Search
Close this search box.
Contact Us

Customer
Success Stories

Bank Alfalah Drafts
Kwiko to Launch
Alfa Mall

Bank Alfalah successfully launches Alfa Mall—a first-of-its-kind ecommerce platform to be introduced by a bank in Pakistan—with the assistance and expertise of Kwiko.

Challenges​

  • Building an ecommerce portal whose design and process flows lay outside the scope of expertise of their product development and management teams.
  • Creating the portal on Bank Alfalah’s existing servers and ensuring protection of client data.
  • Catering to new customers who were not already customers of Bank Alfalah.
  • Designing different checkout flows for Bank Alfalah customers and exclusive Alfa Mall users.

Solutions

  • Engineered the Alfa Mall portal from start to finish on Bank Alfalah severs.
  • Made improvements to the user interface and smoothed out backend processes.
  • Figured out a separate checkout flow for Bank Alfalah customers using Alfa Mall to provide them with special and additional payment methods linked to their Alfalah accounts.

Bank Alfalah Summary

Bank Alfalah is one of the leading banks in Pakistan’s ever-expanding banking sector and a subsidiary of UAE-based private equity firm Abu Dhabi Group. With over 850 branches spread across 200 cities, Bank Alfalah is at the forefront of the local finance and banking ecosystem. In addition to its widespread network of banks in Pakistan, Bank Alfalah also has a presence in the UAE, Bahrain, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

About Alfa Mall

Alfa Mall is a product launched by Bank Alfalah to broaden its scope of offerings, enter the retail space, and cater to its customers’ shopping needs. Alfa Mall is an online shopping portal that deals in grocery items, electronics, home living, fashion and lifestyle products, as well as mobile phones and tablets, and several other types of merchandise.

Journey to Alfa Mall

In a bid to maintain its status as a pioneer, Bank Alfalah embarked on a journey to launch a new product: an ecommerce platform designed to benefit its existing customers while raking in new ones. However, their foreseeable journey to a completely different landscape was riddled with obstacles—the biggest being the lack of expertise and technical human resource needed to build an ecommerce platform that vastly differed from the bank’s existing product mobile applications and online portals. 

Bank Alfalah required an end-to-end servicing team of experts that would oversee everything from design to deployment, and Kwiko provided them with just that. The main challenge with regards to building the Alfa Mall portal and making it operational was that the platform could only be developed on the bank’s servers and not any external servers. Kwiko responded to this challenge with perseverance and flexibility and was able to deliver a fully functioning platform ready for users to start purchasing from after carrying out all DevOps operations exclusively on the Bank Alfalah servers. 

Ensuring the protection of existing customer data was another major concern that Kwiko had to be mindful of while designing and developing the portal on the client’s servers. All development and deployment processes were conducted in a secure and safe environment and data remained safe and protected throughout. Alongside designing the Alfa Mall platform and creating features to enhance the user experience, Kwiko also worked to tackle Alfalah’s challenge of catering to its non-banking customers who were just availing the services of their online retail space. Developers at Kwiko were able to design and implement different checkout flows for banking and non-banking customers shopping through Alfa Mall. 

Having different checkout flows was essential because Bank Alfalah’s business model was dependent on incentivizing its banking customers to use their ecommerce platform by offering three different types of payment methods along with the traditional forms of payment. These payment methods included credit and debit card payments through Bank Alfalah cards, as well as a still-new but up-and-coming method of installment-based payments. Kwiko designed the checkout flow for Bank Alfalah’s loyal customers in such a way that they could access and avail any of these special payment options at checkout in addition to the cash on delivery option. 

In just one quarter, Bank Alfalah and Kwiko’s collaboration over developing and refining the Alfa Mall portal resulted in Rs 6 billion in sales for the bank’s newly launched, sector-novelty product.

Shiro Launches Ecommerce Website to Smoke Out Competitors

Shiro joined hands with Kwiko to kickstart its ecommerce operations, grow its virtual presence, and expand its outreach globally.

Challenges​

  • Shiro was slated to go to market locally and internationally within a limited timeline of two weeks.
  • The Shiro website was inaccessible for users outside of Pakistan and lacked several important ecommerce features.

Solutions

  • Kwiko developed a website using Magento and hosted it on AWS to save time and cost.
  • The Website was built with significant features for generating sales, growing the business, and monitoring website traffic and daily ecommerce interactions.

Philip Morris Pakistan Limited Summary

Philip Morris Pakistan Limited (PKML) is a subsidiary of Philip Morris International Inc—an American multinational tobacco manufacturing company whose products retail in over 180 countries. PKML is a publicly traded company listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange and its large roster of products include cigarette brands—most notably, Marlboro—and smoke-free products like Shiro.

About Shiro

Shiro is an oral nicotine, smoke-and-tobacco-free product offered as part of Philip Morris Pakistan Limited’s (PKML) expanding range of smokeless products. Shiro nicotine pouches are currently available in three flavor options: Sour Ruby, Cooling Mint, and Aromatic Clove. These nicotine pouches are not meant to be ingested, but they offer a unique experience to users by engaging both their sense of taste and smell. PKML developed their smoke-free Shiro nicotine pouch as a relatively healthier and less damaging alternative to cigarettes and other smoke and nicotine-heavy products.

Shiro Launches Ecommerce Website to Smoke Out Competitors

Philip Morris Pakistan Limited (PKML) partnered up with Kwiko to launch the latest innovative addition to their smoke-free product range: Shiro nicotine pouches. The biggest challenge for which they sought out Kwiko’s help was the task of working within the limited timeframe of two weeks that they had set for the virtual launch and for starting the online retailing of Shiro. This challenge was further made difficult by the fact that the www.shiro.com.pk domain could not be accessed internationally. With the target demographic being nicotine users all over the world and not just Pakistan, this was unacceptable and seen as a potential hinderance in generating sales. Therefore, the first thing that the developers at Kwiko did was to begin constructing an easily and globally accessible website for Shiro using Magento. The new website was built as per the requirements of the business and fitted with ecommerce-facilitating features such as custom redirect and auto-generated emails for orders. As a way of reducing cost and operations to meet the impending launch deadline, the developers opted for hosting the new Shiro website on Amazon Web Services (AWS) rather than hosting it on an internal server. The expert team of developers at Kwiko also created a dashboard for PKML’s business personnel to have a dedicated space where they could collect and monitor data related to everyday ecommerce operations. Kwiko implemented the use of Google Analytics to track website traffic and generate regular reports detailing the number of site visits, interactions, and orders placed. In addition to introducing a trusted and reliable system to monitor the online business and quantify ecommerce growth and sales, Kwiko also conducted a thorough risk and vulnerability analysis of the platform to detect weaknesses and shortcomings in the security framework and rectify them. Ensuring the protection of a user’s personal data and payment details on the Shiro website was another challenge that Kwiko promptly overcame by integrating data masking into the backend development of the ecommerce website. The comprehensive security check resulted in an improved and impenetrable security blanket for the safety of user data and protection of the website against hackers and other external threats.

The Shashka Syndicate Refines Customer Shopping Experience With Kwiko

The Shashka Syndicate partnered up with Kwiko and underwent a seamless shift from WordPress to Shopify to optimize its ecommerce services.

Challenges​

  • Growth in sales and potential leads was being hindered by an inefficient website with lacking features. 
  • An absence of conversion-friendly features were resulting in an ROI that was disproportionate to the brand’s efforts in building a distinct customer identity through marketing and a strong social media presence.

Solutions

  • Immediate action was taken to shift the ecommerce website from WordPress to Shopify—a giant ecommerce platform built to facilitate and grow ecommerce operations. 
  • Conversion-friendly features were added to the new website to balance out and increase ROI for the business.

About Shashka Syndicate

The Shashka Syndicate or TSS is an up-and-coming streetwear label that is currently selling direct to consumers through its website and providing customers around the world with high-quality, well-tailored casual attire.

Tailoring Ecommerce Features to Fit

The Shashka Syndicate (TSS) enlisted the help of Kwiko to revamp their ecommerce website. The previous website, built on WordPress, was prone to glitches and lacked many features necessary for the delivery of ecommerce solutions. Therefore, the first step that the Kwiko team of developers took was to build a new website for TSS, abandoning their WordPress website in favor of a brand-new website built on Shopify. Everything from the backend to the frontend of the website was designed anew, while keeping a semblance of the previous design so as not to lose present customer engagement. Improvements and enhancements were made to the user interface and the internal backend processes to guarantee a seamless and efficient online shopping experience for customers all around the world. The new website was designed to include conversion friendly features, because the most significant complaint that TSS had from its old website was that it was not conversion friendly and was not yielding the level of ROI that they were aiming for. An important feature that was integrated into the website to optimize ecommerce operations was the enabling of dynamic search ads that would allow potential customers using search engines like Google to be directed towards specific landing pages of the website. Some of the other features that were added to the website to optimize ecommerce service provision to customers were options for the creation of a wish list for out-of-stock items on the product page and customized user interfaces for the web application and users accessing the website on their mobile phones. A comprehensive risk analysis and security check were also conducted to identify and fix vulnerabilities or data safety loopholes in the web application.

HCA Consulting Group Teams Up With Kwiko

HCA Consulting Group teamed up with Kwiko to launch a revamped version of their website. —the first point-of-contact for their local and international clients, which makes it an important resource for generating business and ensuring growth.

Challenges​

  • HCA Consulting Group were working with a very limited timeline of 1 month for the complete revamp of their website to enhance their company’s online presence.
  • They were facing budget constraints related to hiring talent for designing and developing the new website in-house.

Solutions

  • Kwiko deployed and delivered the revamped version of the website within the given timeline, while respecting the company’s budget for the redesign and rebuild.

About HCA Consulting Group

HCA Consulting Group is a financial services consultancy firm that provides customized solutions to small and medium-sized companies. Their expertise is spread across multiple industries and extends to businesses spread over a number of geographical locations.

Strong Online Presence Leads to Stronger Business Leads for HCA Consulting Group

HCA Consulting Group made the decision to team up with Kwiko and entrusted its team of expert designers and developers to completely revamp their website and help enhance their online presence and visibility—all in a bid to attract potential clients.

A limited timeline of 30 days for the revamp and budget constraints were the two main challenges that HCA Consulting Group wished to tackle by recruiting Kwiko for the revamp.

With a total revamp in mind, Kwiko’s team of skilled designers set about with the task of designing wireframes and mapping out the resulting prototypes for all the different pages of the website. The team then collaborated with HCA Consulting Group to get the design prototypes approved. The approved final iterations of the designed pages were then handed over to Kwiko’s team of developers for implementation at the backend and over the user interface.

Alongside designing the layout, user interface, and various pages of the consulting group’s website, Kwiko also redesigned the logo for HCA and tweaked other design elements related to their branding to improve customer engagement and increase website traffic. This tweaking of different design elements included changing the fonts and color scheme of the company’s website. 

Once the design phase of the project was complete, the team of developers at Kwiko took over and began the process of revamping the group’s website. The new and revamped version of the website was built on WordPress. It was developed with improved features to ensure smooth navigation and a seamless user experience for any potential clients visiting the website to gain more information about the consulting group’s solutions and practices.

Ready to Transform
Your Business?
We're Here to Help

USA

1120 Bent Creek Germantown, MD 20876 USA

GCC

Al Shafar Tower, Barsha Heights, Dubai

Canada

1150 Dunning Rd, Cumberland, ON K4C 1P5, Canada

info@kwiko.io
+1 (240) 234-3861

© 2023 Kwiko. All Rights Reserved.

Terms of Use