Unlocking Omnichannel Opportunities

The Cymax Business and Homesquare web stores were built over the past 10 years, but with limited expansion in the past 4-5 years, Cymax Group chose to get ahead of any potential impact on customer experience while reducing operational challenges.

Lagging mobile performance and slow page load times were hampering sales; difficulty maintaining and updating custom code on an aging monolithic architecture was making it hard to improve experiences; discoverability & menu navigation were making it difficult to drive engagement; localization and multi-currency weren’t supported or supportable, hampering expansion outside the US market; and they weren’t able to meet the ADA standards for accessible design. Most importantly, attempting to address any of these issues was prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

They needed a more modern approach to their e-commerce experience built on a composable commerce architecture that would enable rapid testing and iteration to solve challenges today, while creating opportunities for ongoing innovation and improvement.

Orium set out to rebuild their direct-to-consumer web stores, Cymax Business and Homesquare, on a modern composable architecture that can scale to launch additional brands, both within and outside of the US. The new composable architecture would equip Cymax Group to achieve a more consistent, high level of performance, enable better user segmentation and personalization, and help drive better key performance metrics including conversion, average order value, and repeat purchases.

Unlocking capabilities and features lacking in the current architecture while allowing Cymax Group to own and have full control over their solution and roadmap was a key outcome we worked toward. By replatforming the underlying architecture to enable future growth, Cymax Group can now seize on their new flexibility and agility to expand on their customer offerings with new capabilities and through the deployment of new commerce experiences for new brands under their banner.

Thanks to a replatform of both cymax.com & homesquare.com on Orium’s Accelerator, Cymax Group can now take advantage of integrations with leading composable commerce vendors including Contentful, Elastic Path, Vercel, and Algolia. The composable architecture underlying the upgraded experiences has enabled a host of improvements for Cymax Group partners, customers, employees, and business outcomes.

Customers now have the ability to create an account and login, as well email experts directly about products from the product pages. Implementation of promotions for cart and item level discounts enabled by Elastic Path gives greater flexibility for Cymax Group to customize offerings to their clientele, and a payment service that includes an integration for fraud management offers greater protection for customers and Cymax Group alike.

The transition to composable commerce marks one of Cymax Group’s largest technology investments to date. It has enabled Cymax Group to further its focus on best-in-class technological solutions, creating success for them in the months and years to come. Cymax Group will be able to continue to make incremental improvements to the sites, optimizing across each touchpoint in their omnichannel customer journeys, ultimately improving customer experience and creating new opportunities for their partners.

Integrations with Google Analytics and Tag Manager, as well as Datadog monitoring, ensure Cymax Group will get the right information to enable them to guide future development plans and enhance customer experiences. Technical implementations for SEO including redirects, sitemap, and robots.txt ensured the sites maintained rankings as the upgrades occurred, and sitewide usability testing, pen testing, performance testing, and accessibility testing reduced risks of launches while improving experiences for all. Best of all, hosting on Vercel has enabled continuous integration, so updates can be made quickly and easily as Orium and Cymax Group work to enhance the experience for years to come.