Thermo Fisher Scientific

Bottling eCommerce Magic to Send Overseas

Scope

Overview

Nalgene — of water bottle fame — needed a net-new eCommerce site to expand their product line into the Eurozone. Unfortunately, they acknowledged that their U.S. site (not made by Vital) was not a great foundation to build upon.

We built a brand new B2C eCommerce site so Nalgene could better serve the European market. The site meets all of the European Union’s regulatory requirements, including GDPR compliance, and can also be used as a foundation for more geo-specific sites (and even an updated U.S. site, if they choose).

A Customer-first Approach

We built a WooCommerce site, complete with a block editor, to meet Nalgene’s needs. We also took this opportunity to optimize the integration with their product database and updated their classic brand to appeal to European shoppers first. Site copy is available in five languages and is optimized for the mobile experience (of course).

Smart Validation

As visitors peruse the site, they are met with recommendations and reviews from real Nalgene customers, adding a layer of social validation.

The site is equipped with location-based VAT logic to calculate the proper taxes, and shipping restriction management at the product level limits shipping strictly to the Eurozone. A custom API was written to sync orders and inventory with the logistics company’s ERP, allowing Nalgene to manage fulfillment and updates within their system while syncing the data to the site for updated order status and product availability.

Wanted: Cross-Border Customization

Besides the usual needs of an eCommerce site build, EU eCommerce sites require additional considerations.

With 24 official languages (and possibly hundreds more spoken), any EU-based site needs to include powerful translation capabilities. In addition to string translations, all product taxonomies, attributes, descriptions, and reviews need to be available in multiple languages. Any rewrite rules created for the English version needed to be translated and implemented across all languages.

We implemented WPML to translate content and manage version control across the site while ensuring the product inventory remained synchronized in all languages. Automatic translation was used to translate the English site to German, Italian, Spanish, and French; Nalgene reviewed and made manual corrections as needed.

Thirst, Quenched

When all was said and done, Nalgene was able to launch their brand overseas and sell directly to EU customers. Their team is able to easily update their site and products through the block editor, and their logistics partner is able to easily manage the day-to-day fulfillment of orders and customer service support.