COBA: e-commerce

COBA are a European flooring specialist supplying a huge range of flooring products to a wide range of industries. Due to the size and diversity of their product ranges and the variety of industries they supply, COBA wanted to split and diversify their e-commerce websites to increase their presence and search engine optimisation without considerably increasing administration costs.

Web: www.cobaeurope.com

Solution

COBA wanted to reorganise their product ranges to separate their equestrian and safety flooring form their designer rugs and carpeting so they asked Xibis to develop a web based admin system to run multiple websites to service their client base more effectively.

Xibis set to work developing an administration database to allow COBA to develop their multiple websites and manage their products and customers with ease.

Step 1

The first step of the admin system is to interface with COBA’s existing Oracle database to co-manage their huge product range. The admin system links with a product database holding content such as images, categorisation information, stock levels and prices for trade and retail.

Step 2

The second step was to manage COBA’s customer list. The system allows users to login and order using an e-commerce payment system. After logging in the user can also add products to a wish list and sign up to newsletters to ensure they are kept up to date with the latest product releases and special offers. Users can be labelled as retail or traders to receive the correct pricing structure set in the system. Orders are then tracked to ensure swift delivery and a high level of customer care.

Step 3

Within the admin system, COBA can also build and manage multiple ‘niche’ websites. Each niche site has its own look, feel and product ranges to appeal to its dedicated market. All of the sites are maintained using a central content management system. A central database is maintained for both products and clients to eliminate overlap and increase efficiency. Products can be specific to one website or can appear in multiple websites to increase exposure.

Scheduled adverts can be timed to run on one or more of the niche sites to advertise special interest items and offers to keep the sites vibrant, current and fresh.

The best things about working with Xibis according to COBA

We wanted to develop our retail market but we couldn’t do this with our COBA Europe website as it would interfere with our trade business. We needed a system that would enable us to manage multiple websites without adding cost. The system that Xibis developed has allowed us to promote specific product ranges and target clients more effectively.

The Xibis system also integrates to our existing Oracle database so very little extra admin was needed to set this up. The system even links with our automated stores system so product picking and posting is done automatically saving overheads on each product.