About The Gatehouse

The Gatehouse has sold high quality, name brand garage remote controls, gate operators & accessories, and their respective replacement parts at wholesale prices online since 2003. They stock inventory from all of the major entry system brands including Liftmaster, Linear, Genie, Chamberlain, Elite, DoorKing, Sentex, and Sears Craftsman.

Changing Platforms

When selling online, it’s vital to choose an ecommerce platform that best serves customers’ needs while giving the store owner the ease and functionality they desire in running their business.

The Gatehouse's online store was previously on Volusion. They migrated to BigCommerce in February 2019, primarily because they didn't like having to pay Volusion's substantial bandwidth overage fees. Their customers were also unhappy with Volusion’s platform, which "crashed repeatedly" and resulted in lost sales.

This store's main concern about switching from Volusion to BigCommerce was that they would lose SEO rankings, which has not been an issue.

What have been some advantages of moving from Volusion to BigCommerce?

• BigCommerce's availability of multiple apps is "a huge plus"
• No bandwidth overage charges
• More reliable ecommerce platform

Once they changed platforms, they had to tackle their next biggest issue....

Helping Customers Find the Parts They Need

The Gatehouse provides one of the most comprehensive collections of electric gate and garage systems and their respective replacement parts. Because these products require specific fitments, it's vital that customers are able to find exactly what part they need, based on their search criteria. Providing customers this ability not only speeds up the buying process but can also reduce product returns.

While both Volusion and BigCommerce have filtering tools available, neither offers the capability of providing "exact match" search results. This particular functionality is vital for businesses selling specific fitment products.

After moving to BigCommerce, the Gatehouse tried a different fitment app from the BigCommerce Apps Marketplace, but found it lacking both in functionality and customer service response time. They "constantly fought" the app, lost data, and "had to redo things," which, as any small business owner will tell you, is frustrating and time consuming.

The Solution: PartFinder

Installing the PartFinder app for BigCommerce on their website (along with including easy-to-follow diagrams for correct product choices) has given customers of The Gatehouse a handy tool in finding exactly what they need -- fast.

The team at the Gatehouse worked diligently to create their part mappings. While this crucial part of the setup process can be time-consuming, PartFinder's bulk import feature makes a tedious task much easier and faster.

 

Results

Since installing the PartFinder app in February 2019, data reveals the following from The Gatehouse's online store:

• The PartFinder app has already delivered over 2,500 results to customer searches at The Gatehouse.
• They are now on track to yield 16,000+ fitment search results over the next year.

Think of the customer service requests this will save, returns it will avoid, and customer confidence it will build!

PartFinder Advantages

• According to the President of The Gatehouse, PartFinder "gives customers a second way to search for parts and makes it easier for people who are used to using this type of finder system for car parts, etc."
• The ability to export the part mappings, then copy and paste the parts from one item to another is key. They have a lot of redundancy and it stops them from having to manually enter data twice.
• U.S.-based support staff decreases customer service response time. In fact, they think it is "a HUGE deal," since the first fitment app they tried took 24 hours to reply to their support needs.

 

 

Thank you to The Gatehouse for using PartFinder and for allowing us to showcase their store in this case study. We wish them much success on their BigCommerce store.