AIDA Cruises launched its Shopware store in 6 weeks after migrating off a legacy platform

AIDA: The market leader in the German cruise industry

AIDA Cruises primarily caters to the German-speaking market. Founded in 1994, it is one of the largest cruise companies in the world. It offers a variety of itineraries, including trips to the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Northern Europe, and the Canary Islands.

AIDA's ships are designed for younger travelers and families. They are known for their casual, relaxed atmosphere and colorful exterior designs. They emphasize onboard entertainment, wellness, and dining experiences, with various activities, spa facilities, and international cuisine.

The challenges

AIDA Cruises used to have an online shop based on Oxid. However, due to technical issues, this had to be switched off. As a result, the company needed to create a new online shop for its customers as fast as possible. Work with their partner agency Webmatch had already started with an evaluation of the tech stack and architectural approach in detail. Although the two were working closely already, the urgency for the new online shop meant collaboration between AIDA and Webmatch was accelerate and project schedule reduced significantly.

Aside from the time constraints, the parties had to consider a few aspects of the online shop. First, many AIDA products have specific requirements. For example, there are items that contain alcohol or have to be delivered by drop shipment. Moreover, internet reception is not always reliable on the high seas, which plays a relevant role in transmitting orders.

The solution: Shopware 6

Due to the urgent need to go-live with a new online shop, Webmatch recommended Shopware as the best solution for the quick launch and future expansion. With this strategy and Shopware’s headless capabilities, the most important products were prioritized and made available for purchase online again in the shortest possible time.

Shopware 6 was also chosen as the right platform for AIDA’s future requirements in mind. iInnovative features, including the Flow and Rule Builder and the Experience Worlds help AIDA build and customize its new shop to meet its current and changing business requirements.

In addition, Shopware 6’s APIs also allowed the development team to map the company’s special business processes and tackle connectivity issues. The latter was especially a big challenge for AIDA, since the cruise ships are not always located in areas with internet connections. Thus, orders for the online shop from onboarded customers needed to be transmitted with a calculated delay.

AIDA 2.0: Faster. Reliable. Feature-packed.

AIDA’s new online shop was launched in a record time of just six weeks. Once the first services went live, the team worked on implementing the less urgent tasks and expanding the shops functionalities.

Today, the AIDA online shop has a modern and inviting design. The store is more responsive and has faster loading times, as well as including new functions to deliver a smoother shopping experience.

Vacationers can not only buy available gifts and merchandise in the online shop. They can also buy films of their cruise at the photo kiosks or order them in the shop.

Higher cart value and More conversions

The effects of AIDA’s new online shop are already visible. Not only did the company experience a 20 percent increase in its shopping cart value, abandoned purchases decreased significantly, and conversions grew by 10 to 15 percent.

Aside from that, AIDA’s employees praise Shopware 6 for its content management capabilities. The AIDA team now has more customization options and can implement changes faster, without the help of the development team – saving the company time and budget, whilst being able to release changes quickly.

The future of AIDA with Shopware 6

The launch of the new online shop opens a new chapter in the AIDA story. However, that is just the beginning. The cruise company plans to expand its online store further and add more functionalities. AIDA also plants to develop two separate B2B shops for an external and internal target group.

Roland Vogel, Head of AIDA's online shop, is already satisfied with the results of the project: “With our partner Webmatch, we were able to implement a new environment on Shopware 6, that provides high performance and scalability. Operational complexity was reduced and business processes optimized as a result.”