ISW is a sister company to Coastal Business Supplies. Unlike Coastal who is a B2B for small businesses ISW’s primary customer-base is also B2B but more in the realm resellers like Coastal. Prior to this project they didn’t have much of an online presence. They really only had a landing page with the contact info to place orders by phone.
This project included a lot of research and competitive analysis, a complete website design on WordPress, a custom mega menu and migrating over 2k products onto a new eCommerce shop specifically for wholesalers. This was a collaboration between another person and I - he handled the backend setup and most of the product migration and I handled the research and design.
Problem: no real online presence
The folks at ISW were wanted a better way to showcase their products and product category pages. Product pages where the wholesale customers could get all the info they needed manufacturer brochures, recommended products, videos and additional support information.
Each category page laid out specifics on which products were best suited for which type of garment and printer. This equipped potential resellers with all the information they needed to make informed product decisions based on their specific needs.
Explorations
In this project I preformed a good amount of competitor research, focusing on how ISW’s competition was providing their customers with information and how their websites were laid out. I took that information and together with the folks from ISW we discussed the “gaps” in those designs and content.
With that, I created design that filled in the gaps of the competitors’ with easy to access, straight-forward information.
One simple request
One request that was made by the operations manager at ISW was that we create a navigation that was fun and resembled their bright and colorful logo.
It took me a while but I found the perfect mega menu plug-in with the most customizable features. This menu expanded the entire page and utilized all the logo colors (plus one more) but also, it segmented the navigation into specific key areas.
Outcome
Months of hard work and research paid off - we launched before our deadline with a completely branded and designed website that featured a new mega menu, details product pages and a comprehensive eCommerce product site. Resellers could now setup to become a reseller and purchase merchandise directly from the site without having to call in.
Following the design project I also worked closely with the ISW team to manage and add products to the site when needed.
The leaders at ISW were very satisfied and the customers were excited that they had a faster and easier way to log their orders.
Reflection
One of the most time-consuming part of this project was the product migration process. While we were able to find a popular plugin for the majority of the products, the inconsistency between their prior setup and the new required a lot of cleanup.