Ordering groceries online is totally on trend. And right now, no other segment is processed faster online than eFood. Reason enough to start an ALDI-wide pioneer project. ALDI SWITZERLAND customers can now visit aldi-now.ch and benefit from what’s known as quick commerce. Using an MVP approach, we created an online shop for the retail store in record time. The shop solution is based on the Spryker Cloud Commerce OS and offers a highly scalable and needs-based system.
- Customer
- ALDI SUISSE AG
- Customer since
- 2021
- Go-Live
- December 2021
- Website
- https://www.aldi-now.ch
140
days from the start of sprint 0 to go-live
2,200
products listed in the shop
284
Jira tickets
309
test orders, to train the process from A-Z
Cutting-Edge Shop System in the Spryker Cloud
Aiming for swift participation in the Swiss eFood market, ALDI SWITZERLAND went for a commerce system based on the Spryker Cloud Commerce OS. The adaptive solution provides plenty of flexibility right from the start. As well as offering a range of packaged business capabilities, Spryker’s Commerce OS can simply be integrated into current IT landscapes using existing APIs. The online shop is based on a highly scalable state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, hosted in the Spryker Cloud (PaaS). All functionality is technologically independent – you won’t find any system-relevant dependencies on subsystems.
To maintain the tight timeline of an MVP, we started by working with existing corporate identities. And by operating the platform in the Spryker Cloud (PaaS), ALDI SWITZERLAND will easily be able to handle future order peaks. The platform can readily be expanded to include additional delivery areas.
Order Today, Get It Today
By adding food products, aldi-now.ch is expanding the existing offering at aldi-suisse.ch, where customers were already able to order featured non-food products for home delivery. Of course, they can also continue to fill their shopping cart in comfort from their sofa. The subtle difference is that the system allows you to set a personal delivery window within the order process. And on request, ALDI SWITZERLAND will even deliver future orders within an hour of receiving them. Orders themselves can be planned up to 14 days in advance. This is a huge challenge, not only in terms of logistics. We’ve implemented the logic for this in the system already.
Annanow – Integration of an External Partner
Ordered articles are handled by Swiss company Annanow. The start-up’s staff pick the products at the branches selected by the system and deliver orders directly to customers. To guarantee that things run smoothly at the checkout, we have integrated the Annanow platform with the shop so that it takes over during the checkout process – including payment integration.
A milestone was undoubtedly the ultra-fast realisation by Unic and annanow, chapeau.
ALDI SUISSE AG
Powerful Search Function
What would a shop system be without a product search? We built the search function using Elasticsearch. It describes a data engine that nestles perfectly into the corporate design. A great feature of this open-source solution is that it indexes raw data from a range of sources.
To ensure that the interplay between search and data would run smoothly, we first organised the data into a standardised product data structure. This was based on the parameters from the existing product information management system. To display the product detail view clearly, we not only imported huge amounts of product data, but also took into account the data structure including individual product attributes.
The Result: The search engine kicks in as soon as you start typing in the search box, displaying products drawn from the database.
Clearly Structured: Product Details and Shopping Lists
If customers prefer to browse rather than search specifically, they can use the ‘All Products’ option right next to the search box. From there it’s easy to navigate to the product categories and individual product detail cards.
And these are really the heart of the shop. Detailed product information next to zoomable product images. Another clever feature is that customers can create various shopping lists. For instance, they can have a list for their regular weekly shop, or a wish list for their next barbecue. In the product detail view, customers decide what happens with the desired product: whether it goes straight into the shopping cart or onto a shopping list. Each list can be triggered later – with a single click, of course.
Shopping Cart, Calculation and Self-Services
As is well known, Switzerland has various VAT rates. To guarantee transparency all the way through to the checkout, the shopping cart displays the different tax amounts clearly, itemised by product line. Different delivery costs, too, are adjusted automatically based on the content of the shopping cart.
ALDI SWITZERLAND provides customers with a self-service area to keep track of orders. In future, they will be able to view not only user data, but also order details in this area. More user-relevant views will also be added over the next few months.
ALDI SWITZERLAND reaches the next digital expansion stage with aldi-now; customers look forward to more flexibility and fast delivery.
ALDI SUISSE AG
Developed in Record Time
After a brief ‘family and friends’ phase, during which all participants put the system and processes through their paces, we went live as planned. In other words, the shop, including product data and external logic, was online after around 140 days. And ALDI SWITZERLAND now offers its Swiss customers not just non-food products, but also items from the food and near-food segments.
Products used
Technology
Spryker Cloud on AWS, ECS, EC2, RDS, OpenSearch, ElastiCache, CodePipeline Bitbucket, TeamCity Pipelines
Languages and Frameworks
PHP/TypeScript, Spryker, Symfony, Twig, WebComponents
Our services for the ALDI SUISSE project
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