How we do it: developing Bronson, Magento Enterprise store

Intro: Magento & healthcare industry

Bronson Laboratories is US based international healthcare company that is known for producing a nutritional supplements, vitamins, minerals, herbs and health & body care products. They achieve biggest sales records in the US, but have customers all over the world. Different versions created for local markets are the proof of the growing popularity of the company.

We started working with Bronson Vitamins 8 years ago and up to this day, we spent more than 1000+ hours building and customizing Magento solutions to meet their unique business needs. In 2013 we worked on implementation of new version of their online store, where we replaced our previously developed solution with a dedicated Magento Enterprise software.

Our goal was to enable even greater optimization of online sales channels utilising modern shopping system brought by Magento. Next to that, we did a complete re-design of the layout and made the new site fully responsive (RWD). An implementation of a new responsive e-commerce site resulted in growing traffic from mobile devices while the mechanism of Magento, empowered with dedicated modules, enabled even easier configuration of advanced promotional mechanisms.

Client expectations and scope of the project

A few months ago, we received yet another request for the redesign of Bronson Vitamins store. This time, the challenge was not just to modernize the interface, but focus efforts on making the new site even more accessible and usable for real users we have been given feedback from. We put great emphasis on comfort of elderly users who browse the web using smaller screens. Knowing how users navigate the site, we re-designed the list of categories on the home page making them more user-friendly and easy to read. We also resized product images on category pages to be slightly smaller, thanks to what we were able to eliminate the problem of long scrolling.

Thinking about regular customers, who are often visiting the store to purchase a product very well known to them, we have introduced quick order form that allows adding products with the specified SKU identifier to the basket. We also installed a module that supports the payment in a subscription model, allowing users to have the option of a monthly supply of the supplement.
Responding to customer needs we also prepared and installed modules that were extending default capabilities of Magento. As in previous systems, so in the new one it was vitally important to have special mechanisms for the products promotion. Preparing dozens of types and combinations of special offers was a big challenge for site administrators, even with the extensive functionality of the system. One of the most interesting ones were automatic addition of free products to the cart in the "buy 1 get 1 free" bargain and the ability to choose one's gifts from the list that appears automatically while ordering.

Taking the opportunity of creating new design, we have decided to update the software to the latest version of Magento Enterprise, which included a number of security fixes, improvements in creating and managing promotional prices and the Visual Merchandiser option that allows simple management of the order of products on category thanks to the drag and drop method.

Soon after launching of the latest version of Bronson Vitamins US, we also launched similar shops on national domains dedicated to people of Great Britain and New Zealand. The aim was to allow customers to place orders in their own currency without having to incur the costs of conversion and thanks to the multi-store option administrators can manage all the local shops from a single panel.

Because the pharmaceutical industry in eCommerce requires constant development in order to better meet the needs of customers we are constantly working on further improvements to online sales channels of Bronson Vitamins. In the near future, we will launch new shops for remaining Bronson's brands that will be based on the current release of Magento implementation.

Are you managing an online store and need help with the implementation of new functionalities? Or maybe you are just starting your adventure with Magento and are looking for experienced professionals who are ready to take on an ambitious project? Contact us and see how we can help you.