Heimerdinger Cutlery.com Screen Shot

In Mid 2008, Heimerdinger Cutlery got together with Louisville Web Group to not only bring about a change to their existing webstore, but to overhaul their entire business. Breaking everything out into several stages, the culmination of the project(s) has come to bear fruit for the world to see. HeimerdingerCutlery.com is now live, and racking up more and more sales every day!

Step 1

A new POS (point of sale) system – When LWebG came into the picture, Heimerdinger Cutlery was doing business much as they had done for the past 50 years of their over 150 year existence. Everything, regardless of an internet order, phone order, or a walk-in was written down onto a specially printed notepad and placed in-line in a box for processing. It was almost impossible to keep track of inventory, and factors such as ROI and sales trends were a pain to compute.

The old Heimerdinger webstore

The first thing we did was to gather information on what they had and what they needed. The POS system that was in place wasn’t even in development anymore, didn’t interface with their existing webstore, did hardly any reports, didn’t have any peripherals (cash drawer, scanner, card reader), and most of all did not interface with the Quickbooks Financial software that was running in the office. After doing a bit of research about what their needs were, we came down with a solution of purchasing Quickbooks POS Pro and suggested several peripheral packages from local-based POS supply companies. Heimerdinger ended up with a great deal on some of the software and hardware and were well on their way to a more contemporary workflow.

Step 2

Phone orders and preparing to sync everything together.

Step two of the process (besides training) was to get the framework for connecting the forthcoming new website with the new POS. At the same time, we needed to find a way for Heimerdinger’s employees to take phone orders at the same time that customers were checking out in the brick-and-mortar store. After some more research, we decided to suggest using Atandra’s T-Hub software. Certified as a Gold Intuit Developer, Atandra had numerous message board reviews that were positive. I installed the software on 4 of the in-store computers and commenced syncing the POS’s database with the T-Hub software. Within a short amount of time, Heimerdinger went from writing everything by hand to having the ability to make multiple real-time sales tied in with their inventory levels.

Step 3

Heimerdinger Cutlery sample product page

The Webstore. The biggest part of the project. The then-current/original webstore was built on a Cold Fusion foundation and hosted by Rick at Intent.net. This arrangement was working, but not necessarily the best setup at the time. The site had gone done for as much as a week in recent memory, and stability and ease of use was a definite desire. The root of the site was managed partially by Heimerdinger Cutlery (via Frontpage) and partially by Intent.net.

When we were in the process of making our plan during Step 1, we had narrowed down the webstore choices to OsCommerce and Magento. Ultimately, we chose OsCom to be the backbone of the new webstore. This is because Magento is pretty bulky (and at times very slow) unless you have a pure dedicated server environment. While we offered (at the time) various levels of shared hosting, we did not offer a dedicated server nor was that really in the budget. OsCom became the framework of choice.

Over several months of review and testing, the site went live on June 4th, 2009 – several days after the projected launch date. I wish I could say that it was due to the enormity of the project, but everything was pushed back due to a very, very unhelpful payment processor. After a late switch to Authorize.net, the store was ready for action.

Century Beauty Webstore

The Century Beauty Webstore project was primarily a redesign which incorporated javascript and installation of a blog on the site. It started off as a heavily customized OsCommerce installation that wasn’t working quite right (and looked pretty gaudy). Customers could purchase items, but ancillary parts of the system were out of wack. Besides the redesign to remove the 5 tints/shades of mauve, we were tasked with bringing the inventory system up to spec and integrating the other parts mentioned above.

The site is currently running just fine over at Bluegrass.net. Century’s internal server updates/receives updates on product information and quantity, the warehouse receives an automated printout of all sales orders straight from the store software, and customers are purchasing at a greater rate than before. While the store is limited to Salon professionals, there is now an expanded area of the site where non-professionals can get beauty tips, product updates, etc. via the blog. I’ve even integrated Century Beauty’s MailChimp newsletters into the site so members can review past promotions and non-members can catch a glimpse of what they’re missing.

MCTA screen shot

Web redesign and updates for the Montgomery County Tennis Association. Their previous site was about 5 years old and was pretty clunky. The old site was done with tables inside of tables inside of tables… which were inside of tables. I reworked their site hierarchy (it was larger than it currently is) and helped narrow down the pages that their membership would actually need. The site was built on top of a custom-built CMS system built about 5 years ago by Bluegrass.net

XHTML/CSS recoding for the CMS system, Javascript sliding on homepage, XHTML/CSS recoding for webstore (SunShop), collaboration on webform for New Players page (XHTML/MySQL – input/output to Excel)

Louisville Web Group

While working at Louisville Web Group, it was decided that we needed a new site to help refresh the brand’s image and bring in new customers. With an eye towards SEO, I set out to build a larger site involving social networking and blogging – bringing LWebG’s site into the present and ahead of many local competitors.

The site incorporates the WordPress blogging platform outfitted with a number of plugins to make the site into more of a CMS. Multiple template files were created for the different layouts and sidebars seen through the site. The homepage incorporates random PHP scripts to pull in the video testimonials and featured sites dynamically as well as the main title image being dynamically set depending on the time of day. During the morning you should see a “morning” photo of Louisville, during the day see a daytime image, etc…

I also installed and configured the forms and support software on the new site, as well as am the primary maintainer of the LWebG Twitter account.

I am adding and configuring e-commerce software as well to allow clients to pay invoices online and for potential clients to sign up for hosting accounts. Hopefully those items will be available in July 2009.