CAT LC France accelerates its digital transformation
with Sylius and Synolia

The CAT group owes its rapid growth to proven expertise and an ambitious strategy, especially in digital. For several years, the company has been strengthening its online presence by optimizing several of its platforms.

The website of its subsidiary MotoByCat, which transports two-wheelers across France for businesses and individuals, was the one to undergo a complete overhaul.
Florent Delahaye, Key Account Manager and head of the project at MotoByCat, supported by Gaëlle Gachet, Web and Innovation PO, and Sophie Malosse, Head of CAT LC Business Solutions, initiated and led this revamp.

A site in need of modernization

Choosing Sylius

The CAT group’s needs are unlike those of a typical e-commerce site: no catalog, no product pages, and no traditional 5-step purchase path. Here, the customer experience takes center stage: everything revolves around choosing the departure and arrival points for transporting the user’s vehicle, much like a travel booking site.

Users must also get a quote in as few clicks as possible. The customer experience has to be as simple and fast as possible to lead to an order. Sylius quickly emerged as the obvious choice. “We liked the solution, the back office seemed very easy to use, and the budget matched our expectations,” recalls Gaëlle Gachet.

Customer experience as the top priority

Improving the customer experience largely drove this platform redesign. “It was actually the main focus,” stresses Gaëlle Gachet. “When someone wants to ship their two-wheeler somewhere in France, we want them to think of us! With this new site, we wanted customers to understand that they can trust us. They care about their motorcycles, and so do we. After 10 years in business, our expertise in this field speaks for itself.”

With this in mind, MotoByCat took care to build a site that reflects who it is. Three watchwords: precision, speed and clarity! The first step was to rework the brand’s identity to make it more attractive and dynamic, in line with MotoByCat’s colors. The site’s content was enriched with videos describing its business, along with extensive information about its services.

“On our site, customers can see how we prepare vehicles and how we handle each stage of transport,” explains Florent Delahaye. Testimonials were also added to the website to reassure customers in their choice.

The advantage of a flexible solution

To deliver this project, Synolia’s teams had to create specific entities that don’t exist in a traditional e-commerce project (motorcycles, pickup points, transport stands for two-wheelers, etc.). Thanks to Sylius’s architecture, it was easy to add new concepts that interact with existing ones (products, taxons…).

Next, the team had to build a fully custom booking journey. As mentioned earlier, customer experience was the top priority: choosing the motorcycle model through a search field, displaying the departure and destination on a map, updating the transport price in real time… Everything was designed with that goal in mind!

Finally, as with every Synolia project, the technical side was not overlooked. The motobycat.com site is connected to the CAT group’s IT system so that, among other things, customers can check the status of their shipment at any time.

Full visibility on activity

A success on every level

Thanks to Sylius and Synolia, motobycat.com now runs a high-performing platform that reflects its identity and effectively meets its customers’ needs. As part of a broader effort to optimize the brand’s offer, the portal redesign enabled MotoByCat to revitalize its business and promote its offer while delivering a quality customer experience. The result: sales up more than 60% between September 2020 and September 2021.

Expanding abroad

But there was no time to rest on its laurels. After enjoying the project’s convincing results, MotoByCat pursued its roadmap to give the site the international dimension envisioned from the very beginning.

In February 2023, Synolia and MotoByCat got back to work on Sylius to enrich the platform with new features and offer MotoByCat customers a new departure and arrival country: Belgium.

This decision rests on several key factors that make Belgium a strategic choice for the company.

Belgium’s immediate accessibility from France, thanks to transport lines already established between Paris and Brussels, played a decisive role in this choice, since it did not require setting up a new transport scheme.

Several developments followed, up to the production release of the MotoByCat site enhancements in February 2024.

Multilingual management

To address language diversity, multilingual management was added, starting with English. This meant having a dedicated agency translate the website as well as the automatic notification emails (order confirmation, password reset, shipping confirmation, account creation, etc.). A browser language detection system was also implemented to redirect users to the right version of the site.

Pickup points and CAT centers

Expanding into a new country requires creating new pickup points and CAT centers. To make this rollout easier, the import of locations and their associated entities was enhanced. It is now possible to assign several centers to the same location, or several locations to the same platform.

Managing unavailable days

Since public holidays and working days differ from one country to another, a new feature was developed to declare CAT center closing days by country.

Interactive map

The map’s user experience was improved. Users now select the pickup point or CAT center before entering the departure date, which makes interacting with the map smoother.

Prices are now updated based on the selected centers and pickup points, for a more dynamic user experience.

Tax calculation

Belgium applies a different tax rate from France. The right tax rate therefore had to be applied according to several criteria: the departure point (Belgium or France) and the type of profile (business or individual). Price calculation was completely redesigned to deliver an instant, compliant result that is also carried over to the final invoice.

What’s next?

MotoByCat plans to expand into other regions, particularly southern Europe. However, the company first wants to consolidate its presence in Belgium before entering new markets. Until it launches a communication campaign in the Belgian market, Synolia continues to support MotoByCat to keep meeting its needs as effectively as possible.