The Client

The Virtual Mall of Dubai (VMD) is a virtual mall that can host multiple buyers and sellers, and handle orders and payments fully online. This forms a convenient tool for a variety of sellers to promote their products and for buyers to find a wide range of goods all in a single place accessible via the internet, with shipment and delivery options. The platform offers brands and shop owners their own e-commerce within the platform, similar to renting a physical store in a physical mall.

The Challenge

The client was looking for a robust and reliable solution that would require creating an in-store experience online with a multi-store deployment. Therefore, it was not a simple case of a one-page online store, as the name suggest, it required to be the equivalent of entire mall. They sought this solution to ensure flexibility so they can adapt to the demands of the industry and market and cater to shoppers looking to buy various products.

After partnering with various agencies and providers, many of the solutions provided to VMD weren’t powerful enough to handle the scope of incorporating an entire mall-like experience for shoppers. In other words, the issue was creating a multi-layered e-commerce platform that can offer several e-commerce online shops within the original grand platform.

What We Did

Once VMD approached UCT, they were impressed by the efforts the team at UCT had displayed. After extensive research and analysis, the ideal solution became clear. UCT’s team proposed a solution called which was a dynamic idea that integrates shopping experience with the virtual environment. Therefore, it was not just boring looking blocks containing products and prices, the entire experience was targeted to recreate the feeling of browsing through a mall with various shops and outlets.

The Virtual Mall of Dubai needed to utilize the full potential of the modules and features available in Drupal. The target was achieved by implementing and customizing different modules to allow features to be added/removed without damaging the site. This solution gives a complete e-commerce website to any shop owner within The Virtual Mall of Dubai and allows sellers to customize all of the options relating to products, shipping, payments, etc.

The Results

The client was captivated by the attractiveness of the platform and how interactive the experience was. Business owners were able to book a shop in any of the virtual mall’s different floors. They could list their products under their own specific store or brand name and give the virtual store an appearance that matches their physical shop. This created a tangible effect and will deliver a physical shopping experience to visitors akin to actually visiting a shopping mall. Each of the brands that have participated in the Virtual Mall of Dubai reported an increase in sales because visitors enter the mall with certain products in mind but exit the mall after buying a lot more than they’ve originally planned. So each shop was benefitting from the customer of the shop next door. Using the Virtual mall of Dubai has proved time efficient to both sellers and buyers. Many features cut the time required by the ordering/receiving cycles such as:
Unlike traditional e-commerce platforms, the virtual mall of Dubai relieved customers of having to own a website to participate in it. It also relieved them of having to allocate resources to technology, payment gateways, accounting software, and other headaches.
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