For quite some time, Aarhus University has been in need of a new webshop solution that meets the needs of staff and students. The new AU webshop was launched on Friday 1 May. The webshop is built on a user-friendly standard system that can handle internal transactions and is integrated with AU's accounting system.

2020.05.04 | Louise Asmund-Hjorth

Photo: Colourbox

With AU webshop, AU Finance and Estates Projects and Development can now offer university staff and students a thoroughly tested webshop solution that is up-do-date, able to handle common forms of payment, and where security is top notch.

"Employees wanted a new webshop at AU that could handle both physical and electronic products, and that would make internal transactions easy. Our choice fell on a standard Magento solution, which is used by many Danish webshops. With the AU webshop, we have ensured a long-term upgrade of the university's ability to make products available to employees, students and in the longer term external users,"says Anette Svejstrup, head of Financial Control, AU Finance and Estates Projects and Development. 

A user-friendly solution for a mixed bag of categories 
The AU webshop contains products that you either buy or rent. For example, students can buy books and manuals and coffee and laundry vouchers, and they can pay deposits for rental of of party venues, study spaces and various types of equipment. Registration for events takes place in Conference Manager. In other words, the product categories are a bit of a mixed bag. For this reason, AU's user experience team provided qualified assistance in relation to the categorisation of the products. This process resulted in the following six categories in the AU webshop: Documentation, rooms and facilities, literature, software licences, equipment and services. 

Easy internal purchases    
"Internal purchases were a bit of a challenge in the old webshop due to invoicing, which meant that very few used the webshop for this. Hopefully, this will change now that it’s possible to perform internal purchases in the AU webshop easily and with relatively little information," says Anette Svejstrup. 

After the summer holiday, all departments and schools will be invited to an information meeting, so that more people can learn about the AU webshop and the opportunity to sell products. 

The product range will be expanded in 2020 and 2021 
The plan is for the Science museums' merchandise to be added to the webshop over in autumn 2020. In 2021, the faculties’ and the central administration's IT webshops that sell hardware and software will also be integrated into the AU webshop.

More information

• You can visit the AU webshop here (in Danish)    
• If you have any further questions about AU’s new webshop, please contact project manager Merete Foged, Financial Control, AU Finance and Estates Projects and Development.