Our websites are driven by our bespoke and proprietary e-commerce platform, designed to maximise opportunities and deliver competitive advantage in our niche market. It has the capacity to handle significantly increased volumes, and the capability to expand into new markets.
Having in-house software development resource helps deliver cost-effective investment in platform development and enables us to respond quickly to changing customer behaviours and expectations, by rapidly developing new features and functionality.
We continue to develop our proprietary e-commerce platform to drive website traffic, optimise conversion rates and maximise operational efficiencies.
Our bespoke platform continues to offer a point of differentiation in the market and remains the primary focus of our development efforts. We have over 24 million website users, conversion rates of 4.0%, 846,000 active customers, and 168,000 repeat customers.
We launched a company-wide drive to increasingly adopt AI into everyday working practices including our software development process.
We have a leadership structure combining long-serving Gear4music knowledge with leading e-commerce industry experience. There are plans to support business growth by recruiting additional roles across engineering, quality and analysis, and by working with external developers to provide additional specialist resource to accelerate the key Purchasing Platform project on a variable cost basis. Where commercially and functionally appropriate, we work with selected third-parties to integrate 'off the shelf' solutions to complement our platform, such as a Marketplace Aggregator and CRM Provider.
Alongside continuing rollout of important infrastructure improvements and increased focus on cyber-security and resilience, recent project launches have included:
expansion of Second-hand platform operations enabling broader range and condition of items that can be traded with us;
increased automation of goods-in processing via a bespoke app saving time and increasing accuracy in warehouse operations; and
launched V1 of our Chatbot allowing customers to self-serve on a variety of topics from tracking their order to arranging a return.
Ongoing developments include:
integration with a new CRM and analytics platform to help us better understand and communicate with our customers in more effective ways;
integration with a Marketplace Integrator to build our presence in European marketplaces; and
launch of our bespoke AI-driven Purchasing Platform.
