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In previous articles, we have discussed the importance of having self-services features for your eCommerce website fully optimized. We’ve gone in-depth about how time spent trying to work around an error on your page or contact you about it can impact the customer experience you provide and place you as a top choice retailer for customers. This is something 3D Robotics has excelled at and today we will take a closer look at what exactly they needed to optimize to continue being the company of choice.
The idea for 3D Robotics was born from the curious minds of Jordi Muñoz and Chris Anderson. At just 19 years old, Muñoz had moved to California with his wife with nothing much but his passion for Aerospace engineering. He had plenty of time on his hands while waiting for his green card and put that time to good use reading and learning about his aero more about chips and control boards. He tested several codes and shared all his findings with the DIYDrones community, a platform built for those passionate about building their own unmanned aerial vehicles.
Upon hacking his Wii Nintendo and experimenting with a toy helicopter, he achieved an automated flight. He uploaded a video of this flight to DIYDrones which later caught the attention of Chris Anderson, founder of DIYDrones.com. That attention quickly turned into a small investment for Jordi to replicate the technology which had allowed him to achieve this flight and by 2009 this technology started to sell. This became the starting point for 3D Robotics, the most technologically advanced drone company in the world.
In the years following its founding, the company grew to become the largest drone manufacturer in the world. With that came the need to have their products made available to everyone around the world. The demand for their products and rapidly growing technology, catapulted them to create an eCommerce site to easily meet that demand.
The mission of 3D Robotics is to help people see the world from above. To reach those people, the company would opt to build a custom Spree Commerce store.
The company had experienced the cost-benefit of building a custom website through the unique customer experience they were able to build. But over time, their fulfillment faced a serious issue: incorrect and invalid shipping addresses.
At the time invalid shipping addresses needed to be manually corrected, which delayed the shipment orders from going out in due time. It was then that 3D Robotic partnered with Resolve Digital, needing help to implement a solution that would validate the US and Canada addresses automatically and permanently.
Why was this crucial? The amount of orders coming in the incorrect addresses affected deliveries in that they caused packages to be undeliverable, incorrect, or ultimately returned. Although this was a problem mostly on the user side (inputting the wrong information) the company was failing to validate the information and offer a solution, which resulted in poor customer experience.
In the eCommerce industry, it is up to the site to be responsible for the unique experience they are offering. Timely and accurate delivery is a huge part of that process, businesses who overlook that end up losing time and money. Knowing this, Resolve Digital implemented a consistent solution for 3D Robotics.
We had two objectives, the first was to use these same APIs in the Spree checkout process to ensure consistency in the address validation process. The second was to minimize the number of steps required to complete the transaction.
For this, we implemented a popup modal window that prompted customers to select the entered address or the validated on. The validated address was then saved so there was no need to display the modal window for any future orders, and all stored addresses are verified.
With this solution in place, the company saw ⅔ of their site customers were selecting the recommended, cleansed addresses from the FedEx Address Service before they checkout, which significantly reduced the manual adjustments that were previously necessary to fix shipping addresses. Ultimately this led them to swift fulfillment, happier customers, and lower costs.
3D Robotics is an excellent example of how small self-service features can make or break your sales. No matter how highly demanded or unique your products may be, customers still choose retailers who design seamless customer experience. We are proud to work with 3D Robotics on this tailored solution to help the company continue to thrive.