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HFN Case Forbytes
#Digital Transformation

Full digital transformation for one of the biggest online retailers of furniture and design in Scandinavia

Our software development team has built an entire eCommerce system for our client Home Furnishing Nordic – one of the largest online retailers of furniture and interior design in Scandinavia. We regularly build and implement new features and tools that make the business more efficient and help them scale up and grow.

Microsoft .NET
React
Node.js
PHP
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About Home Furnishing Nordic

Home Furnishing Nordic (HFN) is one of the biggest online retailers of furniture and interior design in Scandinavia and one of the fastest-growing companies in Sweden. The company started as a family business in 2008. In 4 years, they decided to acquire a new technological partner – Forbytes. Since then, both enterprises grow hand in hand.

HFN about

Client:

Home Furnishing Nordic

Location:

Sweden

Service type:

Digital transformation

Team composition:

6 Full-Stack Engineers, 3 Back-End Engineers, 1 Front-End Engineer, 2 QA Engineers, 1 Project Manager, 1 Business Analyst

  • Leading online furniture and interior design store
  • #7 top online store of furniture and appliances in Sweden
  • $72.7 million NET sales in 2021
  • 400 000+ satisfied clients
  • $40 million NET furniture and appliances sales in 2021
  • Owns 19 physical stores

Scope of the project

With Home Furnishing Nordic, we began by creating a flexible platform that became the foundation for further development. Eventually, it transformed into an eCommerce system that now supports separate eCommerce stores for 4 markets: Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. One of the main tasks of the Forbytes team was to build a back-office solution for order management. The system we built is used by different categories of managers to process orders from all digital channels plus offline stores.

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The functionality of the back-office system enables managers to facilitate order fulfillment and respond to orders promptly. For this, the managers use the function of dashboards that display real-time data on critical order issues. For example, if there’s a frozen order or order that requires a manager to get in touch with a user, these are displayed in dashboards. The manager doesn’t have to go through endless order lists manually — orders requiring particular attention are already visible in the dashboard.

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Using the system, the managers can see orders made by users on public websites in real-time or create such orders by themselves (if, for example, the user makes an order via phone). Apart from the back-office system, we built a service purchase system and product information management system that facilitate the work of the brand. Besides, our team maintains and improves the client’s public websites and adds new functionality as the client grows.

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Their Challenges

Our Solutions

Our client needed a full-scale digital transformation that would result in better user engagement, more website visitors, and increased sales. They wanted to improve what was already done and build new tools to facilitate back-office work.

We completed a full digital transformation and built an eCommerce system that handles different aspects of the business, from content management to logistics, accounting, and more.

1

HFN aimed to offer a growing variety of products but prevent outstocking and money waste. The new ecommerce solution was expected to provide managers with all essential data on stock, pricing, and product availability from warehouses.

The managers use the system to check product availability in real-time, manage stock, configure pricing, etc. There’s also the 3-step function of requesting products from warehouses. The progress on the request can be tracked in the system as well.

2

The client wanted to streamline the work of managers who daily deal with thousands of orders of different kinds. For this, they needed an effective functionality for order search and management based on order categories.

The back-office system built by our team displays all essential data on orders for a manager. For each order, they can view info on a customer, delivery status, gift cards, products included, etc. What’s more, they can create and save custom filters that ease order search based on the channel, date, customer, etc.

3

HFN wanted us to regularly introduce new features and make sure that they are integrated properly into the system and have no negative effect on performance and user experience.

We always monitor the system and look for new ways to make it faster and more efficient. We integrated the most popular Shipping and Payment methods, built an intuitive checkout page, redesigned the website’s UI, added the website search tool, and much more to make sure that the user feels comfortable on the website.

4

Their Challenges

Our client needed a full-scale digital transformation that would result in better user engagement, more website visitors, and increased sales. They wanted to improve what was already done and build new tools to facilitate back-office work.

1

HFN aimed to offer a growing variety of products but prevent outstocking and money waste. The new ecommerce solution was expected to provide managers with all essential data on stock, pricing, and product availability from warehouses.

2

The client wanted to streamline the work of managers who daily deal with thousands of orders of different kinds. For this, they needed an effective functionality for order search and management based on order categories.

3

HFN wanted us to regularly introduce new features and make sure that they are integrated properly into the system and have no negative effect on performance and user experience.

4

Our Solutions

We completed a full digital transformation and built an eCommerce system that handles different aspects of the business, from content management to logistics, accounting, and more.

1

The managers use the system to check product availability in real-time, manage stock, configure pricing, etc. There’s also the 3-step function of requesting products from warehouses. The progress on the request can be tracked in the system as well.

2

The back-office system built by our team displays all essential data on orders for a manager. For each order, they can view info on a customer, delivery status, gift cards, products included, etc. What’s more, they can create and save custom filters that ease order search based on the channel, date, customer, etc.

3

We always monitor the system and look for new ways to make it faster and more efficient. We integrated the most popular Shipping and Payment methods, built an intuitive checkout page, redesigned the website’s UI, added the website search tool, and much more to make sure that the user feels comfortable on the website.

4

Technologies we have used in this project

Backend

PHP
Laravel

Frontend

React/Redux
Vue/Vuex
SCSS/LESS
Node.js
Rendertron
ESLint

Cloud orchestration

Kubernetes(GKE)
Terraform

Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform

Continuous integration

Jenkins
SalesForce
Productsup
Wayfair
Redis
GitHub Actions

Database

MariaDB
Redis/Sentinel
Postgre SQL
MongoDB (Atlas)
ElasticSearch (Elastic Cloud)
KeyDB

Recommendation and search engine

Apptus eSales

CDN

Google Cloud CDN
Verizon CDN

Virtualization

Docker

Other tools and integrations

Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Payment providers
Google Pub/Sub
Ansible
Beanstalk
POS terminals
WMS

Monitoring/Logs

Prometheus
Grafana
New Relic
Kibana
Stackdriver

How We Add Value

01.Growing sales

Each year, our team is responsible for maintaining Black Friday campaigns on the client’s websites. We create unique product pages dedicated to Black Friday and add engaging banners, product sets, blocks, images, and more. After each Black Friday, we provide the client with a report on the effectiveness of the campaign and sales revenue based on the user category. Besides, one of the interesting automated features we’ve implemented recently on the client’s public websites is a stress factor. A stress factor is aimed to motivate the user to purchase by setting some kind of limit. This can be discount time, product availability limit, the number of people considering the same product simultaneously, etc. Our joint effort helps to improve the user experience, which drives better ecommerce metrics and increases sales.

 

02.Insightful analytics

Apart from building user-friendly functionality, we integrate third-party tools for generating insights on website performance. The tools we integrate gather data on user behavior on particular pages, user clicks, sessions, orders, the conversion rate of new and returning customers, and more. These data are used by the HFN managers to craft effective marketing campaigns, improve website usability, develop engaging user journeys, etc.

03.A/B testing

Through the years, our cooperation with HFN has been brought to a new level. Our software engineering team works hand in hand with the client’s team to improve user experience on their digital channels. We regularly do A/B testing of features and functions offered to a user. The data collected from A/B testing show us what option works better for users and what to implement to improve user experience and encourage them to order more.

04.Enhanced SEO

We build the functionality with end users in mind. But to reach the end user, our ecommerce websites have to be ranked high on Google. For this, we need to use the features enhancing SEO. Examples of such features are SEO nodes and campaign nodes. These are created by our specialists to group products into sets on a particular page and help such pages index on Google.

Future cooperation

We continue our cooperation with the Home Furnishing Nordic team and keep turning their business needs into powerful tech solutions. In the nearest time, we plan to build a banner management tool that will work independently from the back-office system. This will save time for managers who prepare banners for public websites. Also, we are going to add a blog section to the client’s digital channels. In the blog, the managers will share their product tips, useful links, and insights with the audience. This will bring extra value to the end user, enhance SEO, and improve brand positioning on the market.

trademax case

Forbytes has made us feel almost as if they were our own employees. The management has been available when I needed it, but I’ve been free to run projects directly with Forbytes’ developers the rest of the time. Because Forbytes works with a number of companies, there is a lot of knowledge-sharing between their teams. We wouldn’t have this if we simply employed in-house developers.

— Thomas Andersson | eCommerce Manager & CTO at Home Furnishing Nordic

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    Forbytes has a strong process-oriented way of leading the company, with good respect for themselves and their managers. They made a choice not to become too big but build slowly on more qualified people, which is paying off.

    Niklas Hammar

    Niklas Hammar

    COO & Business
    Development at Offerta.se

    Forbytes has established strong project management. Their entire team is knowledgeable about appropriate processes and project expectations.

    Julia Noack

    Julia Noack

    eCommerce Manager
    Motorsweden & Swebike

    The Forbytes team has been loyal and dedicated in their partnership. The team provides management as needed but allows flexibility for direct work with developers.

    Thomas Andersson

    Thomas Andersson

    Ecommerce Manager & CTO
    Trademax

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