Door Controls USA
An eCommerce and technical resource suite for internal and external support
Door Controls USA is one of the largest retailers of industrial door parts in the US – manufacturing their own custom door products and stocking thousands of parts from top manufacturers. What differentiates Door Controls from other manufacturers and suppliers is a commitment to world-class support and training for door service technicians.
When Door Controls approached us, their outdated website wasn’t meeting their needs. They were motivated and full of ideas on how we could collaborate on positioning them as a technology-forward leader in the industry.
eCommerce Site
Our first priority was to update their ecommerce website, which was their primary platform for inventory management. As we got to know their business, we established that the new website must:
- allow users to quickly find and purchase items related to their needs
- provide instant access to account and order information
- equip partners with resources and tools needed to be successful in the field through education and process
- show Door Controls’ commitment to their customers and industry leadership
The digital experience had to mirror the experience their customers knew and expected from Door Controls.
The new website is focused on ways of browsing, providing various pathways to find the right parts and support.
We chose Craft CMS as our foundational web framework. Craft’s flexibility and extensibility allowed it to serve as the back-end for both of our front-end platforms: web, and, by creating a headless Craft CMS setup, mobile. Craft has an extensive plug-in ecosystem, and while we’re always careful not to over-use plugins, we did get value from plugins such as Freeform, Scout for Algolia, and more. The content management user interface is exceptionally intuitive, and the staff at Door Controls was quickly able to start customizing their web and mobile content.
We created a component-based ecommerce design system to connect products to one another and give customers a predictable and supportive shopping experience.
Craft Commerce proved to be an especially flexible and vital part of the overall application. We built a custom synchronization process, which brings product and customer data into Craft from Door Controls’ Microsoft NAV ERP system. We also built a custom process to synchronize incoming ecommerce orders back to the ERP. This synchronization process has allowed the website and mobile app to always have up-to-date information from their product catalog.
The content management user interface is exceptionally intuitive, and the staff at Door Controls were quickly able to start customizing their web and mobile content.
Mobile App
Door Controls wanted a mobile application for their technicians. With a long list of potential features, we quickly realized we needed to take a people-first approach to this project. Before we built anything, we spoke individually with many Door Controls technicians to ask them what types of digital tools would be most useful for them in their workflow. Through this process, we narrowed a hypothetical list of features into something that these technician would use and feel supported by each day.
The app features the varied search facets of the ecommerce site for products, and also allows for technicians to search troubleshooting manuals for error code fixes. All these features do not rely on cell service, since technicians often don't know what type of conditions they are traveling to when called to assess a broken door.
The mobile app was then designed to help technicians in the field quickly and easily find parts, manuals and troubleshooting guides, as well as receive phone support while servicing doors.
The app allows technicians to browse products by door type, brand, keyword, or – in instances where labels aren't available – by image.
For the mobile app, React Native was our platform of choice. We were able to build a cross-platform (iOS and Android) application using the highly productive React framework. We further extended Craft CMS to synchronize content into Firebase’s Cloud Firestore NoSQL database. We used Firebase to display real-time product content in the mobile application.
The effort Happy Cog went through to understand our business and our audience was instrumental to the final design and user experience – they asked the right questions and provided insights on best practices. In addition, the team continues to go above and beyond post-launch to make enhancements to the sites and mobile app.
– Matt Lucas, VP of Sales and Customer Relations