Crafting a Successful Ecommerce Replatforming and User Experience

Mixing Innovation and Imagination

In any creative endeavor, having the right tools and supplies goes a long way toward achieving a vision. It’s not so different with ecommerce websites, and Plaid had found itself with the development equivalent of an artistic block. Technical debt had accrued over the years, to the point where even minor updates, like adding a simple filter or changing a menu item, required significant effort. They used IBM’s AS/400 as their enterprise resource planning (ERP) software – a legacy platform, not cloud-based or open-source – and it had been in place for so long that the backend integrations were a mystery. And as they added new products to their site, the increasing difficulty of making updates to the site also made it challenging for them to manage the categorization and presentation of their catalog.

Plaid engaged Guidance to dive in and help with an ecommerce replatforming and restructuring project, one that – similar to the DIY sensibilities of their customers – Plaid would be able to easily manage for themselves once it was complete. They chose Adobe Commerce Cloud as their new platform, and began the process of designing a future-proof ecommerce experience. However, like a lot of ecommerce businesses, they were still committed to using the older AS/400 system as their ERP. So the team at Guidance dug into the existing backend integrations, and did the necessary work to cleanly integrate the old ERP with the new ecommerce platform.

The ability to more easily update their site, combined with the continual additions of new products and product lines, created an immediate need to not only restructure their product catalog but also the navigational strategy for the site. Plaid wanted to make it as simple as possible for all customers to find what they want, regardless of their chosen wayfinding method (shopping by craft, brand, or product category, for example). Guidance developed the organizational logic for Plaid’s sitemap, and provided Plaid with multiple megamenu templates to deploy as they expanded their offerings. This ensured the site would continue to have a strong navigational foundation while providing flexibility for future growth.

Painting a Perfect PDP Picture

One of the biggest challenges of the previous user experience was choosing a color. Plaid’s variety of paint product lines may each contain hundreds of options, and the old PDP setup required customers to navigate through separate pages for each variation. After adding one shade of a certain type of paint to their cart, the customer would have to backtrack through their search process to select the next shade they wanted to buy, and so on. 

Guidance revolutionized the Plaid PDP experience by developing a sleekly intuitive product selection interface. On an individual PDP, customers can select a color family from a dropdown menu, then scroll through all the shades within that color family. They can add selections from that color family to their cart while remaining on the same PDP, and then easily switch to another color family on the same PDP and make additional selections simply and quickly. 

Guidance also created color swatch thumbnails specific to the products themselves. For example, outdoor paint thumbnails are shown as solid colors, but thumbnails for stained glass paint are shown with the transparency it would have in a real-life application. They also built modules that allow customers to purchase sets of colors in one clean add-to-cart action – for example, when a new seasonal group of paints is released. The new interface makes Plaid’s vast paint selections easy to navigate, without overwhelming the user.

Building Out B2B Capabilities

Plaid also serves B2B customers, such as small and medium enterprises, makers with a tax-exempt status, and professional crafters. Plaid didn’t need all the B2B features that Adobe Commerce Cloud offers, but creating a tailored experience for wholesalers and distributors was a necessity. 

To start, Guidance developed a streamlined registration process, including the collection of necessary documentation, for efficient review and approval of new resellers, wholesalers, and distributors. This also enabled a significant cost savings for Plaid, by integrating additional shipping information into the review process. Previously, applicants hadn’t been required to share information that might result in accessorial fees, such as liftgate service, inside deliveries, or appointment scheduling. By capturing this information, Plaid was able to provide more accurate shipping and delivery cost quotes for B2B customers, and did not have to absorb the cost of accessorial fees like they had under their old system. 

Plaid also gained the ability to customize what B2B versus B2C customers see when they log into their account. The customer dashboards are similar, but B2C wishlists – from which items are removed when they’re added to cart and purchased – appear as requisition lists for B2B customers, from which items don’t disappear, so they allow for easy reordering. Guidance also enabled the option for B2B customers to upload CSV files with SKUs to add to their requisition lists, and the quick-order form that lets B2B customers search SKUs by name and add to cart directly from their searches.

Additionally, B2B customers needed access to different pricing options and had different order placement requirements. Guidance provided Plaid with the tools to manage six different price lists for these customers. The pricing a given B2B customer sees on PDPs reflects the list to which they’ve been assigned, and the system automatically enforces minimum order amounts and inner pack increments for each item.

Plug-and-Play Content Management

One of Plaid’s biggest pain points was the inflexibility of their previous website’s content management system. It had become difficult to maintain, and as a result, necessary updates and upgrades weren’t being applied, so that even minor changes to the visual presentation were difficult for their team to implement. As part of the replatforming project, Plaid wanted to be able to make content updates to their site that wouldn’t require additional design or development work.

To solve for this, Guidance built a wide-ranging set of content modules within Adobe Commerce Cloud. The reusable content blocks ensure that Plaid can easily keep their website fresh – especially important when considering how often they add new product lines to their offerings. Plaid also asked for, and Guidance delivered, the ability to easily swap out certain decorative elements on the site for new promotions, changes of seasons, and the like. To make sure site visitors wouldn’t be confused by repeated changes in appearance, Guidance provided Plaid with a site-specific UI guide, to help their graphics team maintain brand consistency with their updates.

Inspirational, Not Transactional

Plaid divides their site visitors into two broad buckets – “Seekers” and “Shoppers.” Seekers are looking for high-level crafting content, including tutorials, step-by-step project instructions, and tips for product usage. Shoppers consume that content as well, but they already have purchase intent. They’re looking for deeper product information and specific crafting techniques related to those products. 

Plaid’s aim is to turn Seekers into Shoppers where possible, while keeping both audiences engaged and reducing friction in the purchase process. The key to achieving this during the redesign was to focus on inspiration – to seamlessly integrate education and ecommerce, giving all their site visitors the opportunity to engage meaningfully with the products they could buy. 

Guidance fulfilled this goal by blending ecommerce opportunities into Plaid’s blog posts, tutorial videos, and project showcases. For example, when a customer reads an article about a particular crafting project, they’ll have the opportunity to add all the necessary supplies to their cart with a single click, using one of the “Bundle & Save” modules Guidance created. And if a customer already owns some of the products from one of these curated supply lists, they can unselect those items and purchase only what they need.

Crafting a Virtual Revenue Stream

In addition to physical products, Plaid has an expansive library of free and paid digital downloads for a variety of crafting projects. Their previous ecommerce platform didn’t make it easy to manage or deliver virtual products, but the move to Adobe Commerce Cloud opened up the opportunity to develop this as a lead generation driver and an additional source of revenue.

Guidance built a robust virtual product sales workflow, allowing Plaid’s customers to purchase and download digital products just like physical ones, enabling instant access after order confirmation. When logged into their account, customers have a new “My Downloadable Products” section on their dashboard where they can access all their digital products. Plaid can also restrict each digital product to a limited number of downloads per purchase onto the customer’s devices.