National Tyres and Autocare eBay Outlet
The Brief: Build a dynamic eBay shop to sell National's full range of tyres online
The Solution: A new channel was created with the potential to access a completely new market
When National Tyres wanted to set up a new sales channel on eBay, they needed Silkmoth's expertise. That's because National offers an inclusive package of tyres and tyre-fitting - at a time and place of your choice. So the challenge to Silkmoth was to find a way of integrating that appointment making into the regular selection and payment routine for eBay users.
National Tyres sells more than 6000 products. Another part of the challenge was making the maintenance of the product line-up on eBay as trouble-free as possible. And with 200 fitting centres available to fit tyres for customers, integrating the purchase on eBay with National Tyres' existing order fulfilment process needed to be done as smoothly as possible.
People choose to work with Silkmoth because they're more technically able than many web development companies, and this kind of integration challenge is an everyday event for Silkmoth.
Carl Dean, technical director at Silkmoth, explains the key development in the project. 'Once the customer has made their tyre selection, we take them out of eBay to a microsite – still co-branded with eBay and National Tyres – where they can select the location and time of their tyre-fitting. Once done, we return them to eBay so that they can complete their purchase, with all of the booking details accompanying their order as it's fed into the order fulfilment system at National Tyres.'
Weekly, sometimes daily, a product/price file is uploaded by National Tyres, and a back-office system produced by Silkmoth updates the products on eBay, deleting old products, adding new ones, and adjusting prices.
'It's vital that this part of the process is easy for us to manage', explains Mike Bourne, marketing director at National Tyres, 'because it enables us to rapidly alter prices and availability to suit demand.'
'Working with eBay was a pleasure', said Carl Dean, 'as they assisted us at every step.'
http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/national-tyres
Artwork by: eBay