RDO Equipment Co.
Sowing the Seeds of Digital Success with Headless Integration for Ecommerce
Founded in 1968, RDO Equipment Co. sells and supports agriculture, construction, environmental, positioning, surveying, and irrigation equipment from manufacturers including John Deere, Vermeer, Topcon, and more. With more than 75 locations across the U.S., as well as partnerships in Russia, Ukraine, and Australia, RDO is a total solutions provider.
Challenges
As one of North America’s largest heavy equipment dealers, RDO Equipment Co. sought Americaneagle.com's expertise to address the following issues:
- Legacy website failed to reflect RDO Equipment Co.’s market position and support business goals
- Outdated branding and lack of visual appeal diminished credibility
- Poor site performance, frequent crashes, and a challenging content editing experience created user frustration
- Content editing process was cumbersome and inefficient for internal teams
- Limited marketing team control over the customer journey
- Needed a stronger digital foundation to support ecommerce growth and solidify its presence as an ecommerce retailer
Solutions
RDO Equipment Co. turned to Americaneagle.com because of its in-depth expertise implementing a wide variety of solutions. The project encompassed a full digital transformation to replace their legacy site with a robust, comprehensive, headless solution powered by a first of its kind integration joining Sitefinity and BigCommerce in a single unified ecommerce and content experience. Americaneagle.com executed the following initiatives:
Strategy and UX
To begin, Americaneagle.com provided extensive strategic consultation regarding platform selection, information architecture, product catalog, enterprise architecture, and user experience. The companies then worked together to coordinate a complete business overhaul as RDO entered the realm of ecommerce.
Ecommerce
To facilitate ecommerce, Americaneagle.com implemented BigCommerce, and its REST and GraphQL APIs now communicate product information to the frontend as well as governs most business logic. The Sitefinity presentation layer enables RDO marketers to control and customize the site’s appearance to meet business requirements.
Content Management
Custom editing tools were created, including a resource center page, detailed locations page, and content widgets. Other tools allow editors to drag and drop, configure, and personalize content, and also integrate search landing pages, category pages, and more, to fine-tune search and recommendations from one location, despite the data coming in from many sources.
Infrastructure
RDO’s new website included an integration of Sitefinity as the content management system, BigCommerce as the ecommerce engine and checkout experience, Algolia as the advanced search tool, Akeneo as the product information management (PIM) software, multiple RDO back-office systems, and the John Deere parts catalog user interface/shopping experience. Azure Cloud Services were leveraged and an infrastructure of function apps, API management services, app services, storage accounts, SQL tables, and a Redis cache were implemented.
Website Redesign
Americaneagle.com redesigned RDO Equipment Co.’s website to be in alignment with its newly established brand guidelines. The overarching objective was to bring the website into harmony with its brand message, “You grow and build the world around us. We’re proud to be there every step of the way.” In addition to the implementation of the new brand elements, which included fonts, colors, logos, photography, typography, image filters, and page layouts, ADA recommendations, UX considerations, and design best practices were incorporated.
Website Navigation
To replace RDO Equipment Co.’s existing search tool, Americaneagle.com integrated Algolia as the website’s enterprise search functionality. The process involved both frontend UX/UI updates and backend development and integrations to index and display the correct product and content information. Now, backend users can quickly and easily determine which products, categories, and content fields are indexed, and frontend users are quickly and consistently served results, product suggestions, and product comparisons that best match their search inquiries.
Since partnering with Americaneagle.com, RDO Equipment Co.’s website is dramatically faster, more stable, and offers a robust, intuitive content management experience. The digital transformation enabled the company to achieve its goal of becoming a strong contender in the ecommerce space as well as provided marketers more control over day-to-day processes. RDO’s website now serves as a lead generation asset, attracting and nurturing an increasing number of customers.
