Real Street Performance Uses Magento 2 to Custom Tune Ecommerce

About Real Street Performance

Real Street Performance realized long ago that if their customers are nuts about cars, they needed to be just as nuts (or even more so). The company supplies parts to racers and auto shops worldwide, but the real value comes from their dedication to sound advice and dependable customer service. Over half of their team are experienced advisors that can discuss the finer points of brake pads or explain how imitating The Fast and the Furious series can be a little dangerous:

Real Street Performance operates out of a 20,000-square-foot distribution warehouse in Sanford, Florida, with over $2,000,000 worth of parts. Real Street Performance also does same-day shipping anywhere in the world and free Ground Shipping on most orders over $150 within the continental United States.

The Challenge

Car suppliers like Real Street Performance sell very technically, attribute-driven products that often look the same but are functionally distinct from each other. Real Street Performance was having trouble differentiating specific parts on its website since it was hard for customers to make a distinction through thumbnail images or product titles. Since a single wrong part can jeopardize an entire car build, this was a big problem for them.

To create a more effortless buying experience that would reduce confusion for their customers, Real Street Performance needed to fix the following issues:

• Hundreds of their parts look virtually identical and have near-identical titles that are often only differentiated by a couple of characters. This created a significant pain point: their customers were forced to click on each item on the search results page to view specs and determine compatibility. They needed to display similar products to people to let them filter and sort the differentiating product information into something digestible.
• Not all automotive parts are compatible with each other or even certain vehicles, and it is almost impossible to remember all these compatibility differences without any reference. So Real Street Performance wanted to create an online tool that matched their customers’ make, model, and engine type with compatible parts and accessories.
• Real Street Performance’s website search was not reflecting what their customers wanted. Since their customer base is comprised of knowledgeable people that know what they are looking for, Real Street Performance needed a more granular search function. That way, customers could locate the specific part or parts they were thinking of without too much work.
• Real Street Performance had initially attempted to implement Magento 1 twice, to no avail. After seeing our reputation as a Magento partner, they decided to call Kensium to implement a Magento 2 eCommerce platform.
  
  

The Solution

Kensium designed and implemented Real Street Performance’s new website on the Magento Commerce 2.2 platform and created new functionality to address the abovementioned problems. The implementation took a year to complete, and Kensium launched the website just in time for Black Friday. We also added several new extensions to improve user experience and data visibility.

Here are the solutions Kensium created for Real Street Performance:

Kensium built “Item Cards” for each product (shown above). These item cards offer customers the distinct specifications of each product below the thumbnail so that users can differentiate the products on a single page. The Item Cards showcase product images, specifications, SKU numbers, prices, product availability, and “add-to-cart” functionality. This created a more straightforward, faster way for customers to find what they are looking for without clicking on dozens of web pages. Kensium also connected the Magento website with Real Street Performance Performance’s ERP, allowing them to sync order information.

The new Package Builder tool (shown above) is how Kensium and Real Street Performance simplified part compatibility for their customers. It turned out to be a game-changer. Serving as both a sales and educational tool, the Package Builder goes to a table view that walks customers step-by-step through selecting all the parts they need to build significant car components. They can also enter their vehicles’ make, model, and engine type to receive compatible parts and accessories. This tool cuts what used to be a 30-60-minute process down to 1-2 minutes for power users.

Kensium used Algolia to create over 350 search filters for the website, so customers can get as granular as they want when narrowing down product results. While that number of filters may seem overkill, it was necessary to service the car fanatics that would come to the website to find particular auto parts.

Kensium also worked with Real Street Performance to create a couple of new features unrelated to the problems mentioned in the prior section. These were ideas that had been previously suggested at Real Street Performance but never implemented until now:

We created an additional feature called “Build A Recipe.” Like cookbook recipes, Real Street Performance Performance’s Build-a-Recipe feature takes the same concept and applies it to custom-built vehicles. Each “recipe” gives the customer a story, a list of purchased auto parts, instructions, specifications, guides, and more. This feature was well-received among car enthusiasts looking to build or modify custom vehicles.

Real Street Performance decided to have Kensium implement cost-based discounting. When customers buy certain items together, Real Street Performance provides a discount based on a percentage of the production costs.

“Kensium really helped me turn my rough ideas into solutions. I had lots of ideas in my head that weren’t necessarily the best way to do it, but Kensium was able to take my idea and turn it into something that would work.” – Clay Marsh, Business Partner at Real Street Performance. 

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