Star Building Materials Winnipeg Launches New Website with E-Commerce Capabilities

Winnipeg, MB – Star Building Materials Winnipeg recently launched a brand-new website with some exciting e- commerce capabilities that make ordering building materials even more convenient for customers.

After just over a year of planning and development, the new website was officially launched on December 1. 

Mark Kennedy, Vice-President, Star Building Materials Winnipeg, said that the decision to create a new website was based on multiple factors.

“Our new store has put us into a larger competitive situation in our industry,” he said, “and we’ve become a leader in our industry in the market here in Winnipeg. With the way society and our industry is going with online ordering, especially in light of COVID, it’s a part of business now that we were missing out on. We knew we needed a new website to stay competitive.”

The new website has full e-commerce capability, allowing Star Building Materials Winnipeg to sell any product online, from nuts and bolts to lumber and everything in between. It also includes the Project Centre, which is an estimator tool where customers can plug in information about their project, whether it’s a fence, deck, or garage, and receive an instant estimate.

Mark pointed out that the Project Centre is an industry-leading feature, and he believes none of Star Building Materials Winnipeg’s competitors currently offer such an option.

Customers will be able to create an account and log in to the site, where they will be able to track their purchases to see what they previously ordered, access statements, invoices, and credit notes, as well as make payments to their account.

“Customers can do everything they would normally do at our store, but now from the comfort of their own home,” said Mark, “including purchasing items and having them delivered. They don’t have to wait until we’re open, and they don’t have to wait for their salesperson to be available.”

The process for creating the new website started when Star Building Materials Winnipeg decided to create something customized and found a local web development company to help them execute their vision.

Shawn Watters, Systems Coordinator, Star Building Materials, Winnipeg, who was part of the website development project, said there were a few things that the team wanted to ensure were included/addressed during the process.

We wanted to provide our customers with a straightforward, no-runaround means of exploring and buying from Star online,” he said. “We made a ’no annoying pop-ups’ rule, created new ways of searching for product, added thousands of new product images and videos, and designed our own custom quick project estimator.”

Additionally, Star Building Materials Winnipeg wanted to ensure that online orders would fit into the existing workflow at the store.

“The online order, once received, should fit in and be fulfilled like an order taken in the store,” said Shawn. “That involved integrating the website with our ERP system and credit card processing systems, and the existing dynamics of physically handling and preparing orders.”

The new website would not have been possible without the hard work and input of the small but diverse team who were involved in various aspects along the way.

Future opportunities may evolve from the new website’s capabilities as contractor customers will be using the new functions more and more, Mark noted.

“Contractors will likely use it as an avenue to help quote their material lists for their customers,” he said. “They’ll be able to use the website to get their quotes back faster to their customers, so they can get more jobs and create a more seamless transition. They can plan days or weeks ahead from home and won’t have to come down to the store.”

With the website being so new, Mark said the team will be watching to see how everything goes and will be looking for ways to continuously improve and streamline things for customers. So far, the feedback from customers has been positive, to say the least.

“We’ve had tons of people say how amazing it is, that the ease of navigation is awesome,” he said. “It’s the next step in providing the excellent service we’ve always had in person.”