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Project Overview
Until this year, 55,000 of Australia’s tradespeople were lugging around a product catalogue the size of a Bible.
In the most successful software roll out Clipsal by Schneider Electric has ever experienced, we launched the Clipsal iCat, a mobile application containing an interactive catalogue of Clipsal’s 18,000+ products, and more useful features than you can shake a tape measure at.
Thousands of downloads later, its most critical reviewer gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Enabled are an Australian creative cross-platform company - taking brands, content and experiences to the next level of interactive engagement.
Project Brief
At 500 pages, Clipsal’s Australian Trade Product Catalogue is commonly referred to by its many thousands of electrical contractor customers as “The Bible of the electrical industry.” Each year, the company prints 55,000 copies for its customers.
The much-used guide was as good as it is possible to get in print form, but Clipsal by Schneider Electric wanted to harness technology to benefit tradespeople using their products. After finding out that many customers were using iPhone and iPad technology, they enlisted Enabled to begin developing an app.
It had to be intuitive for tradespeople already familiar with the traditional catalogue, but we also wanted to push it further to take advantage of what mobile computing can offer.
Project Innovation / Need
With over 18,000 products, the Clipsal iCat is probably the largest catalogue in the iTunes store. It is beautifully searchable, intrinsically easy to use, and full of thoughtful features that make life easier for Clipsal by Schneider Electric’s customers.
Users can tap and scroll through the user-friendly interface instead of flicking through hundreds of pages. They can also bookmark frequently-used products, create job product lists to be referred to at any time, and easily send these lists to suppliers or clients (no more writing down product codes!). When browsing, they have the choice of looking by image or text, and on the iPad, the App functions seamlessly in both orientations.
We individually designed the iPad and iPhone versions which are bundled into a universal app - so users only have to download it once. All content is stored locally so the App is fully accessible without web access - handy for regional or basement work. At the same time, Clipsal by Schneider Electric is able to update the App with new information, and tradespeople can download this when convenient.
User Experience
The Clipsal iCat was all about making life easier for Australian tradespeople, and we put a great deal of effort into making sure it did. We researched how contractors used the Trade Product Guide - how they searched for products, and what they did with them once they’d found them. We then converted this information into an app that streamlined these processes, while retaining the intuitive familiarity of the traditional catalogue.
No matter how a person wants to search, the iCat makes it easy. Products can be quickly found by their categories, colour codes, product codes, product names or even their images. We found tradespeople made lists of products for each job, and used these lists for quoting, ordering and record purposes. So we added app features to make it easier than ever to do all those things.
The response from the trade community was overwhelmingly positive, with almost unanimous 5 star reviews, and the worst rating standing at 4 stars. The user is always the biggest test of any product’s merit, and we are delighted to see the glowing feedback reflecting the value the App was designed to offer.
Project Marketing
The Clipsal iCat has a clear target audience so most of the marketing was quite targeted. The App was launched at the 2011 Clipsal 500 car race to over 2000 customers and Clipsal by Schneider Electric conducted a number of national road shows promoting it. The App was also supported by numerous print campaigns, ongoing presentations at Clipsal by Schneider Electric’s Head Office, and email campaigns to their existing mailing lists.
Within a fortnight of its release, the iCat reached the 101 spot out of all apps in the Australian App Store, and broke into the Top 3 apps in the Reference category - which is pretty impressive for a niche app with a strictly limited customer base. Even now, over 5 months after its release, the iCat is featured as ‘What’s Hot’ in the iTunes App Store References section of multiple countries - despite only being designed for the Australian market.
In Field Services
This category relates to applications developed in order to aid and facilitate organisations requiring mobility whilst out of the office.
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