Premier Designs uses Optimizely to Develop a B2B2C Portal for Independent Jeweler eCommerce Microsites to Sell Products Direct-to-Consumer
Premier Designs
Irving, TX
Retailer
Introduction
Founded in 1985, Premier Designs is an independent jeweler supplier selling to over 30,000 independent jewelers to the tune of $200M in annual sales. Unfortunately, their website was basic and had no real eCommerce experience. The site was challenging to manage for marketers and merchandisers as they required IT resources to make simple updates, causing roadblocks, and significantly limiting growth. Premier Designs was conducting the majority of their business transactions through manual processes, the site was cumbersome for users adding additional time to their sales cycle, and its lack of features and capabilities diminished their brand value.
Premier Designs decided to use Optimizely commerce to reinvent their website and create a real B2B2C experience. They selected Luminos Labs as their implementation partner to drive site development and integrations. The site approach was to launch the site lightning-fast, selecting the most essential features (B2B2C partner portal, microsites, integrations, etc.) and then optimize and grow based on analytics rather than guesswork.
B2B2C Customer Experience
The public Premier Designs website allows customers to shop through personal jeweler microsites with complete B2B2C functionality. An Optimizely Azure AD single sign-on login allows jewelers to create personal microsites with specific blocks and personalized data. The website’s responsive design enables customers to shop Premier Designs products through independent jeweler vendors.
Partner Portal
One of Premier Designs’ top priorities was to develop a jewelers Partner Portal. The Optimizely commerce system was integrated with their back-end ERP system to allow jewelers to create their own eCommerce microsites. An order dashboard can search and process orders, while an events dashboard can search, add, and edit jeweler marketing and messaging for events. When necessary, a jeweler impersonation tool allows administrators to place orders on behalf of a jeweler.
Customers can have multiple carts per order when purchasing from different jewelry vendors. Each vendor microsite can also feature various order types, custom catalogs per order type, and personalized pricing.
System Integrations
The development team created many custom templates to support newly digitized business process automation in Optimizely. Premier Designs integrated its digital commerce site with MS Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operation (ERP) using the Avensia Connector (ERP Connector). The Premier Designs B2B2C portal also included a custom JewelersAPI that provides endpoints to access jeweler data housed in Optimizely.
Premier Designs conducted extensive QA and User Acceptance Testing before launching all of this newly developed technology to Premier Designs’ thousands of independent jewelers with a comprehensive training package including documentation and videos.
Premier Designs has deployed an all-new online catalog and custom checkout to provide a complete B2B2C experience. It allows Premier to increase revenue by selling direct-to-consumer online through transactions with independent jewelers who handle fulfillment and customer relationships. In the partner portal, independent jewelers can efficiently manage their relationship with Premier Designs with event scheduling, order management, marketing tools, and a microsite creator. The marketing team can now exercise complete, independent control over the contents of the site, freeing up IT teams, making the company more efficient.
Technical Integrations
Alliance Payment Gateway
Optimizely Find
Hangfire
Melissa Data (Address Verification Service)
Microsoft Dynamics 365
MS Dynamics 365
OneSource (Taxware Integration)
ProPay (Payment Gateway)
ProtectPay
Redis