dd-commerce e-commerce software for large complex sites

Design911

The owner of Design911 is a true Porsche enthusiast who turned his hobby into his business. Design911 has been selling Porsche parts since we started on this project in 1999 when Design911 was a one man band.

Starting with a handful of products, mostly tyres, it has developed into a multi-million pound business with warehouses in UK and Europe.

The original design911 site was built on Datadial’s first iteration of its own e-commerce software, launched around 2004.

Over the years, technical refinements and upgraded integrations have made dd-commerce both resilient and robust.

The site now has over 100,000 products, worldwide sales, over 50,000 customers and thousands of daily users.

Immediately, sales almost doubled.

This was down to increased site speed, better design and usability and improved SEO.

Originally the site was developed as a bespoke e-commerce website (e-commerce platforms did not exist back in 1999).  For more than 20 years we produced a multitude of iterations within this e-commerce platform until, in 2023 we launched a new standard version known as dd-commerce.

The site is packed with functionality, much of it invisible to the everyday user, but which enables the automation of order processes, customer management and inventory management, among many other things.

The site integrates with Orderwise ERP for order processing as well as Adestra for email marketing.

Why bespoke e-commerce?

Most e-commerce is platform based – i.e they use Magento, Shopify, Woo-commerce. We use the these platforms too but they are not suitable for highly complex sites where the requirements go well beyond the capabilities of the platforms. This is why we recommend our own bespoke e-commerce software for this type of project.

Above the standard e-commerce functionality this site includes:

• Fully multi-lingual
• Abandoned basket email functionality
• Tyre and fast part finder
• Find parts via part diagrams digitised from car manuals
• Intelligent search powered by Doofinder
• Automatic feeds for Google and Facebook Shopping
• Orderwise integration
• Stock control based on multiple locations
• Bulk imports from supplier price lists
• Supports multiple payment methods including PayPal, Google Pay, iDEAL and Bank Transfer

We first  came together from an advert placed on Loot*

*A free advertising newspaper (pre Gumtree et al). If you remember Loot then you’re much like us OGs.

We started working with Design911 in 1999 so we know each other pretty well now. Both companies have benefitted from a reliable team of employees who have worked on the site for nearly all this time and who know it intimately.

With these types of projects there is a symbiotic relationship whereby our success is linked to our clients’ success and we are very much a partner in the process.  This mutual trust is vital for project success and we actively seek similar relationships in any new projects.

To the credit of Design911 they are willing to try out new ideas to grow their business. Sometimes these work, sometimes they don’t, but as both companies view the relationship for the long term it’s an accepted principal that this will be part of the process.