Mass

Digital gift card for online purchases

www.mass.si

Mass is a footwear company with a 30-year tradition of excellence and over 400 employees. With 50 stores in Slovenia and Croatia, 8 registered trademarks and over 8.000 footwear models, it is the region’s number one shoe retailer.

We started working with Mass in 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Our first project was setting up their webstore. Due to the pandemic and the corresponding closing of stores, the assignment turned into a race against time: we had to set up a functional website in just 10 days.

Mass’ long-term goal is to maintain its reputation of being the leading retailer of fashionable footwear at affordable prices. It’s important that they put their best foot forward. The company has to follow consumer trends and respond to customer demand. It has become very clear in recent years what the customers want – they want gift cards to become available in online stores as well. We are happy to code what the customers want.

With Optiweb’s help, Mass has joined the elite circle of online retailers who offer:

gift card payment in online stores
the purchase of gift cards in online stores

Project baseline

Mass implemented the SmartGifty gift card management system in all its physical stores in Slovenia and Croatia, linking all its cash registers into a single gift card purchase and payment system.

In order to offer the same service to their online customers, we outlined two primary project objectives.

The first was to make the Mass gift card a purchasable product in their online store set up on the Magento platform. The second was to make gift card payment possible on mass.si (Slovenia) and mass-shoes.com (Croatia).

We gave every challenge the boot – through testing

We carried the project through with the help of the SmartGifty gift card management system, using their API calls for filling and using Mass gift cards.

The project confronted us with two major challenges: incorporating the new feature into the online store’s existing framework (front and back-end development) and launching the client’s very first virtual product and integrating it into its ERP system.

We cleared all obstacles with prolonged and extensive testing of:

• the purchasing process,
• combined purchasing (gift card + footwear),
• gift card payments,
• combined payments (gift card + another payment method),
• cancellations (what to do when an order paid for partly by gift card, partly by a different payment method has been cancelled),
• product returns etc.

Project execution

1. Defining the project and establishing goals

We kicked the project off by outlining the client’s wants and needs in regards to content.

We defined the gift card’s main features as perceived by the user (what it must provide to webstore customers) and outlined gift card purchase and activation scenarios.

2. Design and development

We designed the visuals for the gift card category page and the product page based on the webstore’s existing design, and updated all shopping cart and purchase related pages.
We worked closely with the client’s technicians to successfully integrate the new product into the ERP system.

3. Testing and launch

All processes related to gift card purchasing were subjected to thorough testing.
We also updated all transactional emails sent to online store customers upon purchase.

We pursued our goals boots and all …

✔️ Mass gift card purchase on mass.si and mass-shoes.com – We accomplished both goals, installing the Mass gift card as both a purchasable product and a payment option in Mass’ online store. Credit can be added for any amount between €10 and €300 rounded to the nearest ten.

✔️ Promoting sustainability – E-gift cards are purchased online and sent to the customer’s email address.

✔️ Providing a user-friendly shopping experience – Gift cards can be used in online and physical stores. The credit can be used gradually. Regardless of where the card was purchased, customers can use the webstore to view the balance (online, in real time).

✔️ dentifying additional opportunities – We helped the client define new opportunities for upgrading the offer, i.e. personalized gift card designs.

We stepped into the shoes of regular partners

We introduced a number of additional features for Mass in 2022:
• Subscribing to price drop alerts – We equipped the online store with a “Notify me when the price drops” CTA, which soon became one of its most popular features.
• Expanding the base of email marketing subscribers – The price drop notification button has provided the means for personalized communication with website visitors. The moment the price of a selected product drops, a personalized notification is sent to the user who has subscribed to the service. This makes the sending out of targeted messages easier and ensures a healthy growth of the subscriber base.
• Subscribing to SMS notifications – Subscribing to mobile text alerts is another new feature on mass.si and mass-shoes.com. We also updated the client’s email notification subscription forms, making them user-friendly and fully integrated with the client’s email marketing platform, Klaviyo.

When buying a gift becomes a business opportunity

Exchanging gifts opens up new opportunities for a brand to stand out and expand its business. With a good selection of gift options, a store, be it online or physical, can address a new target audience and offer something new to their established customers.

The global gift card market has been on a steady growth trajectory in recent years. The Global Gift Card Market report predicts it will grow at a CAGR of 19.05% by 2027.

What does the Mass team say?

We decided to modernize our relatively outdated gift card system in August 2022. Originally, our intention was to implement a new system in our physical stores, but the project’s first draft made it clear that we won’t be able to do it without online support. This prompted us to focus on developing a system for purchasing and using gift cards online.

Optiweb helped us set up a modern and flexible online gift card system interlinked with our physical store system in just a few months (we launched the new system early in December 2022). The integration required a deep understanding of user experience and extensive knowledge of background systems (Navision, Magento, SmartGifty). The fruit of our collaboration, which entailed a lot of programming and development, is a completely automated gift card system in both online and physical stores.

Carrying out the gift card project has made us one of the few Slovenian retailers who offer a range of gift card options to their customers, granting them a variety of payment and activation methods, as well as different delivery options for both regular and digital gift cards.

We could not have done it without the help of Optiweb’s flexible, understanding and ‘user-oriented’ team.