Koželj

New website and online shop

https://www.kozelj.si/en

Koželj Wines is a family business with more than 25 years of tradition. Known as The House of Good Wines, the company focuses predominantly on selling high-quality wines by renowned Slovene and Foreign producers while also offering famous spirits and other alcoholic drinks.

Koželj’s rich offer enables business and private customers to buy wines from the most famous wine regions around the world in one place. What is more, Koželj is a vital distributor for smaller wine producers and a valuable source of information on wine. The company’s experts are excellent consultants and also make wine lists for clients.

New website and online shop:

Planning
Design (UX, UI)
Development

faster loading of the website on the desktop

faster loading of the website on the mobile

more mobile user purchases

Wine gets better with age but a website doesn’t

While aged wines are held in high esteem among fans and experts, nobody is interested in old websites, let alone old e-commerce sites. Slow loading speeds, poor mobile responsiveness and a complicated upgrade process are among the most evident signs that a site needs a thorough upgrade.

These were also the main issues that plagued Koželj’s website when the client first approached us. Their online shop couldn’t keep up with the growing number of items and the latest online trends, which made satisfying online wine shoppers increasingly difficult. In addition to the above-mentioned challenges, the site suffered from several other problems that we decided to address.

The main ones were:

• The site couldn’t sync with the client’s ERP.
• There were no additional options for B2B buyers (setting up an individual profile with tailored prices was impossible, which • • meant there was no incentive for Koželj’s business customers to buy drinks online).
• Many key functions didn’t work (submitting a complaint, internal search, product filtering or adding a promo code).
• The UI was fairly unintuitive.

A new platform brings new possibilities

Koželj’s old website was built on a platform that wasn’t flexible enough to allow for quick and easy upgrades. Vital fixes to modernise the shop were either very expensive or difficult to implement. It is for this very reason that we created Koželj’s new online universe in Shopware. This modern platform is extremely scalable, which makes site upgrades and SEO tweaks a breeze.

By migrating to a better platform, we made the new website much more future-proof. What is more, the site now boasts 31% faster loading times and welcomes mobile visitors with a much more responsive design. Due to a mobile-friendly browsing experience, the number of mobile users who make a purchase has risen by 27%.

Killing two birds with one stone

While Koželj’s old site only enabled limited ERP integration, the new platform finally merges these two worlds completely. When the client’s team edits stock levels or product information in their ERP system, the changes are immediately reflected on the site. This not only saves tons of time but also limits confusion.

A good ERP integration also benefits Koželj’s customers as it enables easy order tracking. When the order is being processed, every status change triggers the site’s automated mailing system, which means that customers receive constant updates on the status of their packages.

B2B-suite make lives of business clients easier

The implementation of Shopware enabled us to enrich the upgraded site with an important new feature: a modern and practical B2B suite. This means that business customers can finally order products online by creating a business account with individually negotiated quotes.

Additionally to individual pricing, a business suite has many more practical features. Businesses can, for example, determine user roles with different rights. This way, certain employees can, for example, only order pre-determined items in limited amounts (up to a set budget). Roles are assigned by managers or team leaders who have the highest level of access and confirm each purchase.

A good online shop must also serve good content

Koželj’s mission doesn’t only consist of selling wine and spirits. The family business also strives to educate the customers on the rich history of winemaking and the culture surrounding it. For this reason, the new website is much more than just an online shop with a few random pieces of content. Together with Koželj’s team, we’ve created a proper encyclopedia for wine lovers.

In addition to detailed product descriptions, it also offers:

• a wine dictionary,
• an overview of the most important wine regions around the world,
• the profiles of the most famous wine producers,
• a blog that also includes the latest wine-related news.

We are immensely proud of the fact that our content team has also taken part in preparing many pieces of content for these categories.

An online wine cellar like no other

To boost traffic and conversions, a web shop doesn’t only need a strong portfolio. It also needs to be efficient in addressing the needs of a modern online shopper.

And to achieve this, two things are vital:

1. A platform with enough flexibility for quick updates that can bring it to speed with new trends and changing consumer habits, and
2. A CMS that enables the site owner to quickly upgrade or rearrange content.

Aiming to bring the user experience to a new level, we provided Koželj’s online wine cellar with the following functionalities

• The Ability to quickly create promotional subpages and expose them on the site.

• The Ability to expose additional content segments, such as Winemaker of the Month, Bestsellers, Koželj’s Choice etc.

• A new homepage segment for additional services, such as engraving, glass rental, and experiences.

• Availability updates – if the customer wishes to order an item that is not in stock, they can choose to be notified once it can be ordered again.

• Klaviyo integration for automated mailing, which enables the client to easily update their customers on special promotions and new items. We also used Klaviyo to address the issue of abandoned carts. All online visitors that put a product in the cart but don’t finish the purchase automatically receive promotional emails.

When we can toast a successful project

It’s great to work with a team of experts who are able to tailor their skillset to the specifics of their client’s business. In our case, this means the distribution of wines and spirits.

When developing our new online store, Optiweb’s specialists always kept these specifics in mind. They provided crucial advice regarding product categorisation and created an attractive website that makes for a much more pleasant purchasing experience.
With its optimised, clearly structured, and content-rich product descriptions, the new online store isn’t only a valuable source of information for a wide spectrum of buyers, it is also useful for our sales team as well as B2B partners. And thanks to full ERP integration, managing the site is easy. All the changes are synchronised in the background, which saves a ton of work.

Lucija Koželj,
head of marketing

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