In their 10+ years designing and developing websites, the Toolbox team has used almost every player in the ecommerce game to build online stores for their clients, but realised they needed a more robust solution for clients who had outgrown platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify, which is when they came across Neto.
After hearing about Neto we sat down and did a complete comparison with all the other platforms - looking at features, price, and applications. Overall, Neto was the best ecommerce platform. It can be used for the most basic or complex sites, says Liam O’Toole, Director at Toolbox Designs.
One thing Liam loved about Neto was the offering of Australian integrations - “something that no one else is doing”. The native integrations make it simple for their clients to work with shipping providers like Australia Post and Sendle, and to easily accept payments with payment gateways like Stripe, Braintree and eWay, who understand the Australian retail environment and regulations.
And so the partnership with Neto was born.
Toolbox Designs partnered with Neto as a Design and Solutions partner, which means they earn 20% commission on the subscription value of clients they refer to Neto. But the commissions are just a bonus; the real value comes from giving clients a long term solution that they love. One that helps them scale their businesses and realise their retail dreams.
Gritty Pretty, Toolbox Designs, and Neto: A partnership with real results
Australian beauty blog Gritty Pretty is beauty, minus the bullsh*t. With a hundred thousand unique visitors reading the blog every month, Eleanor Pendleton, Australian multi-award winning style influencer and editor of Gritty Pretty, saw an opportunity to leverage her readers with an online store stocking the beauty products the blog reviews.
Eleanor could see that the readers were clicking through to purchase from their affiliates like Mecca and Adore Beauty - so why not push that traffic to their own store?
Choosing the right ecommerce platform
Gritty Pretty used blogging favourite Wordpress for their blog, which was working well but didn’t quite cut it for the ecommerce dream Eleanor had in mind. The Gritty Pretty blog is an expertly curated array of beauty products and it was critical that this tight edit carried all the way from the blog through to the webstore and into the customer’s hands, with a consistent customer experience and an intuitive and effortless user interface.
Eleanor aspired to create an experience that was incredible, beautiful, luxurious, and premium, but still simple, “beauty products should make you feel good - not overwhelmed.”
That’s when Gritty Pretty met Toolbox Designs.
Instead of building a run-of-the mill website that simply ticked boxes, Eleanor drew on Liam and Toolbox Design’s years of experience building ecommerce sites to make the store she had envisioned into a reality with Neto. And Liam’s knack for asking the right questions and thinking long-term saw Gritty Pretty become what it is now.
Liam says “when we first spoke to Gritty Pretty, they talked about onboarding, dispatch and order fulfilment. People starting out don’t think a lot about the fulfilment side of things”, so asking questions like “do they want to trade internationally, do they want 3rd party integrations, drop shippers etc”, made it clear Neto was the perfect fit.
Neto’s intuitive and easy-to use back end was icing on the cake. Eleanor says, “we had a play around with Neto and it was very easy to use, we’d only had Wordpress experience, but the Neto interface was super easy to navigate ”.
The results are in and customer experience is everything
Liam expected hundreds of orders within the first few weeks of launching, and Eleanor would have been happy with a single order when the online store launched.
The Gritty Pretty online store went live on a Wednesday afternoon and within half an hour a couple of stories were leaked, including one from publisher Pedestrian.TV announcing the store’s launch, and then it went gangbusters. “The orders started coming in like bing, bing bing!’
Safe to say the launch and site is very successful; Toolbox Designs were able to create a seamless Gritty Pretty customer experience from start to finish with Neto:
“When you online shop at every increment and touchpoint, you get a little endorphin rush. You get your SMS & EDM, you shop and then your purchase arrives. So when you finally get that order, you’re so excited. With Gritty Pretty even the packaging is consistent, whoever packages the order signs their name, adds a beautiful black wax seal and when the customer opens it, they have a beautiful personalised card,” Eleanor says.
There is a strong sense of satisfaction for Eleanor when she sees in the analytics that a reader reads the blog and clicks through to purchase a product that she has packed.
“Even though the blog was pre-existing and thriving, starting the ecom store was like starting from scratch. The great thing about Neto is that we can see our customers and repeat purchasers down to a fine detail.”
And Gritty Pretty, with the support of Toolbox Designs and Neto are more than prepared for growth:
“What I like about it is that we can grow to a place where we have an enormous warehouse and Neto will accommodate that, If we go to bricks and mortar, I like that Neto can support us in store.”
| Related Reading: 4 Reasons to Go for an All-in-One Retail Management Platform
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