THE NEW ECOMMERCE PORTAL SIGNED BY REPLY

Technology Reply, the first certified Italian partner Oracle OPN Specialized Platinum Partner, will assume again the leadership of the new great path undertaken by Euronics Italia to bring its E-commerce to a next level.

Technology Reply is the first certified Italian partner Oracle OPN Specialised Platinum Partner. After successfully achieving the previous objective of the project Euronics Italia, assigned to them in 2014, four years later it assumes again the leadership of the new great path undertaken by Euronics Italia to bring his E-commerce to a next level.


The design and technological choices undertaken at the time are still solid and valid, which allows a radical evolution of the online shop of Euronics without upsetting the architectural design of the entire project which has been refined over the years.

However, technologies are constantly evolving which is something everyone is aware of. With technology not being far behind, it is important to be ready in using the new techniques of design and development to better meet the changing needs of the customer. It is also thanks to this factor that Euronics Italia administers its ecommerce portal, succeeding in retaining over 1,500,000 active users and guaranteeing over 100,000 products in a constantly updated catalogue.

Scenario

Euronics Italia is one of the largest companies specialised in the sale and distribution of home appliances, consumer electronics, computers and telephones. It was founded in 1999 as an evolution of the historic GET brand and in over twenty years the Group has continuously been developing with the entry of new members, levering, above all, on the local sign of each of them. The evolution of the markets, the growth of competitive dynamics and the internationalisation of the business, then make clear the need to establish a European Group and this is where the organisation born today in all of Europe comes about.

In 2014 Reply took over the leadership of the E-Commerce project of Euronics Italia setting up Technology Reply, the first certified Italian partner Oracle OPN Specialised Platinum Partner. Thanks to its experience and the involvement of the Oracle partner, Reply develops an innovative solution that allows fast and direct access to E-commerce functionality and integrates seamlessly with third-party systems and external platforms.

Therefore, after four years of intense collaboration between Euronics Italia and Technology Reply for the realisation of its e-commerce platform, efficient and fully integrated with its institutional and information areas for the complete support of the end-to-end sales processes on- line, Euronics Italia itself decides again to rely on Technology Reply to bring its E-commerce to the next level.

The loyalty of new users has been improved with the implementation of a "light" registration that allows quick registration onto the portal thanks to the completion of a few fields and efficient use of the full range of features offered by the portal .

At the same time, the possibilities offered by the book checkout have been increased as functionality has always been one of Euronics's flagships.

In fact, the booking and collection allows you to book any product within e-commerce to be able to pick it up and pay conveniently in your favorite Euronics store, easily selectable within the portal through a geolocated map or a search by zip code / city. In fact, the opportunity offered to users tries to respond to any need in a clear and detailed manner. You can book multiple products at the same time and in varying quantities for each item. Depending on the availability of the articles, in the city searched within e-commerce, it is possible to select one of the three different modes of "book and collect": "immediate", "extended" or "integral". The revised UX leads the user to the best choice in a clear and precise way, where for the first case the product is available immediately and ready for collection by the user; the second mode provides a waiting time of about 4 days; while the last one differs because the product is available only after a week, and the purchase is completed directly on e-commerce, unlike other cases.

The same checkout process dedicated to online purchase, as well as to book and collect "integral", has been modernised in order to improve the user's purchase funnel. Both the anonymous and registered user are able to intuitively manage different types of address books that refer to their shipping / billing addresses that can quickly select and update for each purchase. Subsequently the user is able to select the payment method he prefers and terminate the purchase.

Together with the User Experience, the user interface of the entire portal has been completely redesigned with a first mobile approach and in full responsiveness mode, making the portal accessible and navigable from any device without affecting the desired user experience. This has thus made it possible to dispose of the mobile version of the previous on-line shop, thus cutting down the costs of maintenance and evolution of the same (no longer having to maintain two versions of the same site, mobile and desktop).

The decision to adopt a new responsive User Interface is also determined mainly by the needs of the market and with the purpose of obtaining a higher Conversion Rate. In 2015, Google confirmed that the number of searches made by mobile devices compared to desktop devices was exceeded, and consequently the need to be optimized first of all for mobile devices.

In addition, a single interface for each viewport means better maintainability and faster pages to browse by users, improving the overall shopping experience. A further benefit obtained by a Responsive UI consists in SEO optimization: always since 2015, Google has declared to use the mobile-friendliness of a web portal as an additional index for the calculation of the ranking in its search engine. Moreover, with this approach it avoids the duplication of content which would be inevitable in a case where there are different UI per device.

For interactive applications such as the euronics.it portal, the usability and ergonomics of the relative UI are critical factors for obtaining user satisfaction. Taking into account the end user's perspective, the success of the entire development of an application software depends essentially on the quality of the interaction between the user and the system. In this regard, Technology Reply has decided to involve the same stakeholders throughout the entire process of conception and development through the use of specific communication tools for the exchange of information and general knowledge on the new e-commerce. By obtaining the UI prototyping thanks to the use of the latest technologies dedicated to front-end development being the main instrument used for this purpose has allowed Euronics Italia staff to actively contribute to the design of the portal, sharing timely feedback for improvement of the user experience.

The second great revolution that the project of the new Euronics site brought with it was at the infrastructural level. The entire e-commerce portal and all its components, both front-end and back-end, from now on stand their groundwork on an Oracle IaaS infrastructure completely in the cloud. Porting from the previous application infrastructure was transparent to Euronics and integrated third-party systems. This choice was dictated by key factors such as efficiency in performance and low maintenance costs guaranteed by the adoption of Oracle Cloud, together with a better integration and flexibility obtained from the ecosystem based exclusively on Oracle technologies.

In fact, Oracle has achieved an important goal with the creation of its second generation of cloud infrastructure, which guarantees fundamental peculiarities for the construction of a successful business such as that of Euronics Italia.

Oracle's IaaS 2.0 is based on an architecture that allows the achievement of Enterprise-Level high availability, so the availability of the service is guaranteed at all times, along with high performance. This flexibility and usefulness typical of the cloud are also accompanied by granular control, security and predictability that are attributable to on-premise infrastructures.

Among the various services offered by Oracle available in the EMEA area are: fast and scalable computational resources that can be translated into individual VMs to calculation instances up to 52-core bare metal; various Cloud Storage options positioned on a high-performance network; the Oracle Database on demand with flexible configurations and dedicated hardware performance.

At Euronics, several Oracle components are currently used, including:

  • Oracle Commerce Platform and its components (Oracle Endeca)
    Oracle Commerce Platform is a solid, modern platform that offers various possibilities for managing the e-commerce portal, such as creating omnichannel experiences, customising content, different promotion templates on orders, individual products and combinations of items.

    Oracle Endeca is a hybrid search-analytical database that allows free search functionality available on the portal and advanced search filters available in category pages and product search. A daily update procedure takes care of feeding the entire product catalogue to Endeca in order to have an updated version of the catalogue.

  • Rightnow Live Chat
    Live chat cloud software that provides a simple and effective tool to support the end user in the purchase process, or even in case of assistance for the resolution of any problem that the latter needs. Sessions instantiated directly by e-commerce customers allow a timely resolution of any obstacles encountered, thus increasing productivity, conversion rate and ensuring a boost satisfaction with greater user involvement.

  • Oracle IaaS 2.0 available in EMEA, described above.

The new E-Commerce portal of Euronics Italia summarises the following core features:

  • Navigating an assorted catalogue with over 100,000 continuously updated products, with related search functions and the possibility to refine searches using filters;
  • Display of the product sheet and the technical sheet of each product;
  • Management of the comparison between products;
  • Management of the cart;
  • Management of the checkout and fast checkout of an order with integration with the payment gateways for the execution of the payment;
  • Management of 3 different types of Book and Withdrawals, which allow the user to book one or more products and collect it in the store with the possibility of online payment or at the time of collection;
  • Management of user profiles in a personal area complete with address book, order history, history, reservations and wish list;
  • Search for sales points and flyers;
  • Management of phone top-ups;
  • Ability to make purchases of digital content;
  • Shop in Shop (mini-store by brand);
  • Management and provision of editorial content and promotional pages, which are generated and managed by a custom CMS, able to support preview functionality thanks to the rendering of changes directly on the browser;
  • Management of InfoPoints and Totems in sales points (catalogue browsing and registration);
  • SEO management and optimisation;
  • Multi-site browsing for desktop and mobile channels;
  • Front-end UI of the full responsive online shop.

Furthermore, integrations have been implemented with third-party systems for the functionalities of:

  • Loyalty program for customer loyalty;
  • Up-selling and cross-selling features;
  • Recommendation engines;
  • Sharing on social media;
  • Product reviews;
  • Euronics Newsletter.

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    REPLY VALUE

    The solution designed and developed by Technology Reply demonstrates how the consolidated experience on the reference sector and the certified technological skills can enable large retailers to create complex and innovative systems, able to meet the needs of the final consumer.
    Thanks to the marketing activities, the development of the Sales Network, the attention to new technologies and with the support of Technology Reply, Euronics Italia is reconfirmed as an absolute protagonist of the Italian large-scale retail market in the electronics world.

  • REPLY COMPANY

    Technology Reply is the Reply Group company specialized in consulting, design and implementation of solutions based on Oracle technology. Through certification processes, participation in the Beta Programs and codevelopment initiatives conducted directly with Oracle Corporation, for over 20 years Technology Reply pursues a process of constant innovation to guarantee companies qualified support. Thanks to the skills acquired, Technology Reply is able to support companies in all phases of the transformation process of information systems, from design to implementation, of innovative solutions. Technology Reply is the first Italian partner to have reached the Oracle OPN Specialized Platinum Partner certification level and is currently also Oracle Cloud Select Partner.

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    CLIENT

    Euronics Italia, a leading group in the distribution of home appliances and consumer electronics, was founded in 1999 as an evolution of the historic GET brand, established in 1972 by an important group of retailers in the sector. Entrepreneurs who, in their territory, have achieved leadership positions in terms of turnover and distribution coverage. In over twenty years, the Group has developed with the inclusion of new members, levering, above all, on the local sign of each of them. The evolution of the markets, the growth of competitive dynamics and the internationalisation of the business, making the needs to establish a European Group clear. As a result, the GET Group has become the promoter of EURONICS INTERNATIONAL, an organisation present today throughout Europe with over 11,500 points of sale. The adoption of the Euronics banner in Italy marks a new way of conceiving the retailing of home appliances and consumer electronics: the distribution from "neutral" channel becomes the protagonist of the marketing process by developing a direct dialogue with its client. Therefore, communication plays a fundamental role: Euronics Italia, with increasing investments on the main national and local media, strengthens the brand and develops an intense promotional activity. Thanks to the marketing activities, the development of the Sales Network and the supervision of new technologies, today Euronics is an absolute protagonist of the Italian market.