Official Sports Kicks Off a New, Secure Store

Official Sports e-commerce website design by Lee Willett / Studio 23

official_sports_webHow important is security to your company? Official Sports hired a developer to create a secure e-commerce store for their soccer referee gear store. Unfortunately, they found that the site had been compromised and credit card data was stolen. That’s when they called Studio 23.We reviewed the situation and developed a game plan. We were able to access the store files, scrub any user data and get the site back quickly as a brochure. We assessed existing e-commerce options and knew that whatever system we would recommend would be very secure but also be recognized as a secure brand by customers. Ultimately, we recommended using Amazon’s webstore platform. We developed a new look and feel to the store to reassure visitors that the store was, in fact, new. We worked with the client in porting catalog records and images into the new platform, creating promotions and a special holiday shop just in time for their annual sale.

By the time the holiday sale concluded, the company saw an increase in sales of 11% over the previous year—an impressive increase considering the circumstances. We’d call that a big win but you be the referee and visit the site at OfficialSports.com.

Studio 23 Launches New Coffee Site

National Coffee Association Website by Lee Willett / Studio 23

ncausa_web2The National Coffee Association of USA hired Studio 23 to redevelop its website that serves the coffee trade as a resource of timely information, events and governmental affair initiatives. The site uses a proprietary content management system with components for member accounts, registrations and store. The original site contained considerable archived articles but distinguishing the archives from the current articles was a challenge to visitors. Also, the original site had limited navigational items and poor organization that inhibited access.

We evaluated the current structure and recommended that we continue to use the existing CMS. While not ideal, changing to a new platform would have been prohibitively expensive and would have required retraining by the organization’s support staff resulting in a loss of time. What we did was to re-architect the site, creating a clear two-tier navigation structure based on areas of expertise. Further, to promote these areas, we developed a rotating masthead that greets visitors with the most important news or events that the organization has to offer. Since the site was performing well with regard to search engine optimization, we made sure that the most visited pages gained in accessibility and older pages moved into archive areas where content was accessible but not primary.

Further, to make the site easily managed, we developed robust style sheets and an image module that is a standard size throughout the site. As a result, one size can be used everywhere thus limiting time creating multiple sizes of graphics.

Since the launch, we’ve watched the site’s visitors grow by 30% and retention increase as well. Check it out at ncausa.org.

Software Art Space Online

Software Art Space contacted Studio 23 to build a site that would showcase its line of computer artwork, take orders, process credit cards, transfer order data to the shipper and then process tracking information for the user, all with a minimum of maintenance. In short—build a store that runs itself. Studio 23 worked closely with all parties involved to make sure that orders from around the world could be placed and tracked securely without daily management by the client. But taking the orders is really the final goal of the site. First, we needed to educate the visitor as to what software art is. For that, we developed interactive modules that help explain the concept and its use.