Partner Success with AWS / Consumer Packed Goods / United States

November 2024
Pella
Elastic Path

Pella Reduces Cart Abandonment by 40% and Drives Double-Digit Growth with Elastic Path and AWS

See how Pella built a fully customizable, direct-to-consumer (DTC), first-in-its-industry digital shopping experience that drives leads and revenue with Elastic Path’s flexible platform and AWS technology.

50%

reduction in time to generate quotes

40%

decrease in cart abandonment rates

66%

reduction in configuration questions

Overview

Pella, a leader in custom windows and doors, wanted to target digitally-active, modern shoppers with a fully digital, direct-to-consumer purchasing experience. The company worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Partner Elastic Path to replace its monolithic ecommerce platform with a flexible, composable architecture designed around APIs. This shift allowed Pella to streamline its purchasing process and reduce complexity with an intuitive experience. The solution helped Pella improve page load times, reduce cart abandonment by 40 percent, and serve online shoppers exceptional experiences.

Pella

Opportunity | Addressing Gaps in Digital Engagement

Founded in 1925, Pella offers quality, tailor-made windows and doors for both commercial and residential buildings. While Pella had seen plenty of change over the past century, the window and door industry was slow to adopt the online purchasing tools that were standard in other markets. There’s a reason for this—custom-built products require a greater level of guidance and personalization to meet customer needs. Pella’s process demanded more upfront information than most homeowners had the time or specialized knowledge to provide, making online purchases complex and confusing. That’s why Pella required in-home consultations with sales representatives for detailed measurements and conversations.

However, the company recognized it missed opportunities to engage customers who preferred a digital buying experience and transparent pricing over traditional in-home consultations. For its first DTC model, Pella used a monolithic ecommerce platform, digitizing its processes without reimagining the user experience. Its configure, price, quote (CPQ) tool required customers to answer around 50 questions, deterring buyers looking for a simpler digital experience. With over eight octillion possible product combinations, Pella needed a more flexible, composable architecture to manage the complex configurations required to educate customers and guide them through purchasing. Pella also wanted the solution to seamlessly integrate with existing systems to support business operations while allowing for continuous growth and innovation.

kr_quotemark

We needed a solution that could bring the best of our in-home consultations to the online world. Elastic Path’s flexibility made that possible.”

Rebecca Hicks
Sr. Digital Product Manager, Pella

Solution | Building a Composable Commerce Solution

Pella needed a partner to help it make the shift to a composable commerce model. The company encouraged its developers to help evaluate multiple vendors on factors such as technical architecture, support capabilities, and cultural fit. Ultimately, they selected Elastic Path for its modularity and its alignment with Pella’s flexibility and growth goals. This change, supported by the scalable infrastructure of AWS, enabled the company to build a more customer-centric, customizable experience for purchasing windows and doors. It took less than a year to implement the new solution powered by Elastic Path, with a beta version launched in just seven months. Acting as the ecommerce engine, Elastic Path integrated with existing systems to manage a complex product catalog and supporting dynamic window configurations tailored to customer needs. In particular, Elastic Path supported flexible cart capabilities using custom cart items, a unique capability which allows Pella to process orders for any product, even those that haven’t been saved in the Elastic Path Composable Commerce platform. This way, Pella avoids the massive SKU explosion and enterprise resource planning (ERP) data management challenges that would come from adding and maintaining millions of products based on hyper-specific dimensions. Overall, Elastic Path’s API-first, composable architecture allowed Pella to swap out or add specific components, such as modern payment solutions, without overhauling the entire tech stack.

The solution’s underlying AWS infrastructure played a crucial role in its flexibility, enabling faster API calls and smoother integration with existing systems. It served as a connector between Pella's existing CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) system, manufacturing components, and native applications. Services like Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) enabled scalable deployment of containerized applications for consistent performance during peak traffic periods. AWS Lambda handled backend processes with enhanced security by only running lightweight, short-duration tasks, minimizing the need for long-running servers. Meanwhile, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) offered cost-effective storage for hosting product assets, while Amazon CloudFront accelerated content delivery for faster end-user experiences. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) supported reliable database management, ensuring quick and consistent access to product and customer data. Additionally, Pella used infrastructure as code from Elastic Path Cloud Ops for Kubernetes to define and manage its AWS architecture. This approach allowed the company to quickly review, audit, and deploy new changes, making it possible to launch new features or even entire websites within hours.

Outcome | Achieving Double-Digit Growth with Elastic Path and AWS

With its new digital-first solution from Elastic Path and AWS, Pella became the first national window and door company to offer a fully customized, direct-to-consumer buying experience online. It now provides transparent, dynamic pricing and self-service capabilities that differentiate it in a traditionally in-person industry. Pella was able to simplify the buying journey by identifying key questions that mattered most to users, reducing its original 50 configuration questions to 17, a reduction of 66 percent. Its flexible product configuration management allows for quick handling of a vast range of variations. The solution’s composable architecture enables Pella to quickly adjust its tech stack, supporting expansion into new regions and streamlining multi-channel operations. This efficiency also frees up resources to enhance customer self-education tools like blogs and virtual consultations, aiding buyers in making complex decisions.

Pella reduced the time needed to generate and edit quotes for default window configurations by more than 50 percent—from over a minute to less than 30 seconds. Using AWS further improved the user experience by reducing page load times from double digits to single seconds. “We needed a solution that could bring the best of our in-home consultations to the online world. Elastic Path’s flexibility made that possible, boosted by the speed and reliability of AWS,” said Rebecca Hicks, senior digital product manager at Pella. “We’ve cut configuration steps down to just the essentials, creating a smoother, faster experience that really resonates with today’s buyers.” Even when customers drop off during their journey, targeted follow-ups via nurture campaigns and personalized emails have reduced cart abandonment by 40 percent, boosting conversion rates. These improvements have driven double-digit annual growth in Pella's ecommerce channel. With Elastic Path and AWS, Pella can keep optimizing its platform, confident it can scale seamlessly to support ongoing growth and evolving customer needs.
 

About Pella

Pella Corporation is a leading manufacturer of windows and doors for both residential and commercial markets. Founded in 1925, the company is headquartered in Pella, Iowa, and has over 18 manufacturing locations and more than 200 showrooms across the United States. Pella is known for its innovative products, including custom solutions that focus on energy efficiency and high performance.

About AWS Partner Elastic Path

Elastic Path provides a flexible, API-first, composable commerce platform designed to help businesses create tailored, customer-centric online shopping experiences. Elastic Path’s purpose-built composable commerce solution helps retailers, manufacturers, and distributors tackle the toughest challenges in commerce by integrating chosen components and evolving to market needs fast.

AWS Services Used

Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.

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Amazon CloudFront

Securely deliver content with low latency and high transfer speeds.

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AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources, making it the fastest way to turn an idea into a modern, production, serverless applications.

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Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is an easy-to-manage relational database service optimized for total cost of ownership.

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