Tuwayq.com is a Saudi Arabian dynamic e-commerce platform with a diverse selection of trusted vendors across multiple categories, including fashion, electronics, and home goods. They aim to create a fair, transparent marketplace that promotes healthy competition among vendors while safeguarding user information. Committed to continuous innovation, they strive to enhance their platform to meet the evolving needs of customers.

Challenges

Tuwayq approached nopStation, a Gold partner of nopCommerce, with their new eCommerce solution development project. They requested the development of several new features and extensive optimizations for the UX on their website as well as mobile apps for Android and iOS. Here are the key development challenges of the project.

Support for phone number & OTP-based Customer registration: Since the business operates in Saudi Arabia, most of its current and target customers primarily use phone numbers instead of email for communication. To streamline the registration process and align it with regional preferences, the client requested a phone number and OTP-based registration and login for their new website and mobile app.

Multi-vendor marketplace with Vendor product approvals: With their business being multi-vendor, they wanted their eCommerce platform to reflect that. Alongside the core multi-vendor functionality available in nopCommerce, they also wanted to have an approval mechanism where they can view and approve vendor-submitted products to ensure proper quality control and moderate content on their platform.

Storefront theme optimized for friendly UX and performance: For their new website, the client wanted a modern, responsive storefront theme optimized for both speed and user experience. Additionally, they required customization options to align the theme with their brand identity.

Mobile Apps for Android and iOS: Since most of their customers primarily use mobile phones, the client wanted a mobile app alongside their website for both Android and iOS. They preferred a cross-platform solution to maintain a single codebase while ensuring seamless deployment on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Fast and intuitive search experience: One of their key requirements was having a fast and intuitive search experience for customers on the storefront. They wanted to have features like auto-complete and typo tolerance to give customers a more natural typing and product discovery experience while searching.

A ticketing system for customer support: To help automate ticketing as well as streamline customer support and communication, they wanted to have helpdesk functionality, so customers could easily create support tickets, and ticket management in the Admin area for effective customer support.

Add support for MADA Payment: For online payments, they wanted support for MADA, a popular regional payment method.

Solution

Leveraging a plugin-driven approach, nopStation successfully added new features and enhancements.

1. Simplified customer onboarding phone number-based sign-up & login with OTP Authentication: A Phone number-based registration and login system was implemented with support for OTP-based authentication. This lets customers register seamlessly with their phone number and OTP in just a few clicks, helping boost registrations.

   

   Phone number-based login/sign-up with OTP Authentication

2. Added Vendor Product Approval functionality: To better optimize product moderation from vendors, a vendor product approval system was implemented. Now, when vendors edit or add new products, they must first be approved by the storefront admins. This lets them easily moderate vendor products to ensure proper quality and compliance across their marketplace.
3. Enhanced UX and Performance: The Kingdom theme was implemented, incorporating Smart Slider, Smart Carousels, Product Tabs, and Announcement plugins to elevate the storefront experience.

   

   Storefront category page with category banners

4. Extended customer reach on Android and iOS: To enhance their presence on Android and iOS, a Mobile App for nopCommerce was developed. This solution provided a mobile-optimized shopping experience, seamlessly integrated with the nopCommerce storefront via REST API.

   

   Flutter-based mobile app for storefront

5. Enhanced search experience: To ensure a smooth storefront search experience, nopStation’s Algolia search integration plugin was used. This plugin utilizes Algolia’s hosted search services to provide search features such as auto-complete and typo tolerance.
6. Optimized customer support through Helpdesk Ticket plugin: The Helpdesk Tickets plugin helped facilitate their customer support and ticketing requirements. This enables customers to easily raise tickets from their storefront for any support-related query. On the admin side, it streamlines ticket management through rich filtering and ticket management, letting admins handle customer support more efficiently.
7. Developed MADA Payment Plugin: To integrate MADA as a payment option, a custom MADA payment plugin was developed ensuring smooth transactions on both the website and mobile app.

Results

• Simplified customer onboarding with phone number-based registration and OTP authentication.
• Improved vendor product moderation through a vendor product approval system.
• Enhanced storefront UX and performance with the new theme and advanced UI components.
• Expanded mobile presence with a cross-platform mobile app for Android and iOS.
• Enhanced search experience through Algolia search integration.
• Optimized customer support with the Helpdesk Ticket plugin.
• Secure and localized payments with a custom MADA payment plugin.