INTERTOP.KZ: a scalable e-commerce project that launched online sales in Kazakhstan

Big retail is not a field where originality is worth having at any price. Price matters here, and the result that price buys matters even more. In other words, if sales can genuinely be lifted while money is saved along the way, why reinvent the wheel? Scalable e-commerce web solutions are exactly that: a way to get results at minimum cost, because what you are buying is expertise, and expertise is far cheaper and far faster.

A perfect model for comparison

This case study describes one such solution. What makes it unique is that the scalable project described here was built for the very same client for whom we had previously carried out a complete rebuild — almost from scratch. So we can speak about the benefits of scalable projects not in general terms but with real authority, because we have a practically perfect model for comparison from our own experience. Cases like this do not come along often.

From the very beginning, INTERTOP.KZ was conceived as a breakthrough on a nationwide scale. Our company has taken on a mission of real responsibility: we are bringing the value and the advantages of e-commerce to a wide audience. What drives us is not a thirst for profit but the idea of a prosperous Kazakhstan that keeps pace with the times and sets trends of its own. We want to become the flagship of e-commerce, an example for our partners and for our colleagues in the market. In setting ourselves the goal of advancing e-commerce and taking it to a new level, we accept a great deal of social responsibility. But we are ready to carry it, because we see the potential and the prospects, and because we know and love our country. Because we know how to build a market where none exists yet. To succeed in the global market you need the right focus, and the right focus for us at the moment is the consumer market, which we are shaping by setting a new standard of customer service within it. It is this high goal that INTERTOP.KZ is meant to serve. The ANIART team had already demonstrated its capabilities and its professional qualities on the INTERTOP.UA project, so we counted on them and believed they would deliver.Volodymyr Li, Executive Director, Intertop Central Asia

Objectives and grand objectives

The goals set for INTERTOP.KZ can only be described as grand objectives:

• launch online sales in Kazakhstan;
• demonstrate the value and the advantages of shopping online;
• diversify INTERTOP's sales channels.

The tasks that faced us at ANIART were not as sweeping, but there were far more of them. And yet it was out of this multitude of tasks that an online store had to "come together" — a store capable of changing the rules of online selling and convincing the people of Kazakhstan, once and for all, to buy online at INTERTOP.KZ.

West is West, East is East: problems and challenges

Working for Kazakhstan and working with Kazakhstan were very different in character.

At the same time, working with the professionals from INTERTOP.KZ opened up additional opportunities for us — the valuable experience of getting to know a different style of doing business and different business processes. We could feel the difference in mentalities, in the ways of communicating and of taking in project information, in the style of design work and in the assessment of results. When we discussed functionality and planned training with the sales managers of the Kazakh INTERTOP, that difference was especially noticeable: we used different approaches and business models to describe processes, and different means of evaluating and visualising solutions. They had their own scripts and their own pace of communication; we had ours. "Taking the bull by the horns", for instance, is not from their world — it is a purely Western approach. And we had a schedule. Tight, as always. So it was exactly the moment to quote Kipling: "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." And to carry on working.

One way or another, we kept moving forward — not without the effective help of INTERTOP.KZ's management, who know local realities inside out, and of the head of INTERTOP.UA's IT department, who supervised the project. And in the end we completed all the core tasks… plus a further set of tasks which, as always, appeared while the core ones were being solved.

INTERTOP.KZ under the microscope

Here are the parts from which we assembled a store programmed for success.

Load, data, delivery and payment

1. Resilience under peak load. Every online store owner knows what a powerful test of a site's reliability promotions are — not every platform can cope with the rush a sale creates. To be certain that the online store would not go down under the influx of visitors during promotions, we ran load testing. Not everything went smoothly: we had to adjust the store's settings and optimise internal algorithms. In return, the store now runs stably at peak promotional load — there are enough discounts for everybody.
2. User migration. All users of the old intertop.kz automatically became customers of the new store — with all their personal discounts and purchase histories.
3. Integration with the internal product-range management system. All products are entered into the internal accounting system and uploaded to the site through an automatic data-exchange procedure that we developed. It makes it possible to update, together with the products themselves, their prices, warehouse stock levels and availability in stores. As a result, the customer is always confident that the chosen item is available in the store they need, at the stated price, with current promotions and discounts taken into account.
4. Click and collect. A site user can pick up an item bought online from a store during any working hours convenient to them.
5. Geotargeting. The customer's city is detected automatically. In addition, the customer can select a city themselves — and the site will then show all the stores in that city and the availability of items in them. The selected city is automatically taken into account when the order is placed and when delivery options are displayed.
6. Connection of an online payment service. Users can pay for an order immediately by bank card through the ePay service.
7. Google Analytics Enhanced. All user actions are collected and sent to Google's analytics system for further analysis — this gives the store's marketers a convenient mechanism for shaping a further strategy for improving the site.

Catalogue, discounts and bonuses

1. A powerful filter system. The ANIART team wrote its own filter functionality — for convenient configuration and high operating speed.
2. Metadata for SEO. We developed a powerful engine that makes it easy to set metadata for any virtual or real page of the site.
3. An advanced discount system. To the platform's standard discount tools we added functionality that makes it possible to manage the priority in which discounts are applied, the redemption of bonuses, the discount card and the rules for working with the cart.
4. A bonus system. Every product on the site carries a certain number of bonus points, which the customer receives for buying it. These bonuses accumulate in a bonus account and can be used for subsequent purchases. To prevent misuse by dishonest customers, the option to spend bonuses becomes available two weeks after the purchase — provided the customer has not returned the item to the store. If an order is cancelled or an item is returned, the bonuses for that purchase are removed automatically.
5. An original default product sorting algorithm. When the catalogue is opened, products are displayed according to the sorting index defined for the product type and season. The customer can change the sort order to suit their own preferences — and the selected mode is saved for subsequent visits to the catalogue.
6. Quick registration straight from the checkout page. The customer only needs to fill in the most essential fields.
7. SMS service integration. All important actions connected with an order are accompanied by SMS messages sent to the customer's phone: for this we wrote a mechanism for interacting with an external SMS gateway.

Convenience for the customer and the content manager

1. A custom mechanism for loading products automatically. While browsing the catalogue, customers do not have to page through results manually — new products appear in the catalogue automatically as they scroll.
2. Purchase history. Customers can trace their purchase history both in the online store and in the offline stores.
3. An online consultation service for customers. A way to clear up any question that interests them promptly, at any time of day or night.
4. A service for batch uploading and updating product images. Developed by us specifically for content managers.
5. Cross-browser compatibility. Whatever browser a visitor uses, the site is displayed and works equally correctly.
6. Responsive design. The site's presentation adapts easily to the device in use, depending on the screen resolution.

The results in figures

Let us illustrate the benefits of a scalable project with real figures, drawn from a comparison of our work on INTERTOP.UA and on INTERTOP.KZ.

No comment is needed, as they say. It is worth noting only that in the post-Soviet space operating costs have a remarkable way of "dropping out" of a project estimate that accounts for cost price alone, whereas the Project Management practised everywhere in the West accounts for everything.

Conclusions, in people's own words

INTERTOP.KZ is a project that is revolutionary in everything: in design, in convenience and, of course, in sales. And all of it with our local specifics taken into account. INTERTOP.KZ has no direct competitors yet — there are not many companies in the Kazakh market today that set the service bar this high. But healthy competition benefits the consumer, so competitors are bound to appear. And we are ready for that: INTERTOP.KZ is aimed at the future. A project carrying this much responsibility called for a matching level of development work. And not only in professional terms, but in human ones too: the purely remote nature of the work (Ukraine — Kazakhstan) and the time gap all created difficulties that were known in advance. But the ANIART team managed it — the guys gave the job everything they had. And the result, as they say, is there for all to see. That is how it should be when you work with professionals.Volodymyr Li, Executive Director, Intertop Central Asia

What makes the project interesting above all is that a great deal in it was done for the first time. For the first time we were making a scalable projection of one of our own projects for one and the same client company: the same field of activity, but different specifics and therefore different requirements. For the first time we worked without live contact with the client, and the difference in time zones and mentalities set an intense rhythm that took the project beyond the usual difficulties. There were other extremes as well. But all of that is history now, and INTERTOP.KZ is up and running. The client's management minimised the problems that came up — without their help the timelines would have been different. On a personal note, I want to acknowledge the professionalism and the breadth of outlook of the people from INTERTOP who supervised the project, their immersion in the subject and their involvement in the work — it is always interesting and pleasant to work with people like that. To sum up, I can say that a scalable project means more than a tangible saving of effort, time and money. I believe the future belongs to projects exactly like this one. Because in our day good execution counts for more than a good idea. And a scalable project is precisely what gives you the chance to concentrate your resources on the quality of that execution.Kostiantyn Perepichaienko, Project Manager, ANIART