Ofield Industrial Supply
This Southern California industrial supply company had a decade old e-commerce Website that was grinding to a halt. Years of DIY 'fixes' was showing to visitors and was ultimately damaging their brand.
Primary tasks:
- Placeholder page (during development)
- Data/content migration from old site
- Content fields for client input
- Responsive layout
Ofield Industrial Supply is a family owned business located in Brea, California. Soon after World War II, they began servicing the machine shop industry with abrasive supplies. The abrasive supply industry isn't well known outside of its customer base, which are global industries we take for granted - transportation, aerospace, medical, construction, electrical, restaurants, and the list goes on.
The To-do list
Every Website and the server it sits on is software-based, and that software is almost always updated with new functionality, code corrections/improvements, and security patches. Basically, it's not good to go even a year without updates.
Even when it was stable, the Ofield staff had difficulty adding content to their Website, which had not been updated in almost a decade, and unfortunately some in-house fixes only broke more functionality. When I was hired, the Website was well past the point of no return by several months - access to content management was broken and database errors were displacing or overlaying most of the content that was still visible to potential customers. This was becoming a brand image issue.
My first task was to replace the broken site with a temporary placeholder page that had just enough branding and contact information to show the company was still active.
My most pressing tasks were to migrate content for over 15k+ products from the broken site, then within budget, ensure the new site maintained its prominent search ranking.
Onward and upward
Keep it simple - I followed the same process as I would with a new site.
- Get client feedback about what worked, then provide responsive layout and design options
- Migrate as much usable content from the old site to the new site
- Optimize content, assist with search-friendly copywriting, and design some on-page marketing
- Code in custom content fields so staff could add their own content
- Secure files and database
- Provide a maintenance plan to ensure the site stayed updated
Almost a month after launch, one of Ofield's primary distributors, Falcon Abrasive Manufacturing, gave their approval; "Give someone a pat on the back over there. The website looks AMAZING!"
