Michael Richard Murphy » E-Commerce

Krudmart: Product page and checkout process refresh and SEO

Michael Richard Murphy — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:59:11 +0000

Krudmart is a Buffalo New York-based e-tailer and street lifestyle website. While Magento is their e-commerce platform of choice, they wanted to upgrade some of the stock buttons and images that came pre-installed with something that fits in a little better with the aesthetic they’ve worked hard to develop. But skinning new buttons was just a small part of the larger project to make the site more customer and search engine friendly.

Although the site boasts loads of great content (mostly linked to from the homepage), it wasn’t well-organized and didn’t have a sense of hierarchy or direction. Everything screamed out to be clicked. Reorganization of the content on that page was designed to focus more on product sales (and featured products) and minimize the draw of the additional content (blog, polls, etc) which is secondary to the purpose of the site.

Product pages also lacked clear calls to action (adding to cart) so the redesign of those buttons focused on making them more prominent and noticeable. Customers would also become confused after attempting to add a product to their cart because confirmation messaging appeared at the top of the page; often not visible after they had scrolled down to read product descriptions. This messaging was moved to directly above the ‘Add to Cart’ where it was more obviously associated with the action on the button (and also always visible). A subtle fading (to white) background animation was also added to attract attention.

Like the homepage, the shopping cart itself was cluttered with lots of content and options, and the buttons were not designed or placed where they stood out. There also wasn’t any real difference in the appearance or location between the buttons for the primary action (checking out) and secondary actions like editing the cart or viewing related products. Along with creating a noticeable difference in the size and locations of the buttons for our primary focus (getting the customer to checkout), the layout of the shopping cart was also simplified to make it easier to use and digest the information contained in it.

In addition to layout changes on the homepage, product pages, and checkout process pages, underlying HTML code was modified to be more semantic and meaningful to search engines.

Lance and I were very happy with work that you did. We have nothing but positive things to say about your work ethic and we were very happy with the results. We saw a positive sales increase immediately. Thank you for your service as well as your dedication to our project. We certainly will be calling you for any future work. Thanks from Krudmart!-Christina Vinci

Lumens: Ratings & Reviews

Michael Richard Murphy — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:47:50 +0000

Lumens, a high-end retailer specializing in lighting and home accessories, contracted with Bazaar Voice to provide them with Ratings & Reviews functionality and needed those features implemented on their website. Implementing third party technology in an already complex E-Commerce environment is always tricky but things went smoothly and both Lumens and their customers are happy with the results.

Michael is an outstanding web developer. He implemented numerous functional improvements to our Retail eCommerce site including Quick Look, Recently Viewed and Ratings & Reviews quickly and effectively.-Vince Barriero

Lumens: Recently Viewed

Michael Richard Murphy — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:54:30 +0000

Lumens, a high-end retailer specializing in lighting and home accessories, wanted to provide their customers with a summary of all the products they’ve viewed during a particular time period.

We created a section, titled Recently Viewed, in the right-hand column that briefly summarizes all of the products a specific customer has viewed. Each product is linked to it’s full description page where it can be purchased. Only the five most recently viewed products are displayed at any given time in the sidebar but customers can view every product they’ve looked at one a special page.

This feature is developed so that Lumens can easily change the number of products displayed in the sidebar at any given time as well as the period of time that products are considered recently viewed (ex: a browser session, 30 days, a year, etc).

Michael is an outstanding web developer. He implemented numerous functional improvements to our Retail eCommerce site including Quick Look, Recently Viewed and Ratings & Reviews quickly and effectively.-Vince Barriero

Austad’s Golf: Express Shop

Michael Richard Murphy — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:43:28 +0000

I implemented an “Express Shop” feature for Austad’s Golf, a family owned business with 11 retail stores throughout the Midwest. The Express Shop, appears in an attractive modal window (overlay on the current page) and allows customers to view basic product information, select sizes and colors, and purchase a specific product directly from category and search results pages.

Michael is an extremely dedicated and hard-working individual who responds to direction better than you could possibly imagine. Projects and tasks that are asked of him are always completed in a very efficient and timely fashion and he is never afraid to voice his opinion or his thoughts on the task at hand. All of this coupled with his high levels of creativity and responsiveness make him a dream to work with.-Joel Harrington

Lumens: Quick Look

Michael Richard Murphy — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:11:37 +0000

Lumens, a high-end retailer specializing in lighting and home accessories, wanted to implement a “Quick Look” feature that would allow customers to purchase a product right from their search results or category display pages (as well as view basic product information).

Because of the design-oriented nature of their product line, the Quick Look feature needed to look and work “just so”. It was important to Lumens that customers not have to scroll to view the entire contents of the Quick Look window. With that in mind, I wrote some positioning logic so that the Quick Look window can appear to either the left or right of the thumbnail and vertically aligned to either the top or bottom based on the amount of available screen real estate. The Quick Look window will never appear partially off-screen regardless of where it’s related thumbnail appears in the browser window.

Michael is an outstanding web developer. He implemented numerous functional improvements to our Retail eCommerce site including Quick Look, Recently Viewed and Ratings & Reviews quickly and effectively.-Vince Barriero

Shop Derma Spa

Michael Richard Murphy — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:25:51 +0000

Dr. Robert Loss was excited to unveil a newly redesigned site for his dermatology practice. Unfortunately the e-commerce platform he preferred wasn’t supported by his current hosting company.

The decision was made to create a separate e-commerce site on a new domain and link back and forth between the two. I designed and implemented the e-commerce portion to have the same look and feel as his existing site so the transition would be transparent to visitors.

This project included design work, heavy customization of a PHP-based e-commerce platform, and backend database and information architecture.

Radiant Skin Clinic & Shoppe

Michael Richard Murphy — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 17:45:06 +0000

Carey needed to move her existing site to a new host and e-commerce platform. It was important to her that this move have minimal impact on her existing customers and hard-earned search engine rankings. I handled the implementation of the new platform and site design, data and security certificate migration, as well as redirection of URLs so bookmarked and indexed pages would continue to be valid.

Michael brought an idea I had to fruition. With his hard work and dedication to the job – my website has become the corner-post of my business. He has been a good sounding board, source for sound coding practices, and has vast knowledge on e-commerce platforms. I turn to him for all my IT needs.-Carey Whitmore