Background
Curiosity Box is an established business which offers a range of science toys and STEM products for children of all ages. They were selling to individuals as well as schools using 2 different websites but decided there was value in merging the 2 different sites. They approached us to carry out the merger and, at the same time, speed up the site and improve the search engine position of their site.
Project
This project was complex merger of 2 well-established online shops. Both of the these used WordPress/WooCommerce as their base and the new merged shop does the same, as the platform had proved effective, easy to manage and update.
One of the issues with both of the previous websites was that they were slow and had become too risky to update. The poor response times were due to very large images having been uploaded and the new merged site tackled this by resizing and optimising all the images before uploading them to the new site. The problem with updates was related to the way the site had originally been built. The new site makes it simple to update the plugins as well as easily add/update new pages, posts and products.
Both of the previous shops offered a range of simple products and products with various options. However, one of them also offered a variety of subscription products which were available on a 3 month, 6 month or annual basis. Bring together all this product data, customer data and order data from both sites proved quite a challenge to ensure that no historical data was lost in the process and that all subscriptions were maintained so that renewals would go out at the correct time.
AttractMore were responsible for the entire process - design, search engine optimisation, development, data merge, testing and implementation.
Despite the complexities of the data merge, the implementation went very smoothly. There were a few small issues post-implementation, as one would expect in such a project, but these have now been dealt with. The site is a lot faster than the previous versions with most pages loading in around 3 seconds as opposed to over 10 seconds on the previous sites. The new site is a lot more secure and much less likely to get hacked.
As with all of our projects, we went through a rigorous testing phase, checking page load speeds, appearance and functionality across a large number of browsers, operating systems and devices. It was very helpful having the business users involved with testing the functionality of the new site before it went live. They were very familiar with the processes and were able to check that all these worked properly on the merged site.
Outcome
The client now has a fast, secure new website that works well on screens of all sizes and which is easy to update and maintain.
Testimonial
It was with some trepidation that I first came to Roger with the challenge of recreating a more efficient and effective website. I needed a site that enabled us to improve sales conversions, whilst capturing our brand and values in a way that our current website did not. I had been through a number of fairly disastrous web development experiences and I was very anxious about spending a lot of money to only fail again.
I needn’t have worried! Roger has delivered far better than I expected. He is able to communicate and translate the more technical aspects of the website, whilst completely understanding what we are trying to achieve from a customer perspective. In my experience, this is an incredibly rare combination, and it really sets Roger apart.
Not only that, Roger has worked out as an incredibly cost effective solution and I really wish we had have skipped the agencies and come to him first. Even though he’s a freelancer, Roger feels like a hugely valuable part of our team now. He brings a breadth of skills that make him like a one man tech department which, as a small business, is something that usually feels out of reach.
Summary
Client
Curiosity Box
Our role
Design, development, data merge, testing and implementation.
