About a little over a year ago, DART departed on a new quest – eCommerce. The company had the goal to develop a new platform that would ease the purchasing process for clients and partners.

Before embarking on this eCommerce adventure, DART’s objectives were clear:

• Improve customer experience :
  • With 24/7 access to net pricing and product availability
  • With improved access to technical publication
  • With intuitive search, filter and checkout processes
  • With a responsive website that adapted to the various mobile devices
  • With recommendations based on products of interest
• Continuously deliver on operational excellence to internal and external partners
• Stay in front of the parade on industry trends and integrate the latest technological tools

In order to make sure DART was looking at this challenge from all angles; its lead team on the project incorporated the management’s vision and ideas through a series of workshops, all while communicating with key high-volume customers. The company also put together a team composed of members from various departments (sales, planning, engineering, customer support, and marketing) to help make decisions on the project along the way.

New product positioning

In conjunction to this eCommerce project and while taking into consideration various types of customers that purchase DART products, the team made a crucial change to the classification of the company’s product lines, in order to match customer buying habits.

Then was born the new positioning – GEAR UP, TUNE UP and TOOL UP.

The GEAR UP category now includes all DART specialty equipment manufactured to ensure mission readiness.

The TUNE UP category includes OEM replacement parts and consumables such as skidtubes, wearplates, crosstubes, transparencies, engine mounts, interiors, and more.

Lastly, the TOOL UP category comprises tools and ground support equipment.

This new and dynamic positioning was launched at Heli-Expo 2018 last February and thus has been highlighted throughout various advertising campaigns since then.

Cautious on-boarding 

To ensure user acceptance, DART ensured to launch a non-transactional version of the website first, to slowly on-board handpicked customers who accepted to test the eCommerce site and its functionalities. The team dedicated an important amount of time to test the platform for a stable and successful deployment; a large amount depending on the feedback the team would receive from internal and external parties. In due time, DART is planning to make the eCommerce functionality available to all.

With a lot of teamwork and passion, the first phase of the project was launched as a big achievement for DART and continues to help DART customers worldwide search for products easily and efficiently on a new and embellished website.