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How Typeqast Built an eCommerce Platform for Lokaal Ideaal

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About Lokaal Ideaal

 

Inspired by the charm and authenticity of small shops and family businesses, Lokaal Ideaal decided to bring them together in one convenient online store. Lokaal Ideaal is an online platform where consumers can easily buy products online from local retailers in their own city. By combining the range of all local shops, a local platform is created with a very diverse range of daily groceries to gifts and from jewelry to sports equipment.

 

They are now a big e-commerce platform, with all things homemade available to their customers. From raw, home-grown foods to hand-crafted clothing and décor, the character of the city lives on without succumbing to chain corporations. The webshop is currently available in four cities: Alkmaar, Apeldoorn, Leiden, and Zwolle.

ecommerce platform for Lokaal Ideaal

How Typeqast Built an eCommerce Platform for Lokaal Ideaal

 

About Lokaal Ideaal

 

Inspired by the charm and authenticity of small shops and family businesses, Lokaal Ideaal decided to bring them together in one convenient online store. Lokaal Ideaal is an online platform where consumers can easily buy products online from local retailers in their own city. By combining the range of all local shops, a local platform is created with a very diverse range of daily groceries to gifts and from jewelry to sports equipment.

 

They are now a big e-commerce platform, with all things homemade available to their customers. From raw, home-grown foods to hand-crafted clothing and décor, the character of the city lives on without succumbing to chain corporations. The webshop is currently available in four cities: Alkmaar, Apeldoorn, Leiden, and Zwolle.

The Challenge

 

Although pioneered by great minds led by noble values, starting an e-commerce business isn’t easy. The most challenging part was creating the entire platform from scratch. Thankfully, Typeqast stepped in with their IT expertise and began working.

 

The partnership started with the customer giving ideas and expressing which features would be necessary for a successful operation. Then, the Typeqast teams did their due diligence and research to find exactly how everything can be seamlessly incorporated. By researching the competition and dissecting all the most important and user-friendly features, Typeqasted painted a clear picture on how the platform should look like and what options it would give to its users.

 

The e-commerce platform, in order to be intuitive and user-friendly, needed to include navigation options and product categories. It was also agreed that a third-party payment method would be incorporated into the platform. On top of all that, Typeqast was also to take over the UI/UX design front, making sure that everything looks appealing to the customer and completely user-friendly so that the ordering process can be finished in a matter of minutes.

 

 

ecommerce platform for Lokaal Ideaal

 

The solution

With such a large project at hand, Typeqast delegated the tasks to backend and frontend developers, a QA engineer, UI/UX designers, DevOps, and SCRUM master/Project Manager who made sure the tasks are handled and executed properly and on time. The team changed based on the project’s phase – upscaling with more members once it grew along with the Lokaal Ideaal business. The desktop version was created with all the necessities, and the gateway to the payment method of their choosing was successfully integrated.

 

The testing phase meant testing the platform in different environments. The staging process simulates the whole process, including ordering, regression tests, payment reversal, and how the information traveled from the buyer to the seller. The solution was to implement a third-party back office, which dealt with all the necessary details.

 

The tech stack used included .NET and Angular, and  Typeqast also provided a support team. The project is still ongoing after two years, with constant improvements to the customer experience.

 

 


The future

With seamless communication and positive experiences on both sides, the project will be expanded even further. What we hope to accomplish together in the future is the implementation of an in-house back office, a cross-selling feature, a Favorite Shops tab, and the option for customers to make wish lists. The biggest plan is to create a mobile application to accompany the desktop version.

 

Working on this platform was especially interesting to the Typeqast teams because it was different from any other webshop. The ability to do what one does best while at the same time supporting green ideas and the local economy was a wonderful opportunity, and we’re looking forward to completing all of Lokaal Ideaal’s ambitions for the future!

 

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