Rebuilding an Online Shop With 3500+ Products Share: Alpha Strategy Score Awaiting client review n/a Date Published 26 February 2020 Reading Time 3-Minute Read The Harbour Chandler is a marine and fishing megastore. With well over 10,000 different products. About the Project When we first met with Andrea and Matt at The Harbour Chandler, they were using Yellow Pages as their website developer and maintainer. While their website was very successful with their past provider, their platform lacked customizability and couldn’t keep up with their needs. The site lacked a unique feel that their brick-and-mortar experience provides, and website maintenance was costing them a sizeable monthly fee. Alpha Strategy was up to the task to give them a new fresh look, while also giving them the tools to update and customize their site for their growing product database. Website Redesign SEO Services Ongoing Maintenance Challenges The previous website was built years prior and lacked a contemporary feel Competitors were updating websites Website lacked customizability Functionality on the previous CMS platform prohibited the company from adding necessary features Yellow Pages charged a steep monthly fee to update and maintain the website Technical Spec Due to the size of this store and the number of products they carry, this was a vast undertaking. We were lucky enough to get to work closely with Andrea throughout the entire project. Andrea and Matt described the feel of their ideal website and we developed a mock-up of the homepage. Once this was complete and revisions were made, we took it a step further and had our designer develop a comprehensive plan to improve the user experience. We were given approval for structure and layout, and we started building the comprehensive WooCommerce site on WordPress. During development, we added in 3,500 products, which on its own was a massive undertaking. Many of the images on the old website were very small, so we had to source over 1,000 products online to keep up the quality of the website. Products were also re-categorized at this time, to create an easily navigable experience for the online shopper. We also created a new layout for their popular fishing report on MailChimp and set up email retention for custom content marketing initiatives. Security was a major concern for them and Alpha Strategy. We integrated a strong security application, providing real-time updates and additional precautions to deter criminals from customer and company information. How We Made a Difference Customers are now notified when a new fishing report has been published by email and are directed back to the website to view it. This keeps The Harbour Chandler in the eyes of their customers, while also providing a service which is widely used by the Vancouver Island fishing community. Alpha Strategy launched The Harbour Chandler website in late February after three months of intense development. They are very happy with the way their new website turned out, and we continue to work with them on a maintenance plan which enables them to have us make changes and update the website regularly.