Case Studies

How We Supported Willow & Hall Grow Into An Award Winning Business

The Overview:

 

Willow & Hall (W&H) is an eCommerce website that sell inspirational British living and bedroom furniture. Products are exceptionally well-designed, handmade to perfection in the West Country.
All products comes with extensive fabrics and customization options like mattress, arm caps, seat cushions etc. Awarded Feefo’s Gold Trusted Merchant Accreditation, a super prestigious award based on the independent feedback received from our customers.
Svaapta IT Ally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Successfully supported W&H, a UK based retailer selling hand-made sofa beds, sofas, and other furniture and accessories for home through a more than 3 year period of rapid business growth.

Challenges:

 

  • W&H started in trading in 2012. From the outset they knew they had a product offering that was someting special but they needed a reliable and highly skilled development team to take advantage of their unique product line to achieve their ambitious sales targets.
  • They needed experience of eCommerce, had no internal IT skills, and had already discovered that costs can spiral quickly.
  • Being an online-first business, website sales and affordable costs were critical to sustain growth. W&H have relatively complex offerings as they offer custom built products with various options.
  • They needed a nimble tech team that could flex to their needs without the commitment of full time employees, and carry heavy fixed cost to the business.




PROJECT DURATION:

3 years


TECHNOLOGY:

Magento, Core PHP, Javascript, jQuery, AJAX, HTML


INDUSTRY:

Retailer


CLIENT:

Willow & Hall


 
Open Website

Our Approach:

    •  

    • Onboarding: We analyzed both the business and the Magento website in depth. All websites are different even when on the same platform. So we had to get familiar with their particular code, the extensions they were using, and of-course, the payment gateway integration. Being organized helped us to be able to spend less time developing solutions to new problems as well as providing more timely and effective fixed for the issues as they cropped up.

 

  • Working Methodology: we know from the experience that most problems related to website development go back to the interpretation of a specification and therefore, there is a lack of communication between the developers and the stakeholders. To overcome this, we opted for a helpdesk system, a bug tracker, project management software, and reports management. This has helped in tracking all client communications and monitoring progress of work items. Descriptive and regular email updates and voice calls on a needs bases avoid any communication gap.
    • Bulk Product Upload
    • Catalog Management
    • Store Management
    • Maintain and Sync Development and Live site
    • Performance measurement and applied improvements
    • Installing Security patches
    • Third Party System Integrations
    • Payment Gateway Integration
    • Marketing Related Work
    • Extension Research and Integration
    • Maintaining Server
    • Customizations to website
    • Responsive communication with 24 hour
    • Support in case of emergency

 

    •  
    • Flexible Cost Model: we provided a flexible service through allowing W&H to select a pricing model to suit their needs. We offer different pricing models to different clients such as fixed monthly costs and hours or flexible hourly billed service as well as hybrids of the two. W&H wanted a monthly commitment in order to control costs but also needed some flexibility to account for fluctuations in workload so worked on a hybrid model.

 

  • Flexible Timing & Emergency Support: When required, we had some team members working local UK hours and at weekends to meet important business milestones. We were proactive in integrating tools and technologies to the website in order to progress our work as efficiently as possible.

The Results:

W&H is now an award winning online furniture retailer for over 35 years.
Svaapta IT Ally has continued to manage their web development and support from the very early stages of the company’s life through the high growth phase.
We were flexible to their needs and worked within their varying cost restraints, agreeing resources up front each month but also being there to provide additional assistance if and when necessary to meet business priorities.


Case Studies