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Betty's

Upgrading Betty's from Magento 1 to Magento 2

The Challenge

What’s worse than having to build an online sales platform from scratch? Having to scrap all your existing investment AND having to build an online sales platform from scratch.

It’s as common as it’s depressing, as it’s expensive – baked-in investment that can’t be carried over to a new system. Dead end tech. Dead money.

A frustrating business cul-de-sac that luxury gifts, bakery and café tea rooms client Bettys had found themselves in.

Complex expiries

Because Bettys’ products are often perishable with differing life spans and expiry dates, delivery scheduling can be significantly more complicated than for more straightforward products and purchases.

So complicated that, beneath the surface of what might appear to be a simple enough interface, Bettys needed to apply complex rules and logic.

Whatever was ordered and in whatever combination, every product needed to always be delivered fresh.

Betty's Sundae
Bettys Macaroons

The Brand

For nearly 100 years people have been travelling to Yorkshire for a taste of Bettys. The very first tea room opened in Harrogate in 1919. These days, as well as having six Café Tea Rooms in Yorkshire, Betty’s specialities are delivered across the world through its online shop and Bettys Cookery School.

In many ways, however, Betty’s roots remain unchanged. Still a family business, they have passed the values of its Swiss-Yorkshire heritage down through the generations. Dedicated to using the finest quality ingredients – often locally sourced – and nurturing artisan skills. As well as delighting their customers with attention to detail, ensuring every visit is an occasion to remember.

Futureproofing their online store with Magento 2

Having already parted ways with two Magento ecommerce agencies, the system, developed across two platforms, was proving increasingly inefficient and expensive to maintain.

It quickly became clear to both us and Bettys that, despite the pain of having to ditch the existing tech and upgrade to M2, there was an opportunity here to prevent this kind of redundancy ever happening again.

More than just a platform upgrade this was a great chance to decouple the rules and logic from Magento and to adopt a platform-agnostic ATP (Available to Promise) micro-service.

We separated it out into its own self-contained piece of software so when Bettys eventually switch from M2 to something else, which will happen one day, it means they don’t have to take on that big expense of another rewrite.

Josh Di Fabio – Senior Magento Developer

“Because we understand the uniqueness, logic and business rules of each project we can create something that isn’t just Magento”, says Josh.

“Rebuilt on a single, separate application, ATP models all scenarios including stock levels, batch availability and forthcoming availability so customers can get their deliveries fresh on the right day. Bettys are getting great results and are really happy with the new set up”.

Wherever you are in the world now Betty’s can make sure that their product will arrive fresh.

As well as ATP we’ve added another application that looks after integrations and is responsible for communicating between M2 and ERP – again, when Bettys move away from M2, their investment will be able to move with them and they won’t have to re-write their ecommerce software.

And of course, there are the long term financial implications of decoupling performance from the platform with the cost of customising ERP often extremely high.

A cost that our micro-service products have helped Bettys radically reduce.

Is your investment locked into a platform or product?

Committed to costs that won’t transfer?

You aren’t alone. There are plenty of businesses out there locked into their tech. Tech that’s holding you back – expensively.

The good news is that micro-services, products such as ATP, instead of just replacing like for like, allow you to elegantly and cost-effectively sidestep all that expensive tie-in and explore new more efficient, more profitable ways of working.

The Live Site

Betty's Website on Laptop

Beautifully designed site

Betty's Case Study

Complex delivery scheduling

Betty's Victoria Sponge

The results are in

48
%
of those who add to basket are more likely to complete a transaction than previous year
43
%
increase in conversion rate
219
%
increase in revenue
211
%
increase in transactions

“Space48 is great at all the Magento stuff, it’s all of the other stuff – it’s the completely new work where they overshot our expectations massively.

With the old website even when we did the most basic of changes it would break everything. Even the simplest of updates was a major project. I’ve been in the business nearly three years and until six months ago we’d implemented two or three releases of new functionality. In the last six months, we’ve applied more than thirty.”

Space48 smashed it.”

Bettys Logo Samantha Sargison
Head of Digital & Corporate at Bettys