SoundTube brings seven Magento sites together with NetSuite ecommerce

SoundTube wanted customers and customer service reps to have a simpler way to order its speakers. Instead, seven Magento sites, disconnected workflows, and orders that needed additional editing in NetSuite were making what should’ve been a routine task harder than it needed to be.

Anchor Group guided a SuiteCommerce implementation that brought those seven storefronts into one NetSuite SuiteCommerce storefront. The project combined a website redesign with customized dealer registration, clearer product specifications, and a document catalog. For a small team managing multiple speaker lines, the goal of the project was straightforward and practical: help people find the right products, provide the information they need when they need it, and make ordering easier to manage. 

Ecommerce growth for NetSuite starts with easy order flows

SoundTube sells speakers through a B2B dealer network. Its customers need to identify the right product for a particular application, and its customer service team needs to place those same orders accurately, making a good NetSuite B2B ecommerce experience necessary for both groups.

As can happen with legacy systems over time, the old Magento environment had accumulated significant manual workarounds. After orders reached NetSuite, sales reps needed to adjust item fields, complementary items, and other details. Work frequently moved between people and systems, creating opportunities for inaccurate orders, lead time lag, and less-than-ideal customer experiences.

SoundTube recognized this manual slog was an expensive place to put their team's expertise: they believed their product experts should spend their time helping customers choose products (and rightly so), rather than repeatedly tidying up orders that had already been placed. 

Sidebar: when we evaluate NetSuite ecommerce clients, we look closely at that purchase order handoff, assessing whether the storefront captures enough of the right information for the business to properly process an order. In SoundTube’s case (and in many other cases we work with), we realized it needed its NetSuite ecommerce platform to support the way its dealers and employees realistically worked instead of the hypothetical way that an out-of-the-box solution expects.

A solid strategy for NetSuite SuiteCommerce growth will also account for the work each order creates. As your business plans for future ecommerce growth, it's crucial to ensure the storefront and the team's new processes can support additional order volume without depending on more of the same manual corrections of the past. 

A SuiteCommerce implementation that brought seven sites into one 

Consolidating seven websites naturally added a layer of complexity to the SuiteCommerce migration, but this is what makes them fun (to us nerds). Customers arriving through the old domains needed a route to the new site, and a broader product catalog needed an understandable and thoughtfully planned structure once they got there.

As the full domain requirements were adjusted for additional needs that the client requested, we did what we always do: adjusted the delivery approach and worked with SoundTube's DNS consultant to coordinate the domain setup and redirection strategy.  

For companies looking to redesign their storefronts, here is where we’d like to emphasize how crucial close attention to product organization is for customers to find items that had previously lived on separate sites. This is also where experienced NetSuite SuiteCommerce consultants earn their keep: a site can look finished on the surface while important customer routes still need work under the hood. Our role as SoundTube's SuiteCommerce implementation partner was to keep those dependencies visible throughout the project and coordinate the people responsible for them.

If you're evaluating NetSuite SuiteCommerce vs Magento as SoundTube did, there are a multitude of operational questions needed to inform the final platform decision. For example, a SuiteCommerce vs Magento comparison should account for order handling, catalog structure, registration, and the team's ability to maintain the website. Looking at Magento vs SuiteCommerce only through a design-based lens would have missed much of SoundTube's challenge and resulted in a failed migration (those happen more than you’d think) or significant time and money spent on reworks and post-go-live challenges. 

SuiteCommerce themes shaped around a broader product catalog 

SoundTube wanted a sleeker website with more flexibility than its existing storefronts offered. The redesign moved from a white, block-style presentation to a dark, space-inspired visual direction, giving the combined catalog a different, more modern feel.

Developing custom SuiteCommerce themes or choosing SuiteCommerce templates is just one part of the equation. For SoundTube, the larger NetSuite website design task was making several product lines feel organized within one shopping experience, with a SuiteCommerce theme that needed to support customer browsing behavior and evaluate the products behind it.

In SuiteCommerce theme development, a layout that looks excellent with one sample item still needs to make visual and functional sense across the range of products customers will see. Our SuiteCommerce design services and NetSuite ecommerce development work were guided by that relationship between appearance and usability, pairing the project’s new visual direction with a more useful presentation of product information, rather than treating design as just an aesthetic choice. 

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SuiteCommerce customization for dealer registration and product selection 

The most useful SuiteCommerce customizations for this project addressed specific steps in the buying process. To support the customer’s ability to register and evaluate products within the storefront, Anchor Group implemented SuiteCommerce extensions Modern Signup, a Document Catalog, and a custom Product Specification Chart, with the registration and product-detail requirements receiving additional attention as the project developed to ensure a frictionless customer experience.

The new dealer registration page 

For SuiteCommerce B2B projects in particular, registration flows require careful planning around requirements to collect the information the business needs without making the customer (or sales team) repeat the same work elsewhere. This was a central part of the NetSuite SuiteCommerce B2B experience we wanted to create on SoundTube’s new website.

SoundTube's dealer registration process had previously relied on a three-page PDF that needed to be downloaded, filled out, and returned via email, where an administrator would manually process the information. Instead, we built a customized single-page registration flow within the store using Modern Signup, so new dealers could provide their information through the website, with their information being automatically mapped into NetSuite upon submission. 

Product specifications displayed where customers choose their items 

The specification display required additional discovery and development work, with our NetSuite SuiteCommerce developers needing to establish which information was important to display and how to present it in a clear and thoughtful way.  

With this in mind, the Product Specification Chart was designed to surface item fields into a table on product detail pages, giving end-customers a clearer view of the unique characteristics of each item while they were considering it. The Document Catalog added another resource for product-related information. 

For teams considering how to customize SuiteCommerce, a custom-developed specification chart is a concrete starting point for ensuring important information is streamlined within a customer’s buying journey.  

Tip: We recommend organizations review the questions customers ask before ordering, then look at what the product page already answers to identify opportunity gaps. This will help your SuiteCommerce developer distinguish useful customizations to the buyer journey from other features for the project list.

The end result was a collection of NetSuite SuiteCommerce B2B features intended to make product selection more informed for the customer. 

What changed for SoundTube 

The project consolidated seven Magento sites into one NetSuite web store, delivered a new visual design, and added customized registration, product specifications, and a document catalog, giving SoundTube a NetSuite ecommerce solution designed around its dealer network, customer journey, and product catalog.

Within SoundTube's NetSuite ecommerce ecosystem, the objective was to make the storefront a more useful part of day-to-day ordering. Anchor Group’s NetSuite integrated ecommerce solutions gave the team a platform for that work, while the specific customizations we implemented addressed the information customers and employees needed to fit their unique business requirements. 

Thinking about making the leap? Here are three questions to ask before your own SuiteCommerce project 

What can be changed on SuiteCommerce?

SoundTube's project included the visual design, dealer registration, and presentation of product specifications. When evaluating NetSuite SuiteCommerce features, start with the customer's task and the employee's next step. This keeps SuiteCommerce best practices grounded in the business and helps avoid SuiteCommerce implementation mistakes such as discovering a critical domain or product-data requirement late. 

How should I choose a SuiteCommerce partner?

Ask prospective SuiteCommerce partners how they will handle multiple domains, organize the catalog, document customizations, and teach your team to maintain the site. A NetSuite ecommerce consultant should be able to explain those decisions in plain language and identify where another specialist needs to be involved. Your NetSuite ecommerce developer should also be able to connect a proposed customization to a specific customer or employee task.

Whether you are comparing NetSuite ecommerce solutions or already have a storefront, evaluate the partner's SuiteCommerce services against the work you actually need. SoundTube needed migration, design, development, and training to fit together. 

Is SuiteCommerce right for my business?

In the world of ecommerce solutions for business, SuiteCommerce can be an excellent solution, but, like any product, its solution value to your organization is dependent on various factors. We’ve put together a short worksheet to get you started. Still have questions? Hit us up.

Get SuiteCommerce implementation or support for your next step

Planning a migration? As your SuiteCommerce migration partner, we’ll help you work through domains, catalog requirements, and customer workflows before the build. Explore our NetSuite ecommerce services and talk with our SuiteCommerce consultants about the project you have in mind.  
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