NetDespatch boosts online beer sales with shopping cart integration
01 May 2007

Britain's biggest beer shop has been able to double its daily shipments thanks to an innovative solution from NetDespatch (www.netdespatch.com). Beers of Europe sell 3000 lines including the biggest selection of beer in the country. Using Actinic shopping cart software, the company generates 70% of its sales online and goods are delivered next day by the APC Overnight parcel network. NetDespatch has employed its real time Xpedite shipping solution to automatically convert shopping cart orders from Actinic into barcoded parcel labels and on-line web bookings for APC's NetDespatch Velocity web booking system.

For Beers of Europe, the integration has completely eliminated laborious keying-in and checking of order details. Orders, including delivery addresses entered online by customers, are transferred directly to the APC systems and this helps to eliminate errors. APC parcel labels are printed automatically at the Beers of Europe warehouse ready for collection by the local APC depot.

"We used to have a real bottleneck in our system as online order details had to be re-keyed into a PC shipping system so that labels could be produced. The manual checking of these details was absolutely essential prior to collection and this was proving to be a huge burden during busy times. With the NetDespatch shopping cart integration the process is completely automated, clearing the bottleneck and allowing us to double our daily shipments" says Daniel Clark, Beers of Europe Director.

Formed in 2000, Beers of Europe began as an importer of European beers but now sells beers from all over the world, together with an extensive selection of other drinks including cider and spirits. As well as buying online, customer can visit the Beers of Europe shop at Setchey near King's Lynn. As the only UK stockist of many specialist beers the company's mixed boxes have proved a big hit as gifts and as a result timeliness of delivery is key to the company's continued success.

"APC has proven to be the ideal partner allowing us to freely expand nationwide. With their advanced web services from NetDespatch we see their delivery services as very much a seamless part of our business. This is allowing us to expand freely and meet peak time demands without any real worries." Says Clark.

NetDespatch provides a wide range of e-commerce applications f or managing parcel shipments and enables online booking and tracking. Whether through systems integration, using simple web forms, or even over GPRS using a hand-held device, NetDespatch interconnects shipper and carrier systems to provide a seamless dataflow from order to
delivery.