New VIEROL online shop successfully launched
On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of its company history, VIEROL is breaking new ground and has set itself up for the future with the online portal vierol-shop.de: With a self-developed and customer-oriented purchasing platform, the Oldenburg family-owned company is setting another important course for the consistently pursued digital transformation.
The strategic conception of the online shop, developed in Responsive Web Design, began in June 2021. The technical implementation is based on a proprietary shop system from VIEROL IT-Development. The relaunch of the new shop was accompanied by a variety of new functions and improvements in usability. The online shop shines in a new design and stands out with a fresh and modern look.
Interested customers will find it easy to search and shop in the new VIEROL online shop. However, selected functions in the new webshop are only available to registered customers (B2B customers), for example the notepad function, the returns tool and the personalised customer cockpit with additional features for research and article identification. Logged-in customers can reserve goods that are still in stock and use many other practical tools. Particularly worthy of mention is the innovative purchasing cockpit with a wide range of functions for the buyer or product manager, which provides relevant content according to his preferences and functionalities for assortment design.
Innovative functionalities especially for global retail customers
“With the Purchasing Cockpit, we create an absolute added value for buyers and product managers in retail to analyse their assortments, evaluate gaps, compare articles, determine assortments from market and approval figures and determine potentials down to article level. In this way, we help optimise the assortment as best we can and guide the customer through our product programme. The Purchasing Cockpit thus functions as a personalised shopping feed and automatically presents a selection of articles and new additions based on the purchase history as well as the brands and product groups stored in the preferences. It is possible for the user to generate a comparative offer within the framework of a data upload and to receive gap analyses, but also to be alerted to new products. The result is conveniently a specially generated listing file,” says Ibrahim Chahrour, Head of Marketing & Product Management at VIEROL.
For customer enquiries and professional advice from the VIEROL team, a special contact chat has also been set up on the homepage. With the help of these options, customers can quickly and easily contact the responsible sales representative. “The new online shop is another important step for our company in the direction of digitalisation and virtual connection of our customers. We want to move with the times and offer our trade partners the best possible purchasing process. The revised webshop also conveys our brand identity and values to the outside world and creates potential for further growth,” Ulf Koschig, deputy CEO of VIEROL AG, is convinced.
With new functions and a highly adaptive structure, the new online shop puts the customer even more at the centre. “With our purchasing cockpit, we have formulated the claim to support our customers in product range design and purchasing optimisation” continues Ulf Koschig. “In addition to personal customer contact via our key account managers, our special focus is therefore also on the continuous further development of the VIEROL online world. That’s why we have now decided on an in-house development for the relaunch on the occasion of the company’s 45th anniversary, which enables us to achieve higher performance and flexibility in this respect.”
The technical innovations
In order to be able to further develop the new online shop quickly and independently in the future, VIEROL has decided on its own software architecture in order to create applications that can be better maintained and further developed. In this way, the company ensures the highest flexibility in the development of innovative functions in order to be able to respond even more to customer needs across all channels. “This is done in our own interdisciplinary project team, which is positioned along the customer journey. This simplifies a parallel further development of the online shop at different points without limiting the customer’s options. This means that we now not only develop and test new functions independently, but also make them available to the customer individually,” says Michael Krone, Director of IT and Logistics.
New look & feel in the online shop and blog
For the customer, the online shop not only opens up new possibilities to easily find vehicle parts, to benefit from the new functions and thus to experience the online portal in a new look & feel. The visible new functions in the frontend include, for example, the more search engine-friendly navigation structure, the optimised vehicle identification as well as extended filter options, which, for example, make it easier to find articles even faster and more easily. In addition, there is an improved, modular image teaser concept to optimally present actions and topics on all end devices. Customers can now also look forward to a shortened check-out process, faster loading times and simplified registration.
The VIEROL blog is now also presented in a new look and with a number of revised features. The popular site for technical background information and contributions from VIEROL’s parts professionals has been visually redesigned and, with the introduction of topic pages, has made it easier for all users to discover interesting content and publications. A new, comprehensive search function also allows users to quickly find articles on products, user tips, technical explanations and videos on the practice-oriented EXPERT KITS+ of the VEMO, VAICO and ACKOJA brands, among others. With the online presence, the Oldenburg-based parts specialists have created the prerequisites for further growth and the integration of future digital trends
