Kortreist Ved is a Norwegian nationwide multi-vendor marketplace for firewood. It connects customers with firewood producers. The platform locates the nearest producer for a customer to save on delivery costs and time. One might say that it’s like «Uber» in the world of firewood.
It should be noted that firewood is one of the most eco-friendly ways of house heating; it is a renewable resource and a CO2-neutral source of heat. It is produced in many areas across the country, and Kortreist Ved organizes delivery straight from a producer to a customer. The company coordinates the delivery on all routes, aiming to limit CO2 emissions.
WarmDevs successfully developed the website, which currently helps operate the business more efficiently.
They are good at structuring ideas and coming up with new things themselves.
I was very happy with the services. Innovative and proficient with modern project management tools, they typically worked efficiently and effectively on development.
Kortreist Ved was a large and long-term project that occupied the majority of the WarmDevs team. In the course of the project, the client’s business was expanding, and new services were appearing. We have quickly implemented them in digital.
We split every complex task into separate workstreams, defined the milestones, calculated the workload, and set the deadlines. All that was agreed with a client and stipulated in the contract. A project manager supervised all work.
At the very beginning of the project, we held a kickoff meeting with a client and his team in Oslo. We collected all input data, obtained general technical requirements, and discussed an overall vision of the project. We also identified the project’s main goal: developing an innovative, digitalized, multipurpose, and uniform platform that could be used for the current and the next projects. Background: the existing website was built in a somewhat outdated Angular environment and had an old technology stack. The new platform had to be developed within 12 months.
We evaluated the project’s vision, identified the client’s pain issues, and created high-level requirements like user stories and a project road map (with release dates). Then we worked out the contract and signed it with the client.
We employed the SCRUM method. The client’s vision was divided into epics, which, in turn, were subdivided into user stories. The workflow was split into two-week sprints. After every sprint, we held a demo meeting with the client, where we demonstrated newly made functionality, obtained feedback, updated the backlog, and set goals for the next period. In the course of work, the project grew, and new services appeared. For the majority of them, we created separate websites.
We carried out a business analysis of the firewood industry, explored the activities of market players, and determined the needs of the client's business. We identified strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats as well as outlined the ways to overcome the challenges. We studied the functioning of the current platform and proposed a detailed solution. We defined the stages of work and selected the technologies: React JavaScript, Laravel, Figma, and others. Then we split responsibility among the team members.
We also studied all types of users of this project. We specified the work of an admin, a carrier, a vendor, and a customer. We identified their roles and the ways they interacted with the platform. We also defined the ideal customer profile (ICP) for each role, formulated a user story map, and approved it with a client. At this stage, our interaction with Kortreist Ved team was mainly off-line. In the outcome of the business analysis, we worked out an action plan and divided it into sprints.
In total, we created the designs for 8 websites, which were subprojects of a single platform. Each site had a different purpose: retail, upsale, marketing, a blog to improve organic traffic, and SaaS platform. The client shared his vision and we formulated technical assignments as a SCRUM team.
The work on every website began with elaborating the structure, outlining a site map, and developing a customer journey map for every user’s role. Several examples are below.
We faced lots of challenges and fascinating tasks. We developed a platform that allowed us to scale up the business by entering new markets. We rebuilt a platform that ran on Angular with JavaScript. We optimized all processes that took place on the website, which were:
While solving a logistics problem for the carriers, we configured the system so that it placed several orders in one shipment. The system considered the locations of vendors and customers as well as vehicles’ load and volume capacities and optimized the delivery routes. That saved petrol and reduced CO2 emissions.
The website was made to be very easy to use both for vendors and customers. Firewood producers received an inflow of orders and customers were automatically notified and updated on their orders.
We created a SaaS platform for the vendors so that they could obtain personal landing pages and solve their marketing tasks. Prior to submission of the project, we checked the website performance in all browsers and on all types of devices (QA & bug fixing).
Due to the strategy by which we accurately determined a target audience, we attracted relevant traffic and converted it into customers and vendors. We made a blog about eco house heating, ignition systems, and fireplaces. The blog was aimed at potential customers and guided the audience to the main platform. We made the second blog for the potential vendors; it was about logging, drying of timber, and the firewood trade. The blog steered the visitors to the website for the vendors, which was a SaaS platform. The main website also contained a blog.
We used one more type of indirect marketing – volunteer groups. We established cooperation with the volunteer movement called “Dugnad”, which was very popular in Norway. We developed for them a convenient integrated system for purchasing \ sales records and division of the funds among the volunteers. They became sales agents of the firewood; and, as a result, we obtained more traffic.
Nowadays many Norwegians actively use the Kortreist Ved platform. Since this business is seasonal, we observe a tendency for annual traffic to increase starting from August and decrease in the spring. The vendors, however, are active on the platform all year round.
According to the latest survey, 45% of users reached the website directly, which indicated brand awareness. 31% of users landed on the website as organic traffic. They typically came after reading blogs for vendors and customers. The close collaboration of Kortreist Ved with vendors and carriers as well as referral programs ensured an additional 23% of visitors.
Kortreist Ved project was a real challenge for every member of our team. We kept constant communication with the client both online and offline, meeting in Norway and Ukraine. We channeled all our energy into this project and made many suggestions to the client along the way. To fulfill the project’s requirements we hired new employees, optimized a number of inner processes, and, eventually, grew professionally as a team.
We are heartily grateful to Kortreist Ved for a long and fruitful collaboration!
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