Enhanced user experience can change everything for a customer-facing business. McWong Inc. is a leading international manufacturer of high quality lighting control equipment and related electrical components in Sacramento, California. Earlier this year, they reached out to Sacramento-based Dedicated Designs for a website redesign to enhance their selling experience, modernize their online branding, and streamline the view of their website as a whole. Specifically, the client was experiencing issues with the navigability of their web pages, a lack of mobile compatibility, an obscure product catalog, and backend data concerns. McWong hoped to alleviate these concerns by working with Dedicated Designs.
In the initial planning meeting between McWong, Inc. and Dedicated Designs, it became clear that their legacy site needed improvements in both its design and backend development. After collecting ideas and preferences about the appearance, navigation, and organization of their new site, Dedicated Designs went to work creating a new system interface on which the team could build the updated site.
Transforming the Webpage through Design
The first piece of this effort included redesigning the client’s website. Dedicated Designs worked diligently to bring a new look and feel to the website, incorporating client preferences and goals into the overall design. This effort required a complete overhaul of all design features, including adding light, modern branding and dynamic movement throughout the site.
By the end of this process, the client had a new look to their site that visually conveyed their brand to the site users and potential customers at first glance.
McWong Home Page Before Working with Dedicated Designs
McWong Home Page After Working with Dedicated Designs
Enhanced User Experience
One of the client’s main goals was to create a website that was easy to use – for both customers and employees!
Following these parameters, the team at Dedicated Designs worked to ensure the overall user experience of the site was improved. This process involved the incorporation of extensive human centered design principles which allow customers to easily and efficiently navigate through the site and its products.
Part of making the website user friendly also involved making the products easy to interpret and understand. Working hand in hand with the McWong team, Dedicated Designs assigned product names to each individual item listed online. Before this process, each product had been identified only by a product number, which made the catalog difficult for potential customers to navigate. In the interest of attracting new customers and retaining legacy McWong clients, the team worked to assign a descriptive name to each item in place of the pre-existing product number.
This change made the product catalog more user friendly for customers who were browsing, looking for information, or on the verge of reaching out to the McWong team. By redefining the website goals and user experience, the McWong website now caters to even more potential customers – and makes the browsing experience easier for everyone.
Making McWong Mobile!
What’s more, the team ensured that customers could access the site in web-based, tablet, and mobile application formats. To ensure a cohesive look across all formats, the team at Dedicated Designs created the web version, tablet, and mobile applications in step with one another. In other words, as the team built up the web application, they were also making sure that the same programming would maintain functionality in the different screen sizes of tablet and mobile formats.
Once the bulk of the programming was established, the team further adjusted the tablet and mobile formats for an improved user experience. This process involved adjusting the design to ensure all items are displayed properly in mobile and tablet formats. It also included adding dynamic space-saving features to prioritize the information displayed in the smaller screen sizes.
Throughout this process, the Dedicated Designs team was consistently adjusting the functionality of the tablet and phone applications to make the displays as user friendly and intuitive as possible.
Finding Products with Ease
New McWong Product Page
The Dedicated Designs web development team also incorporated enhanced processes and additional tools into the website design to improve the overall ease of use for web page visitors. For example, our developers integrated a search function into the website to allow users to find and filter all the products contained in the site.
Displayed prominently at the top of all pages on the McWong website, the search function is easy for all users to leverage, and adeptly filters through data on the backend to find products related to the search input. The search process became even more streamlined once the team at Dedicated Designs established unique product names for each item as it could now leverage keywords throughout the catalog to populate the search results. With this feature, both customers and employees can quickly find their preferred products from hundreds of individual featured items in their online catalog.
In addition to the search function, the development team at Dedicated Designs ensured that the website had intuitive product navigation features. After working with the client to determine the appropriate product categories, our developers placed navigation tools prominently on the product page for users to capitalize on.
The “Sensors” Product Page with Enhanced Filter
In addition, each individual product page features an enhanced filter, which will allow users to filter their search by even more in depth categories, including product sub category, input voltage, wireless option, and sensing technology. Users can leverage these filters to narrow their search to products that fit their specific needs.
Making Data Work for McWong
In addition to front-end enhancements, Dedicated Designs worked extensively to restructure the data in the backend of the website. This process included sorting through the existing data and completely restructuring the back end to host the data within an intuitive and functional framework.
The data restructuring had multiple uses. Not only did it make creating the new website easier, but it also ensures that the website will be able to easily scale with the addition of new business and products.
When completed, this process allowed McWong to work with increased data capabilities, including data search and analysis. Restructuring the data will also allow for continued ease of growth. Now that all data has a structure and organization, the company can augment the existing data sets with new sets without straining the system as a whole.
Building Tools for the Future
Even after the launch, Dedicated Designs will be working with McWong to create tools that will further improve their website. From the start, it was important to the company that the website included easy to use tools specifically for McWong employees to facilitate additional sales.
However, it was important that the rest of the site was set up before this process was put in place to maintain overall site functionality.
Following this direction, the team at Dedicated Designs has created backend processes and data connection points that will allow McWong employees to create a sale ticket and purchase order while speaking with clients. As the project continues, Dedicated Designs will work with the client to incorporate client preferences and activate this tool on the client’s timeline.
Throughout this process, the team at Dedicated Designs incorporated human centered designs to make the McWong, Inc. website more user friendly to new and legacy customers, while also incorporating new branding and design into their online platforms. If you are interested in a full website redesign for your current web presence, reach out to Dedicated Designs today.
