Visdeal E-commerce Website

Visdeal is a specialized e-commerce store for fishers and people who like to spend time in nature. It sells anything for fishing tackle and stuff for active leisure activities. Based in Vianen, near Utrecht, Visdeal was set up by Willem and his twin brother, Tuen, who, recognising the success of group buying initiatives websites like Groupon and Groupdeal, set up a service specifically for anglers.

Story behind

Visdeal originated from another project, developed with a website builder, Getsocio, an Anadea’s product. Over the years, the project has been evolving, and custom development has been carried out.

There were several sites for different markets, none of them connected in the same way. The customer, Willem Bontrup, came to the conclusion that it was difficult to manage them separately. He decided to optimize his business processes and create a modern e-commerce website with different localizations.

The main task remained to perform development so that the existing business continued to function. After a discussion with the customer, it was decided to transfer the old system to the new one, using a modular process.

Anadea’s work on Visdeal

It started as an existing project that needed some modernization and scaling, and then we overhauled it into a modern and user-friendly solution. We continued to develop it using RoR, adding new custom features. The goal was to speed up the rendering of the website, as the old application could not cope with new requirements and features. Modules were rebuilt from scratch individually. This avoided the need for any business discontinuity. We achieved a 10x increase in the speed pages rendered.

We ensured that there was localization for every market that our customer wanted to be in the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Germany, France, Great Britain. Anadea’s developers considered the need for fast and intensive scaling and the request for building a modern solution and used The Self-contained System (SCS) approach in an architecture and Micro Frontends to ship features independently.

Main Features

Purchase through Visdeal

Every successful e-commerce site needs a user-friendly payment process. A user utilizes search/filtering by categories, adds to cart, and proceeds with delivery details and payment. It’s not necessary to register to buy the stuff, but for registered users, Visdeal opens discount opportunities.

Integration with a warehouse management system (Picqer)

WMS (warehouse management system) gives control over warehouse operations from the time goods or materials enter a warehouse until they move out. Operations in a warehouse include inventory management, picking processes, and auditing.

Online payment

We integrated a payment system, Adyen, which allowed Visdeal to be localized, while also processing payments smoothly and securely.

Email campaigns

The feature allows sending thematic and targeted emails to users. It monitors which category of offers in letters is more interesting to the subscriber and sends him a special version of the newsletter with more suitable goods.

Integration with marketplaces (Amazon, Bol.com, and others)

We added integrations with the leading marketplaces which provide even greater coverage and popularity of the project.

The product cards are downloaded from Visdeal to marketplaces, but the order made on marketplaces goes to Visdeal for processing and delivery.

More than just a solution

Visdeal is constantly growing, and gaining popularity due to seamless e-commerce site work and speedy delivery. It’s one of the most popular e-commerce sites for active leisure and fishing lovers in the Netherlands. It appeared on Dutch television in stories about choosing gear for different situations.

Now the business has more than 75 employees – all of them anglers – and a 5,000 sqm warehouse that has been recently updated with some of the latest automated packaging technology to make it even more efficient. Its predicted turnover is expected to be more than €21 million this year – a 54% increase compared to 2020.

The customer plans to enter the Spanish market, Ireland, and then with time Nordic countries like Norway, Finland, and Sweden. We believe the customer will achieve his ambitious goal of Visdeal becoming No. 1 in Europe in this niche. Anadea will be happy to help him with ongoing development services.

Technology stack

Ruby on Rails, Elixir/Phoenix, RabbitMQ, Docker Swarm

Integrations: DeepL, Amazon, Adyen, Bol.com, Picqer, Copernica, ChannelEngine