IMS Euro has provided non-pharmaceutical healthcare products to the medical community for over 30 years, including veterinarians and the NHS. They offer a wide product inventory, covering everything from Anaesthesia to laboratory devices.

From humble beginnings to international success, this family-owned business has become the supplier of choice for many lead clinicians and surgeons. Clients rely on IMS to provide quality products that offer value for money.

Historically, IMS Euro have relied on print catalogues to allow customers to place their orders. However, growth in product interest spurred on by the pandemic highlighted the urgency for a digital transformation.

Alongside their print brochures, IMS had a legacy site on Magento 1 (now Adobe Commerce). As this platform approached its end of life, IMS Euro needed an upgrade. This retirement of Magento 1 coincided with a new resource planning software that IMS were rolling out across the business.

Beyond syncing new technologies, a new website offered the opportunity to resolve multiple pain points with IMS Euro’s legacy system. These included: a lack of reporting abilities, a poor mobile site, and a lack of shopping widgets. Our challenge was to improve IMS’s online functionality and facilitate growth across all digital channels.

To maintain market share alongside an increasing number of online competitors, we introduced

fresh branding to modernise the IMS Euro storefront. Our UI Designers leapt at the opportunity to reimagine the legacy site’s front-end design.

Importantly, we didn’t want to lose the brand’s heritage or the familiarity it had developed over 30 years in business. As such, our design recommendations centred on a subtle redefinition of the colour palette for the website based on a newly simplified and modernised IMS logo. Combined with best practice user interface (UI) design for accessibility and conversion rate optimisation, the new storefront is familiar yet dramatically improved.

IMS caters to the healthcare and veterinary markets separately, requiring a single CMS with distinct storefronts within the same website. 

Before we could begin stocking the virtual shelves on either side of the site, we needed to review the labyrinthine navigation. The category structure of the legacy site was vast and easy to get lost within. On the veterinary half of the site alone, there were 463 category pages! Many of these categories contained no products, leading users to a dead end.

To redefine the information architecture (IA) of the site, our marketing team:

• Audited the existing site structure, identifying low performing pages and opportunities to archive or merge URLs. 

• Conducted extensive keyword research, to distinguish between healthcare and veterinary product listing pages. 

• Assigned unique target search terms for every category page, to avoid unnecessary content duplication or confusion for users.

Our recommendations now help users to know exactly where to find the products they’re looking for. 

IMS Euro had an extensive library of product descriptions to optimise, most requiring a high level of technical expertise. The business already had a vast library of content in its physical catalogue, but the internal team were unsure how to transpose this information online. 

Our content team hosted bespoke training sessions and ‘product description masterclasses’ with the in-house team at IMS. Presenting tailored sessions to small groups, we helped IMS translate their technical knowledge into web-friendly copy.

To help the team put our training into practice, we also produced easy-to-use template documents and guidance. Supported by continued content consultancy, the IMS Euro team began to create consistent, optimised product descriptions at pace.

IMS struggled with keeping track of resources and needed a new system to improve the management of their site. As part of its digital transformation, IMS implemented a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system across the entire organisation. 

We integrated the new Adobe Magento Commerce 2 site with the ERP software so that customers could see live stock data and track their order status through the site. The new ERP was at the centre of improving site management and enabling stronger customer relationships by providing transparency and enhancing UX.

With no website tracking in place on their previous site, it was difficult for IMS to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and their habits. To ensure IMS could continue their impressive growth trajectory, we implemented comprehensive data analytics tracking within Adobe Commerce. 

The ability to track customer interactions in detail has offered IMS valuable insights into their customers’ on-site behaviour. Our Data Analysts then provided guidance for using this data to adapt to users’ needs. 

Armed with analytics and training on how to interpret data, the IMS team can be more confident in forecasting sales trends - even in a post-pandemic context.

Combining e-commerce development with design, marketing, and expert consultancy, we led the full digital transformation of IMS Euro. This project created a flexible platform that offered a much higher level of editorial control than before. Our work has resulted in a user-centric site that caters for all audiences and facilitates high growth. 

But we didn’t stop there. By hosting training sessions with the IMS team and providing templates for the in-house team, we helped IMS to future-proof their new site.

We look forward to continuing our journey working with IMS and reaching more impressive milestones in its digital journey.