Case studies
RIVA Racing
About RIVA Racing
Since the 1980s, RIVA Racing has been recognized worldwide as the premiere source for personal watercraft performance parts and accessories. Over the years, RIVA has grown substantially with a dealer network that spans the entire globe. RIVA takes pride in servicing their customers, and making sure that the products they manufacture are built with the highest quality standards in mind.
As RIVA continued to grow, they were utilizing Webshop Manager as their eCommerce platform, and realized that their needs were outgrowing the platform. They required the ability to open new revenue streams, expand mobile & desktop functionality, and streamline customer shopping flows. With that in mind, Ryan Heigel, the Senior Web Manager, and the RIVA Racing team decided to start looking into new eCommerce platforms.
During their evaluation process, RIVA looked at Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento as their platforms of choice. Ultimately, RIVA chose to go with Magento, as they collectively liked the openness of the platform, and felt it was the best platform to continuously grow with their business into the future.
After choosing Magento, Ryan and the team were introduced to an Adobe representative, which presented multiple agencies that could tackle their project.
That’s where 121eCommerce came into the picture.
Why RIVA Chose 121eCommerce:
Ultimately, RIVA chose to work with us on their project, as RIVA felt that 121 really understood their needs from the automotive aspect. In fact, he felt that our automotive knowledge was better than any of the other companies they spoke with. To go even further, they really appreciated how we scoped out their project, and felt that they had an even better understanding of what was needed to have their new site be successful.
During our scoping process, we realized that not only would data need to be migrated, and formatted into a Magento-friendly format, but there were also customizations that needed to be made for their site.
Magento Customizations & Data Migration:
One of the biggest challenges for RIVA was getting their entire product catalog, customer data, and product attributes from Webshop Manager to Magento. With the initial export, it became clear that the data in Webshop Manager was going to need some massaging to become Magento-friendly. Ryan said, “121 had the technical prowess in Magento and Excel to format the data correctly for Magento,” and jokingly added, “I did not have that, so that’s a big one!”
Outside of the data migration, 121 created a custom API integration for RIVA’s Point of Sale system from the ground up to accept orders, payments, and statuses from Magento as there was no prior extension in existence for the integration. We also created a few customizations that we’ll highlight in the overall impact it has had on RIVA as a business shortly.
When we help our clients launch a new site, we never just “set it and forget it.” We want to be a valuable resource to our clients, and offer our support services if/when they need it. Since launching their site, RIVA has used 121 as an extension of their team to help with the maintenance of their site.
Post-Launch Support:
Since launch, RIVA has continuously worked with 121 on supporting them with any requests that come through. Ryan mentioned, “Having an open line of communication on Slack has been great! I know if I have a question, I can get an answer within 15 minutes so it doesn’t stall me on my projects. The support of the 121 team has made things a lot easier for us, as well as the management of the website. I have a whole team that can support us and help me with any questions.”
Our support came into play a few weeks ago as RIVA was working on a new product launch, and needed some assistance in getting across the finish line. A request came in to our team at 10 PM on a Friday night, and we were able to answer it before midnight on the same day. We had multiple team members working on the request, and by Monday morning all the testing was completed, and the updates were pushed to production to keep their product launch on track.
Having a team to support your site is one thing; seeing business processes improve is another, which we’ll highlight next.
Magento’s Business Impact for RIVA Racing:
The overall business impact RIVA has felt since launching their new Magento site has already been felt. For starters, the backend management of their site is significantly easier. On top of that, the time needed to create new pages with a drag/drop builder as opposed to needing to use html/css has decreased exponentially. Not to mention, the need for external development support has also gone down as well.
One of the biggest impacts RIVA has experienced is that 121 helped them to implement a custom up-sell feature for their highly sought after Performance Kits. This feature also allows customers to deselect products that they might already own within a Performance Kit.
With this added functionality, RIVA has been able to offer and recommend customers the exact products they are looking for within a kit without having to leave the page. This has led to a significant increase in customer satisfaction.
The implementation of a fraud prevention tool, Clearsale has helped RIVA substantially as well. To prevent fraud orders on their old site, RIVA had someone checking every single order that came through daily. That is a lot of manual work!
By implementing Clearsale, RIVA has an integration that can help check orders instantaneously, and eliminate human error too.
All of the impact on the business side has also helped RIVA on the financial side too.
Magento’s Financial Impact for RIVA Racing:
Month over month, there has been an increase in sales on their site since their launch. In addition, the average order volume from customer orders has also increased. By being able to use different payment methods such as Apple Pay and Venmo, new revenue streams are possible that simply weren’t an option with their old site. Ryan attributes the increase in sales due to an easier to use (and navigate) site that is increasing their overall customer satisfaction.
Ryan summed up working with 121 by saying:
“My overall experience with 121 is that I love working with you guys! I feel like every member of the 121 team offers something unique for us. I have working relationships with everyone from the developers all the way up to the CEO. It definitely helps me to save time being able to contact exactly who I need to for each project. It is a much more personal experience.
Overall, the experience has been great!
When scoping out projects with other platforms they would shut down our ideas due to resources or functionality restrictions, but 121 doesn’t do that.”
121 is more open to say “yeah, that’s possible. We can do it. Let’s see what’s going to take,” and then offer different solutions to work with our budget.
We are thankful that RIVA trusted us to work on their project, and are happy that they are happy!