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Mapstop.co.uk is an online map shop run by Global Mapping. The online business was losing potential customers because of problems with the website. Willing customers were abandoning their purchases before the checkout because it was difficult to complete the transaction.
Alan Smith, cartographer and managing director of Global Mapping, decided to turn the situation into an opportunity to improve the site.
“Our old site was clunky, and people had trouble buying from it. We wanted to retain more customers, increase product availability – and attract new customers and higher revenue for Global Mapping.”
Alan met Iain Row (managing director and senior web developer) from Prominent Media, and Iain took over the old website and started to implement a webshop e-commerce system. His team also developed the site to include file-downloading capabilities, so that customers could easily buy downloadable map products.
Working together, the new site started to develop. Alan’s vision was for the site to be similar to the amazon.com shopping experience, where customers could easily find and purchase a wide range of products.
“Iain has made it easy for me and my colleagues to add more products and make changes to the site ourselves. And we’ve quickly been able to offer an even wider range of products to our customers.”
Now, from a customer’s perspective, the site is easy to navigate, the products are in obvious categories, they can be easily found and purchased and the site has lots of products on offer.
As an e-commerce site, some products are subject to VAT, while others aren’t. The VAT also affects the delivery price – but only where the product itself is VATable. For Alan and his staff, the administration of VAT charges could sometimes seem akin to rocket science in terms of its complexity! It needed to be simple.
As a consumer, it’s nice to have a breakdown of how much you’re spending before you get to the buying stage. If you need to pay VAT, it’s good to know which items it applies to and how much of your cash it accounts for.
Now, with the new and improved website, when adding new items Alan just needs to tick a box to say whether VAT applies, and the website calculates and displays how much VAT is applicable. It also applies the appropriate amount of VAT to the delivery charge. The webshop applies the VAT, breaks it down and displays it once the item enters the shopping basket – so customers can see in advance the total amount in their trolley, together with a simple breakdown of their order. Easy!
The website now works really hard for Alan. If only 1/3 of an order contains VATable items, then VAT applies to only 1/3 of the delivery charge. The site works this out and makes it clear to the customer before the checkout stage.
“Thankfully, Iain has coded this whole process into the website, so here at Mapstop we don’t even have to think about it any more!”
Delivery charges can also be maddeningly complicated. They vary from product to product because some maps can be rolled and posted in tubes, while others need to remain flat. Plus, some may be heavy and cost more to post.
By buying certain combinations of products, the customer can save money – for example, where two maps can be rolled up and put into the same tube. Other product combinations, however, could cost more. With so many different combinations of products, calculating delivery charges was a bit of a headache.
Iain could see the labour-saving potential of an automated calculation for this, and he created a database of product combinations – one that would work out a true delivery charge. He then programmed in the VAT calculation for each combination, including the specific delivery charge.
The amount of time saved with this new system is immense! From the customer’s point of view, it all appears simple and, from the administrator’s side of things, it IS simple. Prominent Media has built a database clever enough to take over a lot of the complicated time-consuming calculations. It keeps things simple.
On an order-by-order basis, administration time is lower, and revenue is now 2.4 times higher, rising from £2.5k per month to £6k. Despite the labour-saving components of the new website, staff at Mapstop are certainly not twiddling their thumbs. Instead, they’re busy dispatching all the new sales!
Alan Smith, Mapstop“Working with Prominent Media went very well. We’re pleased with the site and would recommend the company to anyone.”