Their Story
Pacer Group was founded in 1979 as a major industrial manufacturer. Over their 40 years of experience, they have built a reputation to be the industry leader in electrical wire and cable manufacturing, electrical panel design and wiring harness manufacturing, as well as electrical components distribution.
Committed to their customer service, they are the company that professionals turn to for their parts expertise. Their hard work and dedication to their customers is outstanding. That’s why they do everything they can to make their customers happy and their lives easier, even through the checkout process on their website.
The Problem: Checkout Limitations
As a leader in the ecommerce industry, IntuitSolutions is always ready to provide customers with custom solutions. Pacer Group originally came to us in 2014 for a new website on BigCommerce’s Blueprint framework. After seeing success with their custom designed website, they decided to stick with IntuitSolutions for BigCommerce Site Optimization & Support, and shortly thereafter subscribed to our BigCommerce One Page Checkout app. Our app, known for its three column layout and available add-on features such as Purchase Order, Customer Group Shipping and Payment restrictions, Ship on Account, and more, was what attracted Pacer Group.
At the time, this was the best checkout solution on the platform. Fast forward a few years and our One Page Checkout app is now antiquated and increasingly becoming less stable, especially as BigCommerce releases updates to their new framework, Stencil, and their new checkout solution, Optimized One-Page Checkout. At this time, our One Page Checkout app is no longer available and we recommend for those that are still using it to transition away from it.
The Solution: Customized BigCommerce Checkout with Features
As we continued working with Pacer Group, we later migrated them from Blueprint to Stencil, ensuring their store kept up to date with modern best practices and the latest features available on BigCommerce. With their custom one page checkout features becoming less stable and our recommendation to move away from our app, Pacer Group needed a new checkout solution as well.
Being BigCommerce Elite Partners, IntuitSolutions jumped at the opportunity to become one of the only agencies given the privilege to build upon the recently released Optimized One-Page Checkout by BigCommerce.
Pacer Group looked at other checkout solutions on the market, but realized they were bulky or script heavy and improperly placed on top of the code instead of meshing with it. So, they challenged IntuitSolutions to customize BigCommerce’s new checkout and become only the second website to have a customized experience on the new BigCommerce checkout page. Without a doubt, we accepted the challenge to rebuild several of the checkout customizations that helps Pacer Group run its business.
Ship on Customer Account
Many of Pacer Group’s customers are companies placing large orders, not only in value, but also weight. Because of this, many customers request that they use their own Shipping provider account for freight delivery rather than Pacer Group’s standard freight delivery methods.
A BigCommerce Ship on Account shipping method is a feature IntuitSolutions built a long time ago for BigCommerce’s legacy checkout, which you can learn more about here. Now with the stability of BigCommerce’s new optimized one-page checkout our team was able to rebuild an improved Ship on Account feature for the BigCommerce checkout.
Customer Group Payment & Shipping Method Restrictions
One of the top most requested features for the BigCommerce checkout is the ability to show or hide payment and shipping methods based on customer group. Similar to our Ship on Account feature, this feature was built by IntuitSolutions for BigCommerce’s legacy checkout, which you can learn more about here Payment Restrictions, Shipping Method Restrictions. While Pacer Group wanted Ship on Account as an available shipping method, they did not want all customers to be able to use this shipping method. IntuitSolutions’ expert BigCommerce Developers built into the platform the ability for Pacer Group to manage which customer groups have access to each payment and shipping method.
Additional Custom Features
IntuitSolutions’ BigCommerce Developers worked tirelessly to ensure everything flowed together seamlessly. In Addition to integrating customer group restrictions and ship on account features, IntuitSolutions added a handful of other features to produce the perfect custom checkout for Pacer Group.
Some of those features include:
- Validate freight numbers – ensure spaces, letters, and special characters do not exist thus causing validation issues down the line.
- Add coupon code and amount to order comments to ensure all necessary information is in one place for Pacer Groups store managers.
- Other stylistic choices in terms of colors, branding, etc.
The Results
Developing these features to integrate seamlessly within BigCommerce’s new checkout was no easy feat for IntuitSolutions’ BigCommerce developers. As previously mentioned, this was only the second time that BigCommerce had approved custom development on their new checkout – the first project also being done by IntuitSolutions, making us the only agency with approval and experience customizing BigCommerce Optimized One-Page Checkout.
Since their launch on April 23, 2020, Pacer group has been satisfied with their new custom checkout process. It has allowed them to continue their work without unnecessary interruptions. Additionally they are happy that their customers have as many options as needed for payment and shipping.
Keep an eye out as IntuitSolutions has a new checkout solutions app launching soon that contains some of the same features Pacer Group needed. If you have an idea or request for a custom feature on BigCommerce’s Optimized One-Page Checkout we’d love to hear from you. Please contact us or leave a comment below!
