Project Overview

About Raft Furniture

Heinz Frye and Mick Quinn founded Raft in 1999 and remain Managing Directors today, alongside their families and a longstanding team of interior designers and furniture fanatics. Specialising in handmade in London sofas and reclaimed teak furniture, sustainability is at the heart of what Raft has been since 1999. Today, Raft is proudly made up of five sofa factories in Wembley, a reclaimed teak factory in Indonesia and four showrooms nationally. In August 2022, Raft opened its biggest flagship store in the home quarter of Westfield, London, making Raft the largest British manufacturer and retailer in any Westfield Shopping Centre.

Objective

Initially, Raft Furniture engaged us for a migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2, during which we developed a brand new website. Both our team and the Raft team take great pride in this accomplishment. Following the successful migration, our next challenge was to enable their legacy system, currently in use in their stores, to communicate with the latest technology stack. Additionally, we developed a sofa configurator and numerous custom features for the brand.

Challenges

Our first and for most challenging task was to integrate their legacy systems which has been developed overtime with the latest technology stack and from experience legacy system integrations can be complex due to differences in technology, data formats, and protocols. Ensuring seamless communication between these systems is a significantly challenging.

Moving on to data centralisation, consolidating data from different sources (like EPOS systems in brick-and-mortar stores and online channels) into a single place for easy access and report generation can be difficult due to data inconsistency and interoperability issues.

Once we formatted the data we started Migrating from one platform to another (like from Magento 1 to Magento 2) is a complex task that involves data migration, feature replication, and ensuring minimal downtime.
Custom Feature Development: Building bespoke features like a sofa configurator or a custom API connector requires a deep understanding of the business requirements and the technical expertise to implement them effectively.

Redesigning the user interface and improving the user experience is a challenge as it requires a balance between aesthetics and functionality. It also needs to be done in a way that aligns with the brand’s identity and meets the users’ expectations.

Dealing with historical data was quite challenging
Outdated stack was casing a lot of hiccups within the company
Business want the online website to meet brick and mortar customer expectations.
Flowless customer experience online as well as offline

What is the Outcome?

We worked quite hard in order to make sure that all the implementation were positively impacting the business and we kept track on this for 6 months and got the following imrovements

+50%

Improvement In Conversion Rates

+100%

Customer Satisfaction Score

-41%

Abandon Basket Rates

+36%

Increase In Add To Basket

Our Streamlined Process

Our Process vary based on the customer needs and objective of the project, this specific case Raft Furniture was looking to improve user experience and fix broken outdated system in order to make sure their business runs smooth and without hiccups.

We reviewed the proposed ETA

We shared report with all the tasks

Client approved the tasks

Development team initiated the work

Core Solutions

We have fostered a strong business relationship over the past two years. We greatly admire the ethics that Raft upholds, whether it’s in terms of customer experience or their distinct and aesthetically pleasing products. This has empowered us to create some remarkable offerings for the brand.

Raft Furniture, a distinguished Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brand, places significant emphasis on the customer experience, striving to make the customer journey as exceptional as possible. They sought to replicate this high-quality experience in the digital realm. The team at RVS Media successfully met this challenge, delivering outstanding results that matched the brand’s expectations.

To ensure minimal disruption during Raft Furniture’s platform migration, we adopted a strategic approach. We created a detailed migration plan, migrated all data from Magento 1 to Magento 2, and replicated all features from the old site. To minimize downtime, we ran both sites in parallel for troubleshooting. Once the Magento 2 site was stable, we made the switch during a low-traffic period.

As a specialized ecommerce agency in the UK, we successfully integrated Raft Furniture’s legacy system with the latest ecommerce platform. This process involved understanding the legacy system, identifying key areas for integration, and mapping data elements between the old and new systems. Any format differences were resolved through data transformation, ensuring seamless communication and improved efficiency.

RVS Media has provided a comprehensive technical solution to Raft Furniture, catering to their unique and specific requirements. One of the standout features they developed is the Sofa Configurator, enhancing the user experience and customer satisfaction. In addition, they implemented a robust store appointment system, streamlining the process of scheduling visits to Raft Furniture’s physical locations. RVS Media also developed a sophisticated quotation system, enabling customers to receive instant and accurate price estimates for their bespoke furniture choices.