E-Wheels supercharge their revenue by 90% and double orders with Optimizely

Pioneering micromobility in Norway and beyond

Founded in 2014 in Norway, E-Wheels is now the largest retailer of personal electric vehicles in the Nordic region. With about 100 employees in total, E-Wheels and its sister companies also sell water sports equipment and workout equipment, with electric vehicles being the focus for E-Wheels.

E-Wheels kicked off its business with electric unicycles. Business took off in 2018 when new legislation for electric scooters passed in Norway and e-scooters and electric bikes were introduced as part of E-Wheels’ key offer.

With a first-mover advantage, E-Wheels contributed to the green shift and made micromobility accessible to more than 150,000 customers. E-Wheels’ customer base includes commuters in Scandinavia and Europe, with the occasional B2B customer.

E-Wheels credits its success to offering transportation that is affordable, safe, and fast. It also prides itself on fast delivery and excellent customer service throughout the buying journey as well as post-purchase assistance.

As electric vehicles require maintenance to ensure the safety of users, E-Wheels is currently expanding its workshop locations throughout Norway and Sweden to ease the service process. Customers can also opt to purchase replacement parts via the E-Wheels website. 
 

The need for an automated, scalable solution

At first, the team believed having good products that meet customer needs was sufficient. Upgrading the company’s website and overall customer experience was not on the team’s radar as the company’s prior platform worked satisfactorily. 

However, E-Wheels soon realized its digital solution was too simplistic and could not scale with the type of growth E-Wheels was experiencing. While E-Wheels products were being sold out at lightning speed, the team struggled to handle the large amounts of orders as internal processes were manual and could only accommodate the bare minimum.
 
Although E-Wheels’ previous platform could handle its site traffic just fine, there was no automation to integrate processes such as product management, order management, and more. Chief Information Officer of E-Wheels, Markus Søderlind, shared that updates to E-Wheels’ internal system and stock counts were done manually as and when container shipments were delivered. This caused a delay in inventory updates as well as inaccurate delivery dates for customers.

The printing of airway bills, while seemingly minor, also became increasingly difficult to manage as there was no integration between airway bill generation and orders received.
 
As E-Wheels wanted to retain customers, it attempted to recommend relevant products based on a customer’s purchase history. However, this was all done manually as its previous platform did not have the capabilities to execute data-backed recommendations.

Setting things in motion with Optimizely

The E-Wheels team eventually accepted that their prior platform was insufficient for the future of the business. They started looking for other solution providers, ranging from those suited for smaller businesses to those often used by enterprises.
 
After comparing multiple solutions with E-Wheels’ business trajectory, the team decided on Optimizely as their solutions provider and Geta as their Optimizely partner.
  
The relationship between E-Wheels and Geta was great from the get-go. Thanks to Geta’s robust experience with Optimizely, E-Wheels viewed the Geta team as an integral part of its new sites’ development, as well as other site optimization processes including SEO.
 
The E-Wheels team leveraged Optimizely’s Product Management capabilities to update its catalog of more than 2,000 SKUs with rich product information including key details, customer reviews, AR view of products as well as product safety reminders.
 
With a large catalog, E-Wheels utilized Search & Navigation to facilitate an easy way to browse for products by providing site users with detailed filtering options.
 
Optimizely’s Content Management also comes into play by providing the team with an easy way to publish content to update customers and keep them engaged.
 
While E-Wheels’ prior solution had no issues handling its site traffic, Søderlind shared that Optimizely’s platform security and ability to handle huge spikes in traffic played a huge role in E-Wheels choosing Optimizely. The ability to detect suspicious traffic activity has helped put the E-Wheels team’s mind at ease as they can rely on Optimizely to flag unusual events.

Optimizely’s Single Sign-On capability also helped the E-Wheels team streamline internal workflows by enabling easy but secure access to their Optimizely tools. With Optimizely’s frequent and up-to-date notifications on license renewals and software updates, E-Wheels is also able to stay compliant and on top of its game.
 

Growing the E-Wheels market share with Optimizely

Since moving four of its 13 websites onto Optimizely in April 2021, E-Wheels has seen more than double the number of orders and a 90% growth in revenue compared to its previous platform.
 
E-Wheels successfully improved customer experience with its new digital solution’s intuitive navigation and rich content.
 
With a flexible platform, E-Wheels could work on market expansions without worrying about the scalability of its platform.
 
In addition, automating workflows with Optimizely improved internal efficiency and time-savings for E-Wheels.
 
E-Wheels leveraged the notifications as an opportunity to cross-sell and upsell with automated “notify when back in stock” emails sent out to prospective customers. This not only provides customers with assurance and reduces stock-related inquiries but increases the opportunity for better customer service and engagement.
 
Customers are also informed of the in-person pickup option with information on inventory levels at the nearest physical branch.  Customers can then choose to pick up in store as a freight option in the checkout section. The overall flow of communication has improved for a more user-friendly experience.  E-Wheels aim to improve this experience further by adding a “click & collect” feature directly on each product page.

Søderlind shared that E-Wheels is confident of its industry-leading platform that helps the company stay ahead of the curve, improve its overall reputation as well as accelerate growth and sales.

The future of E-Wheels

E-Wheels has plans to emulate its Norway success in Sweden as well as grow its market share in electric bikes. Electric bikes will also be made available in its Europe offering next year. A customer club loyalty program will also be introduced later this year, with the aim of enhancing E-Wheel’s relationship with its customers and rewarding loyal customers in a strategic way.
 
The team plans to maximize the potential of Optimizely’s Product Recommendations to provide customers with data-backed recommendations both on its websites and emails. E-Wheels also plans to focus on email and SMS marketing through automation and segmentation based on transactional and onsite behavior. 

In addition, due to limitations with its current experimentation solutions provider, E-Wheels views the move to Optimizely’s Web Experimentation platform as the next natural step in its experimentation and A/B testing workflow journey. Søderlind believes Optimizely’s experimentation capabilities will be able to support E-Wheels’ future testing plans.

This is only the beginning of E-Wheel’s digital transformation, and the team will continue to improve the company’s tech stack to stay ahead of competitors and exceed customer expectations.