Ultra Liquors, a prominent player in the liquor trade, has seen aggressive growth during the past three decades. The group now has a total of 126 corporate and franchise stores across South Africa, and it's growing. It supplies household consumers and over 1 800 businesses with their liquor requirements. As a partner of Arch Retail Solutions, Ultra Liquors uses the suite of Arch solutions in its business.

COVID-19 necessitated the development and implementation of an Ultra Liquors online shopping platform. Arch e-Store, an integrated e-commerce platform, was developed and implemented in Ultra. The online shopping platform integrates with the existing Arch backbone in the business, supplying consolidated management information on which strategic decisions are made. For more information on Arch eStore, visit: https://www.archsoftware.co.za/solutions/arch-estore/

Ultra’s online digital store has a fresh modern look with the goal of making shopping easier and more engaging – https://goodwood.ultraliquors.co.za/

Some of the new interactive capabilities and functionality of the Arch eStore/Ultra Liquors online shopping platform include:

• A responsive mobile website: eStore adapts to different screen sizes to deliver pixel-perfect experiences for the online consumer regardless of the device used;
• User-friendly navigation: Helps visitors easily browse products, look for information and check out;
• Search engine optimisation (SEO) friendly pages: This ensures the Ultra website is found on search engines such as Google;
• Increased speed, performance and stability: Critical for an e-commerce site to be speedy and stable as it has a direct correlation to sales;
• Transparent information pages: These pages provide consumers with useful information that can affect their buying decisions, show how thoughtful Ultra is and increase the store’s reputation;
• Multiple wish-lists: Consumers can store or save specific items in more than one wish-list, which they can buy later by returning to the store – gives consumers an easy reminder of a product and helps the store to track interest in the product;
• Blog: A blog is an effective content marketing channel for Ultra to attract new visitors and turn them into loyal buyers – enhances SEO visibility significantly;
• Intuitive search: Includes ‘previous searches’, ‘trending now’ and ‘quick category links’;
• Product filtering: Filters allow consumers to shortlist Ultra Liquors’ products based on their parameters;
• POPI compliance: Allows customers of Ultra to export and view their personal data and delete their accounts permanently;
• Social media links: Linking the Ultra eStore to social media platforms drives more traffic, increases follower counts and enables consumers to have direct contact; and
• Reports and analytics tool: Reports are essential to Ultra Liquors to measure its website's performance and to plan strategy. Besides revenues and the number of products sold, there are other metrics worth knowing. This include sales conversion rate, website traffic, e-mail opt-in rate, average consumer value and cart abandonment rate, all of which can be measured via Google Analytics.

Casey-Lee Perry, Arch eStore Product Owner at Arch Retail, says: “We are proud that Ultra Liquors selected Arch eStore as their digital online solution. In partnership, the solution has been refined to offer discerning Ultra customers an impressive and effective alternative shopping platform.”