Creating a Streamlined Ecommerce Solution for ABA Members
Overview
The American Bankers Association (ABA) is a member-based association of community, regional, and national banks, which includes holding companies, savings banks, and trust companies. As the largest financial trade group in the U.S., ABA advocates for equitable growth practices and consumer protection policies before lawmakers and regulatory agencies. It also provides training, educational programs, professional certifications, events, conferences, news, and research to members. To deliver these benefits more efficiently, ABA asked Velir to streamline its multiple shopping carts into a single Ecommerce experience.
Challenge
To provide member benefits, ABA relied on multiple Ecommerce engines and shopping carts to handle payments for its training, educational programs, professional certifications, events, and conferences. This created an unnecessarily complex and inconsistent member experience. To build a more cohesive experience for members, ABA tasked Velir with combining shopping carts into a single Ecommerce solution. ABA requested a solution powered by Nimble AMS, which would also house member data as their new business system of record.
ABA’s challenges included:
- Modernizing their Ecommerce solution
- Combining shopping carts into a single commerce solution powered by Nimble AMS
- Integrating Sitecore with Nimble AMS and other systems like their single sign on (SSO) provider, learning management system, email marketing system, and campaign software
- Delivering all products, product details, pricing information, and user account information successfully
Approach
To address ABA’s challenges, we focused on three key areas: account creation, account reconciliation, and Ecommerce. We reconfigured the account creation and login processes to integrate with their SSO provider OneLogin for authentication, and Nimble AMS for user authorization. Then we provided design consultation and enhancements for a profile page for users with multiple accounts in the learning management system and developed the functionality for users to select from those accounts during and after purchase. Next, we redesigned the shopping cart, pricing component, and cart confirmation page. We also created product and on-demand synchronization jobs in Sitecore that allow product information to be updated in Sitecore as it changes in Nimble AMS, configured the API calls to allow users to add items to their cart and retrieve their cart, and developed a new product data template for content types.
Our approach included:
- Integrating account creation and login with OneLogin for authentication and Nimble AMS for authorization
- Providing design consultation and enhancements for a profile page for users with multiple accounts in the learning management system, and developing the functionality for users to select from those accounts
- Redesigning the shopping cart, pricing component, and cart confirmation page
- Creating both product and on-demand synchronization jobs in Sitecore that allow product information to be updated in Sitecore as it changes in Nimble AMS
- Configuring the API calls to allow users to add items to their cart and retrieve their cart
- Building a new product data template and modernizing existing data templates for other content types
- Integrating Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking
Solution
Through our work, we were able to help ABA deliver the consolidated shopping cart and streamlined Ecommerce experience they wanted for their members. This includes benefits for members like a refactored login and registration process for user accounts, the ability to select from multiple user profiles, a unified shopping cart, and a straightforward pricing component. It also includes ways for the ABA team to better manage their content types, simpler ways to create new products and content, and efficient methods for updating information across systems so inventory is accurate, and products are up-to-date.
Results:
- A refactored login and registration process for user accounts that stores user information in Nimble AMS
- The ability for members to select from multiple user profiles
- A refreshed and unified shopping cart, a functional shopping cart icon, and a new pricing component that shows member/non-member pricing as well as any relevant savings
- A flexible product data template that allows ABA to better manage products available in Nimble AMS and other systems
- Updates to existing data templates that allow ABA to better manage their content types, including products, while also simplifying their future content type and product creation
- An efficient way to update product information across all systems so product inventory and information are up-to-date