Specialist car parts supplier, Heritage Parts Centre, has seen a significant increase in online orders after implementing an enhanced product information strategy to improve customer experience in partnership with Akeneo – the Product Experience (PX) company and global leader in Product Information Management (PIM).
Heritage Parts Centre is a renowned classic car parts supplier based on England’s South Coast with a large and varied catalogue of parts and accessories for vintage Volkswagen, Porsche and Land Rover vehicles. Founded in 1986, the company has built a reputation as a go-to brand for genuine and aftermarket parts selling direct-to-consumer and supplying businesses ranging from garages to classic car restoration specialists worldwide.
Run by an expert team of classic car enthusiasts, Heritage Parts Centre manufactures, sources, and sells parts its team would be happy to use in their own vehicles. Selling more than 30,000 parts, the ability to provide accurate and highly detailed product information is critical to ensuring customers can choose the right part for their specific car make, date and model, allowing them to get back behind the wheel as quickly as possible.
However, the company had struggled to accurately and consistently recreate its product catalogue online. Product data errors and inconsistencies meant customers were struggling to find the parts they needed. Additionally, the company did not have the systems in place to allow these product information errors to be quickly corrected, meaning customers continued to find incorrect or outdated information when shopping on its site – eroding faith in the brand and resulting in abandoned purchases. Further to this, the company’s time-to-market for new products was also extremely slow and it was unable to add new products to its catalogue in a timely fashion.
To overcome these obstacles, Heritage Parts Centre turned to Akeneo for help with its product information challenges.
Implementing the PIM solution has enabled the team to radically accelerate time-to-market by updating its product enrichment processes, including the use of a business rules engine, bulk actions and editing, leading to increased accuracy and consistency in its product information and allowing for faster corrections of any error or inconsistencies.
It has also allowed the company to radically rethink how it adds new products and enriches product information for existing products. Rather than updating products once a year, Heritage Parts Centre can now do so nearly instantly and constantly. The integration of Akeneo’s PIM into Heritage Parts Centre’s Magento ecommerce platform and its ERP system, means product data flows seamlessly and instantaneously across the company’s ecosystem.
Barney Dines, CEO of Heritage Parts Centre, commented: “Thanks to Akeneo PIM, we can now offer a dynamic digital experience allowing customers to shop by vehicle, by type of part, by manufacturer, and by many other criteria, meaning they quickly and more easily can find the part that’s right for them.”
The improved product experience has led to increased digital revenue across the business with online orders for VW parts increasing by +19%, while Porsche web orders rose +22% following implementation of Akene PIM.
“We now have a unified data structure that has restored faith in our brand and increased our conversion rates thanks in large part to our improved ability to present information to buyers that can confirm their buying decision,” commented Dines.
Justin Thomas, VP Sales – EMEA North at Akeneo, commented: “Heritage Parts Centre is a classic example of the importance of enhanced product information to improve customer experience and in faith in a brand while the ability to instantly update product information has made the business more efficient and responsive.”
