Driving E-commerce
Through Strategic Website Design
Project Summary
Shelving, Inc., is a shelving and organization company that sells industrial and residential shelving to B2B and B2C customers through direct sales and two E-commerce websites.
The Shelving Elite members-only website expanded the company's services by offering a customized website for Michigan area companies to order items such as tools, shelving, and material handling supplies.
My Role
As Marketing Manager for Shelving, Inc., I was responsible for the website's design, launch, and merchandising. The website uses WordPress/WooCommerce, Pantheon hosting, and a Divi theme.
Project Goal
The project's goal was to capture a larger share of B2B customers by creating a website that provided the specific supplies the company needed to run its various facilities.
Project Strategy
Before the launch of the Shelving Elite site, the sales team provided personalized material handling supplies fulfillment to two Michigan-area companies without a website to support the process. Therefore, the Shelving Elite site was a way to streamline the service for those companies and expand it to other companies. The sales team worked with representatives from those companies to determine their exact needs and desired ordering experience.
Next, the sales team and I met to determine the best approach for meeting those goals and expectations. I also met with other internal company stakeholders to assess how to disperse order notifications, payment methods needed for the site, and the various internal management roles I would implement.
The Home, About, and Contact Us pages are public, while each company has a private "My Elite" E-commerce page, which features their requested list of products. Each company has three possible roles: a company admin, which can access a company-wide WordPress dashboard that can track all of the orders the company has made and other information; a site admin, who can view all of the orders for one site or warehouse; and a site employee that can make orders using a credit card or purchase order number. Their dashboard only provides their order history. The website took 3 months to design and launch, with three having a "My Elite" area.
Key Takeaways
Honed my ability to work in WordPress/WooCommerce, theme customization skills, and managing systems through Pantheon.
Enhanced my knowledge of the unique needs of a B2B vs. B2C customer.
Gained a better understanding of facilitating cross-departmental projects and executing a large-scale project in a condensed time frame.