Ecommerce Website with API-Powered Dynamic Pricing

The client was launching a new supply-only doors brand aimed exclusively at trade customers, with no physical presence. They already operated another ecommerce business selling doors with fittings and finance options to retail customers.

The key challenge was to launch a new ecommerce website quickly while keeping product data and pricing consistent across multiple sites. This needed to be attached while pulling live sales and pricing data from suppliers, but ideally while avoiding duplicating product and pricing updates across platforms.

Manually managing pricing and product updates across separate systems was time-consuming, error-prone, and not scalable as the business planned to launch additional brands.

Mantle proposed and implemented a centralised product database to act as a single source of truth for all product and pricing data. Existing product data was migrated into a new central database, and an API was developed to distribute product and pricing data to the original ecommerce website and the new supply-only ecommerce website.

Mantle Development spent a full day with the client and their team to understand every aspect of the sales and operational workflow. Time was also spent with wider business stakeholders to ensure the solution supported the entire customer journey, not just sales and operations.

The Mantle team reviewed all findings internally to align on challenges, requirements, and potential technical solutions before moving forward.

Proposed solutions were presented back to the client for feedback to ensure no requirements were missed. This collaborative approach helped finalise the scope and implementation plan.

Mantle proposed and implemented a centralised product database to act as a single source of truth for all product and pricing data. Existing product data was migrated into a new central database, and an API was developed to distribute product and pricing data to the original ecommerce website and the new supply-only ecommerce website.

Automated updates were scheduled daily at 1am to prevent disruption to live site traffic, and we built a user-friendly interface for the backend that allowed staff to manage all product updates in one place.

The Mantle Development solutions team implemented the system and trained the client's team to use it effectively.

Monthly product updates previously took one team member a full week. The new system eliminated duplicate work across platforms. Saved 456 staff hours per year (12 weeks at 38 hours/week) across two businesses.

When the client launched third and fourth brands using the same system, total annual time saved increased to 1,368 hours. Equivalent to £24,500 per year in salary costs (based on a £35,000 salary). The solution scaled effortlessly as new brands were added, compounding operational savings over time.