Building a best-in-class e-commerce platform to better serve the construction industry

As part of the NCI Building Systems family of brands, ABC and MBCI provide thousands of individual metal building components to construction sites all over the country. The two brands share a core set of values—and a radical vision for how to make builders’ lives easier. Imagine if workers on the job site could take out their phone or tablet and easily order the critical parts they need, right then and there.

Bailey helped bring that vision to life, in an area of business that has yet to take full advantage of all that state-of-the-art e-commerce has to offer. This required designing a custom, complex e-commerce platform from the ground up based on the unique needs of the business. Bailey set out to create the user experience—including site organization, workflow, user interface, design and page-level interactions—and conducted extensive research and usability testing to ensure the site offered a superior solution to builders using traditional quote and order methods, such as calling or faxing their reps. The result is an innovative and intuitive e-commerce platform that fundamentally improves the way builders do business.

Bailey led both the internal and external messaging rollout for the new platforms, creating materials to generate awareness and excitement around the launch, including an interactive sales presentation and comprehensive playbook for employees. We also developed a cross-platform marketing strategy, which included print collateral, teaser ads, promotional videos and an email drip campaign.

The new ABC and MBCI e-commerce sites went live in 2017 and have each met with success. Online order size has matched that of traditional ordering, and the streamlined user experience has helped reduce customer service time by 30%. By partnering with Bailey to reimagine the user experience, ABC and MBCI created value for existing customers and strongly positioned themselves to capture new ones.