Bikebiz project

Big, Ambitious, Sales Forcing e-commerce for Bikebiz Webstore!

Intention: Development of customized Magento-2 e-commerce solution from scratch

Technologies used: Magento 2, React, Ember.js, Bootstrap CSS Framework, Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Custom Integrations

People Involved: 6 developers

Timeframe: 2 years

Previous version of Bikebiz looked really outdated

Prehistory of the development

The online presence of Bikebiz brand has been long established at the time of their first contact with Skynix. Starting in 1987 as a small second-hand bike dealer, Bikebiz quickly grew to become one of Australia's leading bike retailers. And they seem to be at the top of their home market for many Australian-favorite bike brands. The previous version of their website was running on an old and unknown yet fairly powerful platform.

As you see, the older version no longer met the requirements of time.

And not only from the design point of view. Since the first release of Bikebiz website, the e-commerce industry has dramatically transformed.

Their existing website could not meet today's customers' needs for practicality and simplicity, neither Bikebiz own complex management requirements.

At that point, Magento 2 was just announced, and choosing it as a platform would be a risky step ahead.

Skynix took that risk and proposed to try it, and that was a good choice.

Having passed a difficult way through the raw Magento 2 development, Skynix team managed to get all the necessary components working as a breeze.

Bikebiz received a full-featured system which has now become their team's reliable companion, remarkably transforming their operations, skyrocketing their ROI and allowing them to keep growing for years to come.

Custom e-commerce solution to meet all business needs

When you are running a web-store you want any required modifications to the site developed quickly and responsibly. You want a developer to spend as little time as possible and deliver results when you need them. Does that sound like too much to hope for? We don’t believe it does and we’re here to prove it! Just recently a team of IT professionals at Skynix delivered a highly complicated e-commerce solution. To see what we mean, visit https://www.bikebiz.com.au. We believe you might find some features and ideas there that could help your business. Core features of the site: This store was designed for a distributed Google Cloud-based architecture with database replications, load balancer, cybernats, pods, dockers, health and security monitoring. A fully automated Continuous Integration architecture was implemented to automate builds, tests, deployments on staging servers and releases. The software was a built-from-scratch Magento 2 Community Edition. Magento 2 delivers a high level of complexity with the capacity to be customized as needed to fit the most sophisticated customer’s needs. Speaking about Bikebiz, such customizations included:

32 third party premium level modules installed
a unique theme created from scratch
SLI Search service implemented for better search experience and performance

Core features of the site:

This store was designed for a distributed Google Cloud-based architecture with database replications, load balancer, cybernats, pods, dockers, health and security monitoring.

A fully automated Continuous Integration architecture was implemented to automate builds, tests, deployments on staging servers and releases.

The software was a built-from-scratch Magento 2 Community Edition. Magento 2 delivers a high level of complexity with the capacity to be customized as needed to fit the most sophisticated customer’s needs.

Speaking about Bikebiz, such customizations included:

32 third party premium level modules installed
a unique theme created from scratch
SLI Search service implemented for better search experience and performance
Google Tag Manager integrated and configured for Enhanced e-commerce analysis
Olark and Live chat services were implemented for gathering data from many different custom forms
reCaptcha and Cloudflare set to perform better content delivery and DDOS protection

Integration with another Magento store of original parts and accessories (like Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki) developed and set up
Orderhive accountant service integrated
Special deals module based on frontend Ember.js framework was created from scratch

results

Results of 2 years agile development

Due to implementation and integration of all those third-party modules and services, Skynix managed to be cost-effective, significantly reducing development expenses and timelines. Timely launched, upgraded and modern Magento 2 Bikebiz e-commerce store was rapidly growing. During the first three months after launch, the business has multiplied their income and covered 2 years of development by a profit of 3 months. Bikebiz became a number one bikes retailer in Australia and left their competitors far behind.

Is Magento 2 really perfect? Does it cover all needs?

Unfortunately, no. Having a closer look at all sides of Magento and all solutions we implemented, Bikebiz team noticed how further they can improve business processes and earn even more with the same effort and resources. They involved world leading experts and they built two strategies that had shown the weak pieces of a resulting architecture.

First, they found that site speed has a direct correlation to conversion rates

As it is not possible to convert large, heavy and slow Magento frontend.

The solution here was to code a completely custom theme using fast and modern Javascript framework - Reactjs, and use Magento and it's RESTful API as a backend only.

Following implementation of Reactjs, page speed was multiplied by six ( ! ) times! This helped improve conversion rates by 30%, meaning more profit with less expense.

Second, optimizing order management processes

The business had grown to the point where Bikebiz team couldn't process all orders during business days. And they noticed that this process in Magento is quite over-engineered and slow.

The solution was to code some order management application using Javascript Vue.js framework and Magento API. This application was picking up new orders from Magento and let staff process it using intuitive, super fast interface and workflow.

This helped to speed up the process 1.5 times and let them be ready for more orders and growing income.

As a conclusion

By the example of the Bikebiz project, the incredible potential of Magento 2 CE becomes clear. Despite it still cannot be called perfect, it is possible to customize this system to meet all needs dictated by time.