Delta Vehicle Systems
Building the 4x4 industry's most comprehensive ecommerce system on Webflow.
Summary
Delta Vehicle Systems (DeltaVS or DVS) is a small organization based in Boise, Idaho that specializes in the design and manufacturing of performance off-road equipment for a variety of 4x4 trucks and SUVs. With a focus on the legendary 80-series Land Cruiser, they have slowly built up a reputation for building some of the most reliable and performing Land Cruiser parts in the entire industry. Their precision designs and products have won numerous accolades from enthusiasts and professionals alike.
I met their team after the purchase of an 80-series Land Cruiser myself. I had always been in love with the classic design, unmatched reliability, and entry to the overlanding and off-road community that the 80-series provides. Upon noticing that their photography could have used some improvement, I met with Dave Schenker, a cofounder and award-winning engineer behind DVS. Upon meeting he had expressed a strong need for a new website. I had built websites before, but knew immediately that their desires and needs would go far beyond what any simple platform like Shopify or Squarespace could provide. With that, we decided the best way to build a truly unique and capable solution would be using the emerging capability of Webflow.
Goals & Expectations
We had a few goals and metrics we wanted to meet. We knew that a fresh website with more innovative design elements, more effective shopping UX, improved SEO, and ample marketing opportunity could pretty easily result in measurable growth across a series of measurements.
Web & Sales Goals:
1. Increase web traffic by 30%
2. Increase sales conversion rate by 10%
3. Increase avg. cart value from $125 to $200
4. Increase avg daily revenue from $700 to $1000
Soft goals:
1. Streamlined manufacturing to sales to shipping process
2. Build a more comprehensive and client-owned CMS
3. Reduce order error rate
4. Increase employee effectiveness with simple tasks and easy-to-follow processes
Initial work & solutions
With the plan in place, and the goal of building the website entirely on Webflow, we began the project. At the time, Webflow had just released a native ecommerce solution to support small businesses with customizable and powerful ecommerce CMS solutions. Midway through development, we decided to utilize this new system, with the expectation that DeltaVS could grow sustainably for two to three years before we would have to overhaul and update the back-end solutions.
Unlike most major competitors and brands in the off-road space, we had the unique opportunity to build something completely unique and tailored towards a select number of products and brands. Most automotive websites are use product numbers and a series of narrowing categories for users to find parts. It isn't uncommon for parts sellers to have over 100,000 SKUs on site, and thus, products often get lost, lack content and support, and quickly become outdated.
With Webflow, we were able to turn the traditional buying process around and allow shoppers to immediately narrow down their parts selection by the specific model of their vehicle. The CMS would then filter all products to a sorted array and break them down to 3 categories: parts designed by Delta, third party partner brands, and OEM parts.
While the primary goal was to increase the sales of DeltaVS components, we also had longer term goals to be the leading website for all parts related to the 80-series Land Cruiser. This was to be accomplished through strategic parts partnerships, and a unique offering of rare and valuable OEM parts from Japan.
Building a Comprehensive Ecommerce Ecosystem
As with all projects, we could have never really planned for how large this would become. After reviewing and approving early prototypes it was quickly apparent that to truly build the product and brand we wanted, we would need to design an entire ecosystem. This would involve numerous assets such as proper design standards, photography, branding, style, and more. It would also involve the entire transactional process from placing and order to getting your receipt. Everything needed to be considered and intentionally built.
With this said, set off to freshen the brand and build everything together. This involved
- Defining a style guide and visual brand
- Establishing tone and voice
- Building a comprehensive website
- Designing unique email receipts
- Creating packing material and collateral
Early Results and Reactive Changes
Upon the initial launch of the website, the results started immediately showing for themselves. Revenue quickly grew with the new array or products for sale, sessions and time on site improved dramatically, and engagement with customers for larger and custom purchases grew.
Our goals were as follows:
Goal: Increase web traffic by 30%
Result: Web traffic increased by over 370%!
Goal: Increase sales conversion rate by 10%
Result: Sales conversion rate grew by 13%
Goal: Increase avg. cart value to $200
Results: Cart value grew to $375
Goal: Increase avg. daily revenue to $750
Result: Avg. daily revenue grew to $3100 per day!
Adapting solutions to support rapid growth
We originally set out to build this entire ecommerce system with Webflow's new and growing native ecommerce solution. But with sales growing so quickly, we quickly realized we were growing beyond the capabilities of our current platform. So we had to make some major changes and bring on some new platforms to handle the growth.
We set out to involve several new tools to streamline and really build a solution that could scale beyond our expectations.
Ecommerce: the entire ecommerce platform would shift away from Webflow's system to now integrate the native CMS with FoxyCart, a much more powerful and modular platform that could handle our growing needs.
Order Management: Orders we quickly growing to an unsustainable rate. Staff and software inefficiencies were causing errors, orders to be missed, and other problems in the transaction process. We would adopt a new platform called OrderDesk to aggregate and manage all of our inventory, customers, and orders to reduce opportunity for error and streamline processes.
Shipping: with the new solutions, we had the opportunity to speed up our shipping process with automatic and live international freight shipping rates. Alongside this, we could speed up processing by reducing shipping errors, automating customer emails, and numerous other shipping elements.
Raw materials restocking: we ended up building a powerful integration from our inventory management system with a tool called ODOO. Through this connection, the software would keep a real-time status or all raw and manufacturing materials and automatically order them from their respective providers; dramatically reducing time spent on building parts and speeding up the large components manufacturing process.
Takeaways
Today, DeltaVS continues to grow, and is quickly becoming the leader in the classic Toyota Land Cruiser segment. With the new platforms in place and optimized, we are staging the company for exponential growth. Our goal for the next year is to support next-generation vehicles and establish dealer partnerships. Once we have our parts able to be installed and managed by Toyota dealers, sales could easily grow exponentially and open up the opportunity for DeltaVS to be one of the most premier Toyota off-road parts manufacturers in the entire United States.
Through this process, it's clearly apparent to me how important it is to build solutions that can scale. You never know when a project or product might exceed your expectations, and it's incredibly important that your are always prepared to meet that demand. Through Webflow, we were able to build the foundation of a company that was able to rapidly adopt new tools and continue to grow for years to come.
Next steps for DeltaVS is to expand marketing efforts, begin support and manufacturing for a wider array of vehicles, and continue to build partnerships with various reputable and well-respected brands from around the world.