Challenge

Based in Georgia (USA), DoorHub sells commercial door hardware to contractors, maintenance engineers and locksmiths, and has long used technology to set itself apart in the market.

Building on its technology-forward approach, it saw the opportunity to transform how customers interact with the millions of products available for purchase via DoorHub’s website. The company wanted to enable easy online navigation, selection, and purchase of the right SKUs in a PCI-compliant manner, without assuming the liability associated with processing payments. Out-of-the-box and customisable e-commerce solutions couldn’t accommodate the size and complexity of the product catalogues that DoorHub represents. Instead, the company needed a development partner capable of creating a custom e-commerce platform with a world-class user experience.

Solution

DoorHub found its partner in Black Airplane, an Atlanta-based product design and development company and Stripe partner. To help DoorHub realise its vision, Black Airplane needed to normalise and organise data from the industry’s largest distributor, and present millions of SKUs and thousands of hardware variations in an intuitive way. It also needed to integrate a fast and reliable PCI-compliant payment solution with the platform architecture.

Calling upon its more than five years of experience working with Stripe, Black Airplane integrated DoorHub’s custom e-commerce platform with Stripe’s payment processing platform. Using Stripe’s Payments API, PHP SDK, and Stripe Elements made it easy to implement a high-end shopping and checkout experience.

Results

Transforming the e-commerce experience

Simple integration with Stripe allowed Black Airplane and DoorHub resources to focus on other critical pieces of the customer experience. Stripe eliminated heavy development lifts and enabled a digestible front-end catalogue and streamlined shopping experience. While Stripe manages data security related to payment processing, the two companies can optimise the workflows that transform how customers select and purchase door hardware from 1.1 million customisable SKUs.

Simplifying payment processing and PCI compliance

Stripe handles PCI compliance, eliminating the need for a customer’s credit card number to touch the e-commerce server. By tokenising the response and returning it to the e-commerce server, Stripe lightens Black Airplane's development load and insulates DoorHub from concerns about liability and exposure. Specifically, Black Airplane saved more than four months of developer time and over $100,000 associated with addressing PCI compliance, and now DoorHub enjoys a worry-free approach to e-commerce and financial transactions.

About Partner

Founded in 2017, Black Airplane is an award-winning custom software development firm that builds apps and websites. With clients ranging from startups to Fortune 100, it has quickly established itself as one of the Southeast US’s premier development shops.