Grafityp UK Ltd, part of the International Grafityp Self-Adhesive Products Group, is a manufacturer and distributor of adhesive sign making films, digital print media, laminates, and automotive and deco films. With over 65 years of service to the sign industry, Grafityp works with businesses across a wide variety of sectors.
Grafityp has long understood the importance of selling online and had maintained a webstore since 2004. However, with its webstore administered by IT, and a separate, static site being managed by marketing, its online setup was less than ideal and made it difficult to unify sales and marketing. When integrating the two sites in existing systems proved too challenging, Dave Bragg, Grafityp IT manager, decided that a new solution was required.
“We had very specific objectives in mind for our new e-commerce webstore; to reduce the amount of time employees were spending resolving errors, and to attract new customers,” explained Dave, “The solution had to be a shortcut to implementing a mobile-friendly, modern-looking site.”
As a next-day delivery company, many customers use Grafityp as a just-in-time supplier. In order to deal quickly and efficiently with these orders, the company required fast and accurate information in its web store; “A delay, however small, between a customer providing information, like an order, and our staff having visibility of it, has caused trouble in some scenarios,” Dave explained.
Grafityp also required its new solution to work with its existing SAP Business One ERP. With these priorities front of mind, Dave began the search and investigated a number of new e-commerce webstores, looking into solutions like Magento and WordPress. However, these solutions required many additional customisations and were a significant investment in time and money.
The search concluded when Dave found Sana Commerce. “It was the only solution compatible with SAP Business One that offered a real-time, integrated framework,” Dave explained. “It provides near-instant access and visibility to transactional events and data.”
Sana’s seamless integration with SAP Business One eliminated system silos and made the ERP and e-commerce work as one, guaranteeing a convenient and reliable customer experience and making it ideally suited for Grafityp’s dedication to speedy fulfilment.
As well as delivering on the technical specification, Sana scored highly on usability. While Grafityp previously struggled with the two-site setup and its siloed approach, this wasn’t an in issue with Sana Commerce; “We were able to pick things up very quickly. We used the Sana University to guide us through any processes we were unsure of and to make sure we were getting the most from the solution,” said Dave. “It was incredibly easy to navigate and it helped us establish website design consistency.”
When the webstore went live, it quickly became evident that Sana enabled a seamless user experience. Grafityp didn’t give customers any advance notice of the new store launch; yet once the site went live at 11.30am on launch day, the first order had been placed by 1pm.
Since the launch, Grafityp has found that its customers are engaging more with the site and viewing more pages on average per session than they had previously. With its decreased bounce rate, improved conversion rate, and a higher proportion of visitors browsing on mobile devices, Grafityp can be confident that it’s offering a more consistent and engaging user experience. It also found that it was attracting a significant percentage of new users, and in the first year, Grafityp saw a 37% increase of new customers buying online.”
Dave commented, “Our previous solution was created for the online world ten years ago and wasn’t being updated to keep pace with the latest trends and constantly-changing online world. Sana Commerce will allow us to be current in that online world and has futureproofed our online sales.”
This has been evidenced through the ongoing global pandemic. Since the UK went into lockdown, many businesses without webstores have been hugely restricted in their ability to trade. Thanks to its new Sana webstore, Grafityp has been able to continue serving its customers, allowing many organisations, including those in healthcare, education and retail, to re-sign their businesses and continue to operate through lockdown with the correct guidance and safety measures in place. Against the backdrop of business disruption and financial uncertainty, Grafityp has experienced a 32% year on year increase in materials sales, as well as increased printing machinery and laser product lines sales, which customers are using to produce face shields and Perspex screens.
“We’re pleased we implemented our webstore when we did and we’re confident that it will continue to serve us now and into the future, whatever challenge is thrown our way next,” said Dave.
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