The success of Norwegian home supply and improvement retailer Megaflis stems from an idea so simple, yet so very hard to implement. Founded in Oslo in 1997, the company early on learned how to master the craft of negotiating large quantities high quality products, directly from manufacturer, thereby removing the middleman to cut prices significantly for the end consumer. Hence, the success lies in that the customer do not have to look for discounts or campaigns as prices are always the lowest possible.
The company boasts 21 magnificent stores across Norway with over 600 employees who tirelessly work to provide better in-store and online shopping experiences. In 2020, Megaflis had revenues of more than 2 billion NOK.
While the pandemic brought inconveniences to all of us, it certainly did not seem to stop us from shopping online for home supplies. However, from the retailer’s perspective, creating a delightful customer experience for online shoppers has proven to be a tough nut to crack.
One of the bigger challenges facing Megaflis was managing an increasingly growing assortment. While the physical stores offer around 8,000 products, the online version provides close to 19,000. When searching for a new e-commerce platform, scalability was a high priority.
Creating a great online shopping experience, selling home supply and improvement products online, is hard. Some aspects of the in-store customer experience are easily lost, such as getting inspiration and a feel for materials, colors, textures, patterns, etc. A key success factor for Megaflis is how they have managed to create outstanding in-store customer experiences, something that they now want to recreate online.
Another challenge was how to make the online shopping experience relevant to each visitor while also handling potential scalability issues associated with a growing number of products and customers. Despite years of e-commerce experience, it was clear that a platform shift was needed to better handle these aspects.
The Megaflis team therefore consulted commerce solution provider Avensia about the possibilities of taking e-commerce to the next level. At this point, it was clear that the current solution (a combination of Magento, Nosto, and Algolia) would not meet future requirements regarding stability, scalability, and personalization.
The commerce solution presented to Megaflis was centered on EPIserver, framed by Avensia’s Nitro Storefront, and supported by Voyado Elevate, which provides key web store functionality using AI for personalized search, navigation, and recommendations.
“We were pleased to find that now we had a complete, proven, and easily implemented online business package to support our future growth,” said Frank Jonassen, Head of IT at Megaflis.
In addition, Elevate has enabled the merchandisers at Megaflis to get full control over promotion and demotion, pinning of products as well as personalization of product listings, something that will be further developed in the months to come.
The implementation took six months to complete, and the new solution was launched on time, only underlining Megaflis’ conviction of the importance of selecting solid partners.
“Voyado provides us with a continuously developing platform, backed by AI, to guide, advise, and inspire our customers. It allows us to improve shopping experiences and to systematically do A/B-testing for optimising our product exposure,” Frank Jonassen continues.
With Voyado Elevate implemented, Megaflis feels it is in a much stronger position to take on the future of online commerce. Looking at the post-launch results of online sales, Megaflis has already seen a significant increase in both conversion rate and average order value, increasing equally as much.
“We are very pleased with the results of our new modern platform. The increased performance, more relevant search results, and higher quality of product images combined have increased our conversion rate and revenue”,” said Frank Jonassen.
Looking ahead, the team at Megaflis is convinced that Elevate provides a radically better foundation for further developing personalized and relevant experiences across different channels, including email marketing, campaigns, newsletters, and physical stores.
“It feels great to have a modern and solid platform in place. It will support our future efforts. With Elevate we are not limited in our ambitions,” Frank Jonassen concludes.
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