traditional consumers, and needed to be adapted for wholesale clients.
With DEMDACO providing initial designs and documentation, it was Codal’s job to implement the B2B portal’s front end. Our engineering team’s depth of knowledge and experience was extremely beneficial here, as we were able to work confidently within Stencil—BigCommerce’s design framework—as well as PHP, HTML, and Node.js.
Codal and DEMDACO were true partners throughout the development process. The client’s in-house IT team provided APIs, while our team provided technical consulting, code improvements, and successful implementation—which was especially crucial when integrating the new B2B portal with DEMDACO’s complex ERP system.
Once a breakdown of necessary features and functionalities were identified and mapped, integrations with the BigCommerce platform were required. Codal built, tested, and deployed enterprise integrations for:
DEMDACO’s B2B client portal—easily accessible from its main eCommerce site—offers a UX and UI that’s tailored to wholesale clients.
The portal is a central hub for wholesale buyers to monitor orders, track shipments, and review account balances. Clients can pay invoices within the portal and add credits to payments. The B2B portal also includes provisions for high-volume and frequent ordering, like the ability to search for items by SKU, and a ‘quick-order’ function for convenient and time-saving reordering. The portal also includes custom content geared towards B2B users, like buying guides, retailer success kits, and relevant contact information for territory managers.
As a result of a great working relationship and a shared vision, Codal successfully delivered an intuitive and engaging B2B sales portal—allowing DEMDACO to extend its excellent online shopping experience to one of its most important customer bases.
