Kidsbooks

Founded in 1983, Kidsbooks is successful by focusing on their niche and providing a wide range of books for children and young adults. Kidsbooks has a dedicated staff that customers rely on for recommendations and expertise.

As THE go to source for Children’s books in the Vancouver area, it was important to them that they were able to carry that niche expertise onto the web.

Challenges

Kidsbooks had several obstacles to overcome to launch their web store.

1. Their massive list of over 100,000 titles was too large to be managed manually.
2. They wanted to be able to support hand-selling and benefit from the expertise of their staff.
3. They needed to ensure that all products listed on their site were available for sale
4. Their POS data on titles was not consistent and included abbreviations and industry jargon.

Solution

CommerceCM's manual catalog management easily handles their handselling requirements allowing them to create lists of exciting new releases but the size and rapidly changing nature of their catalog added additional challenges. Our solution for Kidsbooks includes the following enhancements.

1. Their POS updates the web catalog nightly and limits it to relevant titles.
2. CommerceCM automatically pulls XML bibliographic data and book covers from a data provider.
3. CommerceCM sorts titles into departments by store categories from the POS and standard BISAC classifications from the XML.
4. Automatically determines availability of out of stock titles by checking data from suppliers

Result

The result for Kidsbooks is a fun and functional web site that reduces Kidsbooks need to manage every last detail.

Shoppers can browse or page through the catalog, click to find more titles in the series or by the same authors, and see inventory at the local stores as of the previous night.

Shipping guidelines are determined by availability in store or from specific regular suppliers.

Similar titles are based on how the book is classified in the catalog and shoppers can click to see similar titles.

Other benefits:

• Increased Search Engine visibility
• Search Engine key-phrases sending traffic increased by over 2000%
• Web visitors up 600% within 6 months of launch

At a Glance: CommerceCM customer since 2007

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Kidsbooks, the largest independent children’s bookstore in Canada, needed an eCommerce solution that would allow them to differentiate themselves from traditional full line bookstores, easily manage over 100,000 titles, and keep the personal attention and product knowledge that has made them a Vancouver institution for over 25 years.

The first step was to integrate CommerceCM with their POS system so the catalog was limited to titles that they carry. Their POS also included store specific categorizations of titles. Next, CommerceCM retrieves XML bibliographic data and cover images from a third party data provider for all of the titles in the database.

CommerceCM receives nightly updates of new titles and inventory from all three stores. CommerceCM then checks publisher availability for all of the titles to determine if the books that are not on hand are still available and how long it will take to fill an order.

Books are sorted automatically based on industry and store classifications. Kidsbooks can also use the CommerceCM manager to create topic and seasonal lists of staff favourites.