Weizen Young

Cory Barnes had a challenge

As Digital Marketing Manager, he had ten separate ecommerce sites to look after under the umbrella of a parent company, Exxel Outdoors.

He wanted all ten sites on BigCommerce.

And he needed to get it done affordably, quickly, and in a way that would preserve the distinctiveness of all ten brands.

Weizen Young stood out from other web development firms for three key reasons:

01 They specialize only in Big Commerce

"I think that's fairly unique in terms of other agencies that we work with. It's not like they specialize in Shopify, and then BigCommerce is a side project for them. They only do BigCommerce, and that gives me a lot of confidence that if we have an issue or problem that needs to be solved, they're going to be able to solve it."

02 Their smaller size means more client attention.

"They're a pretty small agency, and I like that.I like working with small agencies, just because I know that we're not going to get lost in the shuffle. I get to develop a personal relationship with the people that I'm working with which I really like."

03 They bill hourly instead of by the project.

"I like knowing exactly what's been done and being billed accordingly. So, for me personally, I prefer being billed by the hour instead of by the project."

But Exxel didn't just have the technical challenge of moving from ASP.net to BigCommerce.

Cory also had some staffing limitations.

"When we first migrated over to BigCommerce, we didn't have it in the budget to have a full-time developer. Using Weizen Young as an external resource was great for us to do the kind of projects that we needed to do at the time without having somebody in-house."

Even after Exxel hired a full-time in-house developer, they continued to work with Weizen Young.

"It definitely helps us out because we still have that knowledge base to tap into with them, even if our in-house guy leaves, so that's very beneficial to us."

What Exxel really needed was a partner with expertise, not just a developer.

It's the knowledge base that sets Weizen Young apart:

"That's one of the things that I really like about Weizen Young is the fact that I can go to them for advice, and Eamon specifically. He has a lot of knowledge from working with other clients and other scenarios that I don't."

"Whenever I have those strategic-type issues and ask him about it, he's very good about giving well thought-out advice. That's something I couldn't get if they were a larger company."

"The fact that I can speak with the owner of the company about strategy or other questions is very beneficial to me."

How things changed after the migration to BigCommerce.

01

"It was much easier for us to maintain the sites. ASP.NET was challenging at times to maintain, especially because we have so many different sites and brands to manage. So that made my job easier and my team's job easier."

02

"We really had a dramatic improvement in our mobile conversion*. This was true for all the sites across the board. On our old platform, the mobile sites were... They were pretty bad. And when we moved into BigCommerce, our conversion rate for mobile traffic got much better."

272%

Improvement in mobile conversion

Roughly half of all traffic to Exxel's ten sites is from mobile devices, a boost like that is a game-changer.

Other projects followed.

An ERP integration with Microsoft Dynamics:

"The ERP, of course, is essential to running our business. It is a requirement that our websites are integrated with our ERP. That's something that's extremely important, and it needs to work, and it needs to work every single day."

The ExpertVoice integration:

"ExpertVoice is a platform for what is referred to in the industry as a 'pro program'. We have a very good and long-standing relationship with Expert Voice, and they drive a substantial amount of traffic and revenue to our sites. That's also an important integration that Weizen Young has done for us."

To date, Weizen Young has logged over 1,500 hours of work for Exxel.

As Cory explains, "once I find somebody that I like to work with, I tend to stick with them."

All projects were done in close coordination with different product teams at Exxel, including:

Leveraging an in-house designer throughout the process to keep brand visuals consistent.

Working directly with new hires as Exxel ramped up their internal team.

Stepping in for time sensitive key projects, both for front-end development and API work.

Coordination between Exxel's internal product teams and Weizen Young was done using our project management tool of choice which is ASANA.

"I do really like the fact that they use Asana, which is a web-based project management tool. I think Asana is great. It's strongly preferred to communicating back and forth by email, which is extremely inefficient and easy to lose track of things. So, I love the fact that I can communicate with them in Asana. Same for our designers and we've had a few over the years. I think consistently what the designers have told me is that they like communicating with the Weizen Young teams through Asana, like I do. It makes the job so much easier. And it's just better communication all around for everybody."

Cory's advice to other ecommerce businesses.

Many small ecommerce companies are used to doing things themselves. If they've got some web development skills, couldn't they just switch over to BigCommerce themselves?

"Anytime that ever comes up in a conversation I have with somebody about potentially switching over to BigCommerce from some other platform, I always mention Weizen Young. You probably don't want to be on BigCommerce unless you have a development partner."

Think of it as an investment.

"If you want to grow your business, then you're really going to need a development partner that's familiar with the platform and knows how to squeeze everything out of it. So I always tell potential BigCommerce users that they should have a partner."

"You can only go so far on your own with the platform and BigCommerce customer support. At a certain point, once your business starts to get bigger, you're going to need to have some more technical expertise on your side."

For Exxel and Cory Barnes, Weizen Young is their best source for that level of technical expertise. We are their long-term BigCommerce partner.

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