October 2020 Kadro eCommerce Insights newsletter

October 30, 2020
By Chris Cowles

By Chris Cowles

Contributing Writer

News, insights and information from the rapidly changing world of eCommerce designed for the online B2B and B2C merchant!

In the October 2020 Edition…..

  • Kadro named one of the Top Performing E-Commerce Developers in North Carolina
  • SeaDek Marine Products – World leader in innovative marine non-skid flooring makes the switch to Kadro
  • Technology Partner of the Month – Braintree, A Paypal Service
  • Kadro’s Site Analysis & Optimization Services (SAOS). Don’t let site performance issues interfere with your online business.
  • Meet Allison Holadia, Kadro Customer Support Specialist
  • Magento 2.4 – Packed with new features designed to enhance the B2C and B2B customer experiences
  • Explore our latest blog posts

 


Kadro named Top Developer in North Carolina by Clutch

Kadro named one of the Top Performing E-Commerce Developers in North Carolina 

The team at Kadro received some exciting news this month from Clutch, the internationally-renowned B2B rating and review platform. Kadro was named one of North Carolina’s top e-commerce developers for 2020. Clutch praised Kadro’s e-commerce strategy, consulting, design, and development expertise!  According to Clutch and their research, amongst all providers in North Carolina, Kadro is consistently one of the best! 

 


SeaDek

SeaDek newsletter banner image

Founded in 2002, SeaDek® Marine Products, part of Hyperform Inc., is a leading developer and manufacturer of innovative marine decking materials and lamination for OEM boat builders in the marine industry as well as to boat owners seeking custom products.

In 2019, SeaDek moved their eCommerce website from an ASP/.Net implementation to Magento Commerce cloud. Sadly the move to Magento Commerce was not a good experience and resulted in a highly unstable implementation, many of the Magento platform’s capabilities not being effectively utilized and the SeaDek team growing frustrated as they faced constant site and operational issues that were compounded by lack of support and responsiveness from their systems integrator at that time.

To combat this business-impairing situation, in June 2020 SeaDek hired Kadro. The objectives of the new relationship were:

  • to stabilize the SeaDek eCommerce website so that the team could focus on running their online business
  • provide responsive on-going support and development for new features
  • offer strategic guidance for growing their eCommerce business.

Jason Gardner, VP Marketing & Advertising at Hyperform, Inc. framed the situation and subsequent SeaDek/Kadro relationship this way… 

 

“After a nightmarish development phase and long-delayed launch with another development company we were left with a half-baked website that lacked functionality and wasted valuable money and resources. Poor communication, lack of quality control and extensive use of offshore developers resulted in a horrible experience.

Making the switch to Kadro made all the difference. From the start, they visited with our department managers and team members to understand our company and our needs both short term and long term. Communication has been clear, concise and timely and the quality and efficiency of the work has exceeded expectations.”

Kadro went to work in the transition and rescue of the SeaDek.com Magento site performing a detailed review of the site’s implementation as well as conducting a thorough Requirements Discovery session with the SeaDek team to fully understand the current website implementation challenges, eCommerce business challenges, and a go-forward plan to provide the support and development that SeaDek needed.  Kadro’s assessment and subsequent plan were geared towards establishing system stability and enabling the SeaDek team to focus on growing their business versus fighting website issues on a daily basis.

SeaDek website composite image

Website: www.seadek.com

TO READ THE FULL STORY VISIT THE SEADEK PORTFOLIO PAGE ON THE KADRO WEBSITE AND TAKE A LOOK AT THEIR CURRENT WEBSITE.

 


Technology Partner of the Month

Braintree logo image

Braintree provides the global commerce tools people need to build businesses, accept payments, and enable commerce for their users. Braintree permits the use of many payment methods including alternative payment methods such as PayPal, Venmo, ApplePay and GooglePay.  With Braintree and Magento 2, merchants get comprehensive payment options to allow customers to pay via their preferred method, the potential for more mobile revenue via a fast, simple checkout process, robust fraud protection & PCI compliance, and expansive global reach via a network of more than 300 million active consumers (Paypal 2020 Q2 data).

 


Turbo Boost Your Magento Website with Site Analysis & Optimization Services (SAOS) from Kadro

 

 

Site running slow?  Inconsistent performance?  Need a partner who has the expertise to improve your website’s performance? We can audit your website environment and propose solutions to your site’s functionality and performance woes.

 


Say hello to Allison Holadia, Customer Support Specialist at Kadro

Allison H. photo

The famed football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “It takes months to find a customer… second to lose one.” This statement has been validated by volumes of survey data over the years and I suppose a bit of common business sense as well. It’s surely true that customers quit doing business with a company due to bad experiences and thus businesses must approach every support interaction as an opportunity to delight or displease.

Good customer support starts with the human touch, often boosted by a dose of technology.  It’s reinforced by the understanding that customer support/service is the cornerstone of the business and the foundation of the customer experience.

It is with this brief preface that we introduce Allison Holadia, Kadro’s Customer Support Specialist. Like many at Kadro, Allison has been with the company for quite a few years now. She started in 2007 after leaving the eCommerce Department at a long-time Kadro customer (the first customer actually), REEDS Jewelers. Given her familiarity with Kadro and its services, Allison was a natural fit.

Also like others in the company, Allison wears many hats. No literally, she has lots of hats and wears them. But she also “wears lots of hats” when it comes to her role at Kadro.

Knowing the customer and their website(s) reinforces the support process…

Allison has been an integral part of many new website launches and upgrades over the years. Regardless of the project size, Allison considered each to be a major project. “It’s exciting to be part of a new website project from start to finish,” mentioned Allison. A current project Allison is participating in is the new Hungry Harvest project. She is the QA lead on this website, so she’s responsible for all aspects of testing. Being part of the QA testing team allows Allison to get to know the new website in great detail. This familiarity spills over to other types of website projects like upgrades which typically include the addition of new features and functionality. When support issues come up, it really helps to have this hands-on familiarity with both the customer and their website which adds context and relevance to the support request or issue.

Great people meeting an array of business and technological support challenges…

Kadro really is a place full of great people. The staff exhibits a true team attitude which makes working at the company a very positive experience.  Everyone is always willing to help and teach others when needed. And no day is ever the same. For Allison, each day’s course is charted by the variety of support issues and new website feature requests received. These make each day unique providing her and other team members with a new sets of challenges to meet and more interesting projects to undertake.

She can go the distance… in the long run… (and swim and cycling)

Outside the office, Allison’s hobby and favorite interest (other than her 2 kids of course) is training and competing in triathlons.  She has competed in multiple sprint triathlons, as well as many half and full marathons. She has competed in three half Ironman’s (70.3 miles) and finished her first full Ironman last year (140.6 miles).

For those not familiar with what an Ironman competition is, it’s an endurance multi-sport race consisting of swimming, cycling, and running over various distances. But 140.6 miles? Really? Now that’s impressive!  

With the physical and mental demands of competing in endurance events, it’s not surprising that Allison spends a great deal of her spare time participating in swimming, biking and running training. 

Should you have the occasion to be on the phone or emailing support at Kadro, you’ll likely have the opportunity to communicate with Allison. If you do, take a minute to ask how her training and competing is coming along.


Magento Logo

Magento 2.4 – packed with great enhancements to make the customer experience even better

Magento is a powerful, flexible, reliable and popular commerce platform used by hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide.  And the latest version of Magento adds to this legacy with great new features for both B2C and B2B eCommerce and omni-channel merchants.  Here a peek at just a few.

  • New and improved default search engine.  Makes site search faster and easier for site visitors and customers.
  • Improved Media Gallery – Your store admin can now search, filter and sort images faster and it’s integrated with Adobe Stock.  
  • New feature Seller-Assisted Shopping – Your Customer Service Representatives can log into the website as the customer from the Magento Admin and guide and assist the customer in all aspects of the buying experience.
  • New feature Purchase Approval Workflows (only for Magento Commerce) – Brings better control to B2B buying companies allowing them to set up approval workflows for individual purchases with specific rules based on order value, number of SKUs and shipping costs.

There’s so much more.  Contact a Kadro representative to learn more about Magento 2.4 and how it can help make your vision for selling online a reality! 


 

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Coming Soon!

More informative blog posts!  Stay tuned for future announcements.

Want to make future newsletters better? We’d love your feedback! 

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