Wholesaler of Bubble Tea Supplies Product in Houston, TX
Challenge
To provide a complete e-Commerce and e-Marketing Solution
Solution
LavaTech
Result
Website traffic increase from 30 visitors/month to 1500 visitors/month. Online sales recorded for the first year is
USD 18k and USD 33k for the following year.
Headquartered in Houston, TX, TapiocaKing.com is a wholesaler providing bubble tea supplies to
bubble tea store owner.
Their business was mainly focus in surrounding area of the state of Texas. Local market was getting more
competitive as new competitor started to show up. Tapioca King Inc. needs to find new ways to increase revenue and get
ahead of competition.
The Challenge :
A bubble tea supplies company needed a dynamic e-commerce website complete with products
database online to increase revenue and gain exposure beyond local market.
In 2001, the company launched their corporate website www.TapiocaKing.com to establish a web presence. It was just a
basic informational website with no database or e-Commerce solution. Over the first couple years, this website has seen
traffics mainly consist of store owners looking for information about bubble new tea supplies available. The only way
people knew about the website was from URL printed on the cups or other products packaging. That didn't work because it
failed to attract new business.
By 2004, however, lack of updates and frequent down time had caused the visitors losing interest of the website.
According to the webmaster at that time, the traffics was only about 30 visitors per month at that time.
Bobby, Chief Executive Officer of the company, thought that the website needed a restructure and redesign to allow the
company to take advantage of the e-Commerce that everyone was talking about. So he approached LavaTech to discuss about
the possibilities of selling their bubble tea supplies online.
The Solution :
A dynamic e-commerce website with online product catalog that allows customer to pay by credit
card in a secure environment.
After several discussions with Tapioca King Inc. to understand their challenge and extensive market analysis and
planning, we proposed an e-Commerce website with customer login, real-time shipping calculator complete with a credit
card processing facility. An e-Marketing campaign were also in the proposal to promote the website after it's done by
using Pay-Per-Click campaign and link exchange program to promote the website.
The website was written in PHP using MySQL as the backend database. Since Tapioca King Inc. has a webmaster to update
products prices and information, an administration control panel was built to allow easy update on products price and
info. Customers created an account when they first buy from the site so they would save times when they come back. A
real-time shipping calculator that directly connects to UPS that automatically gives
the customer exact amount of shipping charges for their order.
The credit card processing process were conducted in 128-bit Secure Socket Layer(SSL) environment to prevent fraud and
unauthorized access. A monthly and annual sales report are easily available in the administration section to keep
track of the sales as well.
The Result :
A successful relaunch of TapiocaKing.com that enables visitors to shop online and pay by credit
card. Website traffics up 50 times and online sales have grown by more than 85% in the past 12 months.
Tapioca King Inc. has seen benefits from the new website for itself and their customers. "In the first year of the
site relaunch, stocks has been reduced by over 30%", says Bobby. Processing cost have fallen as well as number of calls
since customer can get most of the product information online.
Customers benefited too, as average delivery time has been reduced from 7 days to just 2 days. "As soon as the customer
placed an order and chose to pay by credit card, our staff process and order immediately and notifies the customer when
the products ships out. The real-time shipping calculator provide an accurate shipping cost from UPS so we don't
over-charge our customers.", says Bobby.
Customer Testimonial
"Ever since LavaTech took over, our website's visitors increased by 50 times and our online sales has
increased by over 80% in the past 12 months. They were able to integrate their e-Commerce solution and tailored it just
for our company. They were also very professional and patience throughout the project."
