A US-based skincare brand accelerates e-commerce results in Southeast Asia with VISEO

As the popularity of online shopping began to skyrocket in 2020, a US-founded skincare brand with a strong presence in Southeast Asia (SEA) had almost everything they needed for success online – a recognised brand name, popular products, loyal customers, and a proven local distributor selling their products. Their only issue was their Magento-based website that was bottlenecking e-commerce operations and choking potential profits.

The company was concerned with their website’s slow speeds, especially on mobile devices, as this was resulting in high abandonment rates. The standalone site also lacked integration with shopping platforms, SAP ERP and third-party logistics (3PL) partners.

This resulted in an abundance of manual work and problems that are commonly associated with these manual processes, such as a lack of accurate inventory levels and frequent out of stock situations. This led to a host of operational issues for the company, and dissatisfied customers.

Choosing VISEO and Shopify

The skincare giant, represented by their local SEA distributor, needed a user-friendly e-commerce platform that was easily configurable, able to integrate seamlessly with SAP, 3PL partners and popular shopping platforms like Shopee, Lazada and Zalora.

The company chose to work with VISEO on building an e-commerce website with the Shopify Plus e-commerce platform at its core. The first step for the VISEO team was implementing their proven project methodology, which involved 2-3 weeks of discovering the company’s business, processes and needs, before commencing on the building and implementation.

The Shopify Plus platform was selected based on the business’s most pressing needs – the company wanted an e-commerce solution that is user-friendly, easy for merchants to configure, affordable to maintain, and can be specifically configured with either readily available or customised plug-ins.

During the implantation phase of the project, VISEO worked closely with the company to customise the platform and select the right plug-ins to meet the brand’s exact requirements for their loyalty programmes, promotions, store locator functionality, and more.

The customisations would ensure the website’s look and feel, as well as its user interface, would reflect the branding and deliver a user experience that customers love coming back to.

After a three-month building and user acceptance testing (UAT) period, the skincare brand got a brand-new website that was now integrated with SAP, popular shopping platforms, and 3PL partners – and it performed speedily on desktops and mobile devices.

Based on the feedback provided by the company, the skincare distributor has been delighted with the results the new platform has enabled so far. They shared with the VISEO team how mobile traffic, conversion rates and sales have increased significantly since the website’s launch. Also, because all their orders (from their website and various marketplaces) are now centralised in SAP, they can now easily track all inventory levels, orders, fulfilments and follow-ups. With these processes now largely automated, the company can now focus their efforts and resources into improving their product offers and customer experiences, instead of bug fixes and operational hassles.

Multiplying success across SEA, and across brands

Following the success of this e-commerce website, which was developed for the Malaysia market, the company asked VISEO to replicate this success to other countries in Southeast Asia. Over the next few months, VISEO built adapted versions of this Shopify-based website for markets in Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.

The VISEO team also developed an all-new interface that would enable the platform to be easily integrated with Zalora, as there were no high quality, ready-made plug-ins available.

In fact, the group was so impressed with VISEO’s implementations and with Shopify Plus that they also engaged VISEO to launch an e-commerce website for another of their brands – and this launch was completed just three months later.

Two years on, this winning collaboration is still going strong – with the group continuing to approach VISEO for updates and enhancements to keep their e-commerce sites functioning optimally, to connect the websites to more marketplaces (Lazada, Shopee…) and ensuring they maximise profits from the ever-growing online shopping trend.

Do you have an e-commerce project?