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Mike's Montes - Case Study
MikesMontes.com specializes in new and used parts for 1983-1988 Monte Carlo SS and other similar models. Mike's old website was nice looking, but wasn't proving to be an effective sales tool. The administrative functionality on the website made adding new parts a rather difficult procedure. Additionally, many of the models for which he carried parts were nowhere to be found on the website, nor did he have any way to add them.
Another major obstacle to generating sales on Mike's site was the logic used for shipping. Depending on the parts ordered, shipping calculations were often generating an unreasonably high amount. The original site's designer had set him up with a 3rd party shopping cart solution. While this provided a suitable model for accepting payment, the limitations on calculating shipping were hindering his sales.
We provided Mike with the following solution:
- Create a new administrative area to allow easier management of parts on the site.
- Redesign the site to show all models for which parts are available. Customers can shop for parts by either selecting their vehicle's model and year, or by entering one or more keywords.
- Allow parts to be assigned to multiple models and years.
- Since some parts are used, and therefore have limited availability, allow inventory to be tracked to prevent overselling of these parts.
- Continue to use the 3rd party shopping cart for checkout and secure payment only. Orders and shipping will be gathered and calculated beforehand, and then sent to the 3rd party application as a whole.
- Shipping will be calculated using web services from UPS or USPS, depending upon the total weight of the order. The customer will see the cost of shipping in their order before checking out.
- Reuse existing graphics where feasable.
- Improve site's search engine ranking.
Because we were able to reuse portions of the original site, we were able to come up with a working solution that fit into Mike's budget. Since completing the project, Mike has reported drastic increases in both site traffic and sales.