B2B and B2C E-commerce with Magento

This case study focuses on the second phase of Innovative Skincare’s Magento multisite project that began in our first original case study. In this second part, we'll touch on the consolidation of multiple web products into one succinct and scalable ecosystem powered by Adobe Commerce (Magento 2).

For those unfamiliar with Innovative Skincare Clinical (iSC), they're a highly successful skincare product manufacturer based in Burbank, California. Their focus on high standards of quality ingredients and clinical testing has led them to become the preferred product line for estheticians and medi-spas around the world.

With their success over the years, iSC outgrew the capabilities of their overseas team, and needed a savvy local group of Magento developers to help them expand and maintain their online capabilities.

Noted in our first case study, Innovative Skincare had a large and complicated Magento e-commerce site originally developed by an overseas company. iSC’s global presence with wholesalers and distributors needed to become a scalable but sustainable ecommerce machine to accommodate their marketing programs and logistical needs.

For context, you’ll see a list of iSC’s goals at each of the three phases while specifically highlighting the worthy mentions later in the article. Our high level of synergy, since early 2020, grew from an initial maintenance engagement to a full redevelopment of their Adobe Commerce online store. Here are the goals listed under each of the two phases.

Phase One: Initial goals

Maintenance

At the start, Endertech was hired as a software maintenance company to take over support of iSC’s existing B2B Magento site. The original site previously operated with dozens of custom modules, each with their own rules. These modules enforced and track rules like:

• Product access

• Discount prices

• Rewards system

• Partner Directory

• Marketing Library

Endertech quickly learned the inherited modules to help support the platform over a year taking over the full responsibility in providing website maintenance services.

Phase Two: Pandemic Goals

Once the 2020 pandemic hit, iSC quickly pivoted to help its partners, many of whom were affected by the economic lockdown. This led to the creation of Magento multisite sales channels for easier product access to each of the different categories of customers.

Concierge site

For iSC’s smaller medi-spa partners, they developed the concept of the “Concierge Site”. iSC’s Concierge program is essentially a drop-ship service. iSC partners who sign up for this program, can purchase low volumes of product at significant discounts, for direct drop-ship to their client.This service allowed the medi-spas to continue earning margin on product sales, while avoiding having to inventory and ship the products themselves.

Affiliate site

For larger medi-spas, iSC developed the concept of their “Affiliate Program”. This program allowed medi-spas to co-brand an e-commerce affiliate marketing website selling products directly to consumers at full retail.This is also known as affiliate marketing. iSC handles all inventory and fulfillment, sharing revenue with the Affiliates who direct their clients to the co-branded e-commerce site.

B2C site

After the implementation of the new web capabilities for their partners, iSC developed a B2C site so consumers could purchase directly from iSC in the event that their local medi-spa was not currently operating.

Year 2 goals

The work referenced above in phase 2 was completed in 2020 as the world adjusted to the new travel and economic conditions. You can learn more about this phase and its intricacies from our previous case study. In 2021, with several development and launch phases completed, iSC requested Endertech to redevelop their B2B Adobe Commerce website. This would bring their Concierge, Affiliate, and B2C systems together with the B2B site for a full Magento multisite setup.

Magento B2B eCommerce Development

Bringing a Magento multisite project together is a heavy undertaking for a development company of any size, but it’s the type of technical perplexity Endertech loves to decode. As our unofficial slogan indicates, a small business tech shop, with big business tech chops!

The goal of the B2B e-commerce project was to migrate essential functionality from their old Magento platform to the new one developed in 2020. All this while also improving everything else we could. This included the site’s overall design, the structure of their marketing programs, to the technical quality of the code itself.

Over the course of 2021, we carefully analyzed each feature of iSC’s B2B website, documented all requirements, and through a series of weekly sprints, migrated all functionality and improved many aspects of their online business. Here are some details of the project, including what makes the relationship so successful.

Regular communication

Weekly meetings

One cornerstone of Endertech’s successful relationship with iSC, and of all our best client relationships, is meeting regularly to review progress and status. Every week our teams connect to share what we’ve been working on and plan the way forward. A transparent process in development any client can appreciate.

Meetings with agenda

And yet, it is not enough to simply meet each week, our meetings with iSC all have an agenda which we prepare for. This makes for efficient and productive meetings. This helps everyone keep priorities aligned in a very busy and fluid environment.

Flexible Budget

Another cornerstone of success is flexibility. New and unexpected things come up all the time, and handling them fluidly requires the ability to quickly scale resources up and down. A flexible agreement based upon rough estimates of resource requirements allows our teams to collaborate freely with minimal bureaucratic delays.

In-house Resources

Internal team

Having an in-house team focused on digital success is a major benefit in the Endertech / iSC collaboration. Endertech brings the technical muscle, but that muscle would be useless without iSC’s in-house team directing the priorities coming from the executives.

ERP Integrator

iSC’s back office systems are complex, and the integrations with their Magento multisite setup make it even more so. Having an ERP team familiar with those operations helps make the integration requirements clear, and lessens the burden on Endertech to learn all of iSC’s inner operations.

Magento Multisite

iSClinical.com is a Magento Multisite setup. There are currently over a dozen websites operating from a single backend Magento management platform. As discussed previously, there’s the Concierge site, Affiliate site, and the B2C site, but let’s highlight the B2B site below.

B2B

The Magento B2B ecommerce site is our most recent deployment for iSC. It implements a rich set of B2B ecommerce features that include pricing and inventory rules for multiple B2B customer groups. It also leverages much of the design detail built for the B2C site.

This is one of the primary values of a Magento multisite setup, the ability to share both backend platform and frontend theme across sites. A huge benefit for similar ecommerce sites looking to create and separate these entities to customers.

ERP Integration

Microsoft Great Plains

Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains is a sales and inventory accounting software that can bring all your store’s data together. The process of bringing such technologies together is known as ERP integration or a Magento ERP integration. In this situation, it can be called a Great Plains integration but here are some of the details involving this project.

The Magento multisite integrates with their back office accounting system, ‘Great Plains’ for order fulfillments and customer database integration. This accurately tracks sales and order status.We worked closely with the development team that understands the Great Plains end in order to help the third-party integrator use Magento’s REST APi.

We added custom data exposures to uncover or consume data. Data examples can be: sales order information that eventually may end up in Great Plains or customer data or customer reward points that need to be passed back into the website.

Custom Payment Module

Creating a Magento custom payment module involved a few steps using 3rd party technologies. Here are the important points to remember.

iS Clinical’s back office systems use a custom Payment Processor called `Payfabric`. Payfabric is a cloud based payment processing solution that makes it easy for merchants and developers to accept payments from anyone and anywhere, while offering simplicity, security and flexibility.

Endertech created a custom payment integration with the popular payment processor, Payfabric, so the B2B any customer can manage credit cards (add/delete) in their virtual wallet from the Magento website.

This provides multiple card choices during checkout and records transactions accurately. This became a portal for customers to manage their Payfabric credit cards while they’re shopping. The website then passes this information to the Great Plains system where the sales order is finalized and the Card is charged.

Reward points system

There are multiple facets to Magento ecommerce. For growing a customer base and loyalty there’s the Magento reward points system. Again, there were several tweaks of basic and custom modifications that made them work. Let’s look at those now.

A Rewards Points functionality is included into the site where the iSC administrator can define how their B2B Customers can accrue or earn points when they purchase products from their web catalog.

Each B2B Customer is awarded a certain amount of points to start based on their partner status with iSC. Partners can use these points against their purchase of samples and testers and other product categories. This is a great way for the client to promote some of their products. The Customer has visibility into the transaction history of the reward points earned and spent.

Customizations were added so the system can control when and how reward points are awarded. Mostly, these customizations were based on iS Clinical business rules. It added the ability to update the sales order reward points from Great Plains via REST API. The integration was offered so their Great Plains based “customer service” orders also could accrue points all in the ‘customer account’.

Partner employee benefits

Extended benefits for employees of B2B partnerships. The employee points reward system in Magento is now available to employees. With access to varying discounts for iSC’s products, this further grows their customer base and loyalty.

Select B2B Partners/Customers are allowed to add a client-defined number of employees to their benefits program. This increases their own partner contribution and sales records.

Employees enrolled into the Benefits program have access to the iS Clinical Benefits Store which provides catalog items at discount rates. Again, all of this is managed from the same database system without having to learn new interface layouts or buttons.

Partner locator tool

Using the Amasty Store Locator extension, finding partner locations is simple and accurate. Here are some highlights of the new feature.

The partner locator feature was added to easily find iSC’s Certified SkinCare Partners in the US. Also, without forgetting partners outside of the US, an external link directs users easily to those links.

Also, a REST API was custom built by Endertech so the partner’s store data inside of Great Plains would automatically populate and refresh the Partner locations on their Magento multisite every 24hrs. For new partnerships added in Great Plains, there isn’t a second step necessary to update the locator extension.

Additionally, custom frontend/Javascript customizations were done to tweak the store location results, per client filters.

Custom Designs

With the level of improvements to the site, no level of detail was overlooked. On the B2C site, custom location icons for the Partner Locator map were created. Red pin bubbles on a map were replaced with the iSC company logo, adding custom touch to a popular feature.

Another B2C site custom design was a hover effect for the “4 Steps to Great Skin” top menu. Hovering the mouse over the images will indicate the corresponding step in the 4 steps.

On the B2B site, a custom dashboard for Professional partner accounts was created. It shows the reward points status. It has a bulk order custom form named “Purchase again” for simplified ordering. It includes all the necessary items iSC partners may need quick access to.

Skin Quiz and Product Finder

Helping your customers find the right product through a shoppable quiz is appealing and engaging for customers to interact with. A short quiz for customers to take is a smart addition in order to help users find the perfect product.

This way, it’s less overwhelming for shoppers who don’t fully understand each product’s purpose. Here are some of the points to know for iSC’s skin quiz.

A Custom Product Finder based on Customer inputs was designed for iS Clinical.

iSC management can edit and define the Quiz questions and answer combinations on the backend to associate the product catalog drawn out based on user answers.

Brand Folder Accessibility

A custom module was built in so the iS Clinical admin team can configure which B2B Customers can view select marketing material from their partner dashboards. The branding material consists of things like images, logos, scientific papers, videos and more to use for their own marketing campaigns. This increases brand uniformity across all locations and maintains high standards in brand identity.

Quick Order Forms

A Custom B2B Order form with infinite scroll was built in for an easy ordering process for the B2b customer. With the nift AJAX add to cart functionality, the User can quickly add many different products to the cart quickly scrolling through the list.

There is a custom configuration for each product count that the customer can order and is defined from the backend for each customer group. This makes re-orders simple and fast for partners while protecting overall supply.

RMA System – Return Merchandise Authorization

A very robust return mechanism is used via Magento’s extensions that allows returns, facilitates communication between customer and client and reasons for returns either then leading to product exchange or store credit.

Customer View

Admin View for Returns

iSC started with the simple goal of ecommerce maintenance then shifted priorities to what is now a multi-channel sales operation. Their website updates have led to increased sales, brand recognition, brand loyalty and partnership contributions. During uncertain economic conditions, iSC invested in their core sales vehicle.

The creation of their Concierge, Affiliate, and B2C websites addressed each of their customer’s needs. Small medi-spas, larger affiliates, and direct to consumer audiences were provided with the ease of order and delivery service they needed under changing economic circumstances.

Combining these three sites with an improved B2B website supplanted their dedication to deliver the highest quality service to their customers. Adding custom details to their Magento multisite setup has resulted in favorable sales growth and customer growth and retention.

At times, an important question for business owners comes up. Do you wait for sales to increase before investing, or do you invest first in order to increase sales? Of course every industry is different, but this case study has proven that investments in your core systems of business can have exponential returns. A sign that iSC made the right decision. If you’re looking to do the same, we would love to hear from you.