Music Direct Builds a Studio-Grade Site with BigCommerce
Discover how customisable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.
11.29%
decrease in average page load time
73%
decrease in average server response time
43%
increase in conversion rate
Performance metrics compare data from June 2022 to June 2023.
The go-to spot for music connoisseurs.
For over 25 years, Music Direct has been a haven for audiophiles — known for supplying premium sound equipment for enthusiasts seeking a world-class listening experience.
Whether you’re searching for vinyl records, standing speakers, or sound amplifiers, this B2C and B2B brand has you covered. Music lovers and businesses can find products from leading audio brands — including some of Music Direct’s affiliated companies — through its website or brick-and-mortar shops like record stores.Â
With the majority of Music Direct’s sales coming from online transactions, it needed a reliable ecommerce platform that could seamlessly cater to its growing number of digital shoppers. After years of hosting on an outdated platform, the brand knew it was time to find a new solution that would provide the same high-quality experience its products are known for.
CHALLENGE
Feeling held back by an outdated and unreliable platform.
Before moving to BigCommerce, Music Direct’s site was hosted on DotNetNuke, with the integration Hotcakes serving as its online shopping cart. However, this solution presented several challenges that kept it from scaling to its full potential.
“The moment we got up and running on DotNetNuke and Hotcakes, it felt like the platform was outdated and we had already outgrown it,” explained Steve Shapiro, Director of Ecommerce and IT at Music Direct.
Music Direct quickly realised the platform’s open-source framework created more limitations than opportunities. Between dealing with the site's hosting and maintenance and fixing problems caused by the platform's unreliability, Music Direct struggled to scale its ecommerce site. Implementing new features presented an added layer of difficulty, leading them to feel stuck.
“Many features were locked down, and there weren’t a lot of usable APIs. Any extensibility or customisation we needed to do took us off the upgrade path. We would have to maintain the site with our development partners, which was a bunch of work and pigeonholed us in a spot where we couldn’t do what we wanted,” said Shapiro.
Eventually, the brand decided enough was enough and started searching for a new ecommerce solution. After ruling out options like Shopify due to the lack of APIs, the team stumbled upon BigCommerce.
“BigCommerce is geared towards developers, but it also has that entry point where you can just jump in and start using it. You don't need to rebuild or reinvent the wheel if you don't want to, which was the big selling point for me,” explained Shapiro.
After learning about BigCommerce’s open APIs and compatibility with its ERP, Comprehensive Commerce Suite, Music Direct began the re-platform process with its agency partner, BlueBolt.
“BigCommerce is geared towards developers, but it also has that entry point where you can just jump in and start using it. You don't need to rebuild or reinvent the wheel if you don't want to, which was the big selling point for me.”
Steve Shapiro, Director of Ecommerce and IT, Music Direct
SOLUTION
Freedom to build a custom payment processing system.
One of the primary reasons Music Direct chose to host its site on BigCommerce was because of its robust API capabilities, which enabled it to build a custom payment processing system.
Music Direct processes payments through tokenisation to enhance the site’s security and minimise the amount of customer data it needs to store.
Few payment gateways support payment tokenisation, and even fewer are compatible with Music Direct’s ERP, so the business required a platform that could support the tools needed to build its offline payment processing system.
Thankfully, BigCommerce’s Open SaaS architecture gave Music Direct complete freedom to build a custom integration that transformed its payment processing vision into reality.
“With BigCommerce’s API functionality, we were able to build exactly what we needed. When an order comes in, webhooks trigger our integration, which goes back to BigCommerce with an API call and grabs transactional information. With that information, it reaches out to our payment gateway — authorized.net — grabs tokens, and sends them to our ERP system so we can process the order,” explained Shapiro.
To learn how to build this integration, Shapiro and his team worked with a BigCommerce Solutions Architect.
“Our Solutions Architect was instrumental in designing the tokenisation integration. He outlined the process we needed to use and recommended how we implement it, which was extremely helpful,” remarked Shapiro.
Creating custom features to enhance the UX.
In addition to building customisations designed for backend functions, Music Direct has also created custom integrations designed to improve the user experience.
To make customers aware of the inventory status of products, the company built a feature that tells shoppers if an item is out of stock. If Music Direct already placed the restock order with the manufacturer, additional information will appear on the product page informing customers. This way, shoppers can feel comfortable purchasing an item that is technically out of stock and know they’ll still receive it in a standard timeframe — encouraging sales.
“We built a way of displaying back orders so customers can buy things that are out of stock and not treat them specifically like pre-orders. To do this, we built custom availability calls and a way to flag something as out of stock versus in stock. When shopping on our site, something that's out of stock might display information that says that it’s technically out of stock, but an order has been placed with the manufacturer, so customers can still purchase the product and receive it in a reasonable amount of time,” explained Shapiro.
Amplifying the site with native features and apps.
While Music Direct takes advantage of the ability to build custom integrations, the business also enjoys BigCommerce’s variety of native tools and apps.
Particularly, they like features designed to cater to their different customer markets, such as customer groups and price lists.
“We have a price list for retail and a price list for wholesale. If you're in the wholesale customer group, you get the wholesale price list, and if you're in the retail customer group, you get the retail price list. This has really helped streamline processes and improve the customer experience,” said Shapiro.
Since migrating platforms, BigCommerce has introduced Music Direct to different technical features designed to optimise their site and back-end processes. One of these includes ShipperHQ, which enables the business to build shipping rules and promotions.
“We can create a lot of cool shipping rules and promotions that we've never been able to build before. Now, we're offering free shipping promotions and pickup options. ShipperHQ is definitely one of the coolest things we've been exposed to since moving to BigCommerce,” remarked Shapiro.
Music Direct is also in the process of implementing Klaviyo and Searchspring, which will assist with email marketing and search.
“We're pretty excited about Klaviyo and Searchspring. BigCommerce’s ability to integrate with these tools will allow us to create really cool dynamic, personalised emails and product recommendations,” said Shapiro.
“Our Solutions Architect was instrumental in designing the tokenisation integration. He outlined the process we needed to use and recommended how we implement it, which was extremely helpful.”
Steve Shapiro, Director of Ecommerce and IT, Music Direct
“We're pretty excited about Klaviyo and Searchspring. BigCommerce’s ability to integrate with these tools will allow us to create really cool dynamic, personalised emails and product recommendations.”
Steve Shapiro, Director of Ecommerce and IT, Music Direct
RESULTS
Success since day one.
From the moment Music Direct selected BigCommerce as its ecommerce platform, the brand has seen success.Â
With the help of BigCommerce’s Professional Services teams and BlueBolt, Music Direct launched its new site in just six months.
Thanks to the platform’s reliability, Music Direct no longer has to spend time fixing broken site elements, allowing it to focus on growing the business.
“Since moving platforms, I don’t receive calls in the middle of the night about broken site features. Because of BigCommerce’s reliability, we’ve been able to re-allocate our time and resources and become much more efficient. We get to focus solely on what features or upgrades we can do to make things sell better,” explained Shapiro.
In addition to the platform’s stability, its ability to build custom integrations has enabled Music Direct to improve back-end processes and the overall customer experience, leading to an increase in sales.
“BigCommerce offers all the same entry-level functionality that a small business might like while offering flexibility and customisations that larger companies — like ours — want to utilise. Since moving to BigCommerce, we have peace of mind. We now have stability, security, a better user experience, the ability to handle more customers on the site at once, and increased sales,” remarked Shapiro.
“Since moving to BigCommerce, we have peace of mind. We now have stability, security, a better user experience, the ability to handle more customers on the site at once, and increased sales.”
Steve Shapiro, Director of Ecommerce and IT, Music Direct
LOOKING AHEAD
Turning up the volume with BigCommerce.
As Music Direct continues to grow its business on BigCommerce, it plans to focus on building brand loyalty among customers through targeted marketing and AI-product recommendations. As a long-term goal, it plans to migrate its affiliated brands to BigCommerce and have them all managed through the Multi-Storefront feature.
With BigCommerce’s easy-to-use, reliable, and flexible interface, Music Direct knows it has endless opportunities to grow.
“BigCommerce’s flexibility and the ability to customise and develop with APIs is one of the most valuable aspects of the platform. The other most valuable part is its stability and support,” remarked Shapiro.
“BigCommerce’s flexibility and the ability to customise and develop with APIs is one of the most valuable aspects of the platform. The other most valuable part is its stability and support.”
Steve Shapiro, Director of Ecommerce and IT, Music Direct
Published June 2024
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