SPRINGFIELD, MO, Dec. 17, 2021 — This week, Classy Llama, Springfield’s only full-service eCommerce agency, has earned places on two of Comparably.com’s top 50 lists: Best Companies for Women and Best CEO.
“I’ve been with Classy Llama almost six years now and it’s very different from just about anywhere I’ve worked. I’ve been in male-dominated industries my entire career and there has always been a level of disrespect toward me as a woman. But then I came to Classy Llama and I was allowed a seat at the table and my opinion mattered. To have that level of respect and care from your co-workers is huge, including other women. At Classy, you don’t feel unnecessary competitiveness with other women. Instead, we empower each other,” Ashlee Colliver, senior eCommerce strategist, said.
Other employees at Classy Llama shared similar feelings about what it’s like to work for the company:
“I started as an Office Administrator and, five months later, here I am, promoted to a Project Manager position. I’ve had so many people pouring into me and fostering my growth. As someone who’s never done Project Management before, this was an awesome opportunity for me to grow into something new and I have had an amazing support system from both men and women here,” Leianna Pavon said.
When asked how he felt about the accolade, Theobald redirected the focus to the employees who provided feedback: “I don’t care about accolades. I care about the hearts behind those accolades. If this award means I’m providing effective leadership to my employees, that’s what matters the most to me.”
An Award-Winning Company
These two most recent achievements bring Classy Llama’s workplace award total for 2021 to five wins, also including:
Comparably Awards are based on feedback provided by current employees who anonymously rated their employers on Comparably.com during a 12-month look-back period. Employees have the opportunity to answer up to 100 questions spanning nearly 20 different workplace topics. Each answer is given a numerical score and compared to companies of similar size. The final data set was compiled from 15 million ratings across 70,000 companies.
About Classy Llama
Classy Llama is a full-service digital commerce agency filled with eCommerce industry veterans passionate about leveraging technology to help online merchants grow and build their business sustainably. For more information, please contact Greg Johnson by phone at (417) 866-8887 or by email at [email protected].
Do you have an eCommerce business? Are you tired of dealing with multiple vendors, tech integrations, software services and more, all while trying to piece together a cohesive online selling strategy?
If so, then you need to consider hiring a full-service eCommerce agency. Check out the ways partnering with a Full-Service eCommerce Agency can serve your needs:
Cohesive Strategy, Not Siloed Efforts
When you work with an eCommerce agency that offers a full suite of services, all the strategy and efforts will be consolidated into one place. This makes it easier to create and follow through on your sales goals. One company is responsible for your website design, user experience, digital marketing, and even your conversions. This creates a cohesive eCommerce strategy that is more likely to increase revenue and conversions than a disconnected strategy.
Time and Energy Savings
By hiring one company to manage all of your online needs, you are freeing up time and energy that can be put into other important areas of the business. Instead of spending the extra time it takes to explain your sales goals and brand values to several different company’s teams, you can share the information once and rest assured each piece of your strategy is in alignment with your objectives. Plus, you’ll never have to worry that one of your vendors or partners efforts are negating another’s.
More Efficient Decision Making
When you have one company managing all of your eCommerce needs, it is easier to make decisions about the next steps for your business. For example, if a new feature on the website or an updated user experience flow will impact email marketing and PPC campaigns, you can discuss those changes with only one team. This not only saves headaches of repeating yourself, it can save you money and has the potential to increase revenue.
One Agency Means One Budget
When your website, digital marketing and other online eCommerce efforts are all managed by one company, your budget will be simpler to manage. Instead of having separate budgets for each vendor or partner you work with in order to sell online effectively, you can work out a budget with only one company. This can save you money in the long run.
Higher Quality Work
Working with a full-service eCommerce agency usually means you will be working with a team of highly skilled professionals. These are people who have years of experience in website design, user experience, digital marketing and more. They also know how to work together as a team to create the best results for your business. When you work with a boutique eCommerce agency, the team is usually smaller and may not have as much experience in all areas of online sales.
Easier Scalability
As your business grows, you will need to make changes to your online strategy. This can include expanding your team, adding new features to the website or increasing your digital marketing efforts. With a full-service eCommerce agency, these changes are easier to implement and manage. You don’t have to worry about finding new vendors or working with multiple teams. Instead, you can work with one company to scale your online efforts and grow your business, and you can do it faster than ever before.
Increased Efficiency
In order to sell online successfully, you will need a website with an easy user experience and seamless eCommerce functionality. A full-service agency can help ensure your website is efficient for both customers and employees. For example, if one team member working on the UX notices that a new feature or design may negatively impact email marketing efforts, they can communicate this to the digital marketing team. This type of communication and collaboration is crucial for an efficient eCommerce business, and a full-service agency makes it happen.
Classy Llama — a Rock Solid eCommerce Partner
If you’re looking for a full-service eCommerce agency, look no further than Classy Llama. We offer web development, user experience, conversion rate optimization, digital marketing, consultation services and more, to help businesses of all sizes increase their online sales. Thanks to our team of eCommerce veterans, we can handle everything for you in one place, no matter how complex or how custom, which saves time and energy and frees you up to do what you love: run your eCommerce business.
Click here, fill out our contact form, and get started with a free roadmap preview call today.
Sometimes, no matter your best intentions, a project can be laden with difficulties. That was certainly true for the R&R Products, Inc., company in the early stages of their eCommerce journey.
When the R&R team decided their new goals were to expand from the golf products industry into the landscaping market, all while keeping up their commitment to customer service, they knew they would need a stable website with a great user experience. Unfortunately, they were working with a Solutions Integrator that wasn’t able to handle the complexity of the upgrade their website needed, from M2 Open Source to M2 Commerce Cloud.
That’s when R&R began their search for an agency partner that had the experience and confidence needed to get into the weeds of coding complexities and also the expertise to pull the project out of those same weeds.
CUSTOMER SERVICE AND GROWTH GOALS
R&R Products, Inc., is a name that’s synonymous with quality. As the world’s leading manufacturer of turf equipment replacement parts for the commercial turf industry, their dedication to serving the needs of golf courses, athletic fields, and more with high quality products has never wavered since their founding in 1971.
Not only that, despite their catalog featuring over 32,000 quality replacement parts, accessories, and more, their team takes superior customer service so seriously, they proudly offer a 98% rate on products being shipped the same day their order is received. When you order from R&R, you can be assured that not only will you get a quality product, you’ll also get it in a timely fashion.
Looking to the future, R&R is also pursuing growth into the general landscape industry, hopeful they can bring their brand of quality and service to another market.
But, with a site that worked directly against these objectives, an update with better functionality wasn’t just wished for—it was an absolute necessity.
BLOCKED BY FAULTY TECH
Standing in the way of the R&R team’s goals was an outdated website that wasn’t functioning at a level commensurate with their commitment to customer service. Their M2 Open Source website contained an abundance of archaic, specialty code, making it slow to load and hard to use.
Having a stable website with a great user experience is absolutely crucial to R&R Products’ mission that every shopper gets the same excellent customer service every time they visit their website.
Unfortunately, the complex fixes that would be needed weren’t achievable with the SI they were currently working with. Facing frustrated customers and internal team woes as well, Brian Larson from R&R felt the pressure to fix their eCommerce presentation so acutely it followed him home. He felt unable to disconnect from the stress even in his down time. If the company couldn’t get a better website launched, their eCommerce presentation would continue to stall the growth and expansion R&R saw for their brand. Not only that, their team members would suffer the continued weight of that stress.
FINDING AN ECOMMERCE PARTNER WITH FOLLOW-THROUGH
When the R&R team came to Classy Llama, we knew it would be a difficult project, but that didn’t dissuade us from digging in. Delivering what clients need even through storms of difficulty is what lights llamas up, so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work discovering what R&R needed to achieve their goals, and how we could make it happen for them.
Fitment, UX, and more: Solutions for R&R
Because of the intense level of customization R&R’s M2 Open Source website started with, Classy Llama knew it wouldn’t be a simple process to move them to Adobe Commerce (Magento). Each area of their site that was built with custom code needed to be reviewed and a new—hopefully native to Magento—solution would need to be developed. From shipping to UX to their ERP, Classy Llama began the complicated process of auditing, roadmapping, and implementing each Adobe Commerce integration that would bring R&R’s website from buggy and archaic to functional and technically up-to-date.
One feature that was intensely important to R&R’s user experience functionality and, therefore, their goals of stellar customer service, was the interactive schematics. This functionality, often referred to as, “Fitment,” is designed to make searching for parts super simple for shoppers and is extremely popular among all kinds of parts sellers. Fortunately, Classy Llama’s extensive experience in the automotive industry and dealing with large catalogs of aftermarket parts made us the team with the technical chops needed to create an excellent fitment search solution for R&R.
Lawn mower schematics display with all parts showing.
Hover over the part(s) you want to buy, that part lights up in the schematic and vice-versa.
After identifying that the previous SI’s work on the fitment solution would need to be scrapped, Classy Llama’s UX team got to work rebuilding the code from scratch. The team also implemented a functionality that made it possible for customers to save the models of their machinery (ex. lawn mowers) to a personal login so that when they searched, only parts for the models they own would display.
When customers create an account, they can save their equipment and only shop what they need.
An Ongoing Partnership
After almost two years of working through various problems during the new Adobe Commerce build, the Classy Llama and R&R teams were able to build the kind of trust and connection every brand needs in their eCommerce partner. Shortly before the official launch date, R&R signed on to an ongoing partnership with Classy Llama, to provide post launch support as well as continued maintenance on whatever they need most.
Not only that, during our ongoing maintenance, the solutions team determined R&R would benefit from an upgrade to their Adobe Commerce site. Classy Llama is now working toward kicking off the upgrade project as soon as possible.
R&R’S SERVICE PROMISES KEPT
Now that R&R Products, Inc., has an eCommerce partner like Classy Llama on their side, their brand is primed to achieve their growth goals. Plus, their dedication to customer service excellence has the technical back-up necessary to make sure they always keep their promise to their customers.
A huge product catalog can make a website difficult to navigate, which leads to customers bouncing and, ultimately, a loss of revenue or even a bad reputation. But for a company like PurposeBuilt Brands, with nine huge product catalogs, customer confusion can become an even bigger problem.
THE CLEANING REVOLUTION
Since 1941, the Weiman family has been pioneering a new revolution they like to call, “So much more than clean,” when they started developing their expansive line of cleaning products starting with Weiman Wood Polish. This product was a first-to-the-market of its kind, formulated specially to preserve and protect fine wood furniture.
Since then, Weiman has continued to develop more first-of-a-kind cleaning products, including pioneering glass cooktop cleaner in the 1980s. The Weiman Family’s dedication to creating products that go beyond simply cleaning and instead beautify and fortify people’s belongings led them to develop a diverse portfolio of cleaning product brands.
What started as Weiman in 1941 is now known as PurposeBuilt Brands, a company passionate about building premium brands that offer safer, gentler, and more sustainable cleaning products: “Our desire is to be better for you, your family, your business, and the environment.”
PurposeBuilt believes in operating with a purpose and passion for creating products that are prized by their users and ultimately better their lives.
eCOMMERCE STRESS AND STRUGGLES
Because PurposeBuilt Brands is dedicated to continually improving their customer’s lives by adding to their portfolio of exceptional brands, they came to a point as a company where they realized they needed cohesion and improvement in their eCommerce presentation.
Their previous Magento 2 websites were extremely buggy and overloaded with third-party plugins that made daily site maintenance so difficult and time consuming the upkeep was virtually impossible for the PurposeBuilt team. Because none of their sites were connected, their team had to play a game of debugging whack-a-mole each time Magento went through an update, fixing issues on one site and then checking through code on the other 8 until they could fix each site’s issues.
Not only that, PurposeBuilt offers a robust library of helpful content available on most of their websites that drives traffic to their eCommerce stores, but their WordPress blog was constantly in danger of going down. Pat Lee, the eCommerce Director for Weiman, and the rest of his team were frequently stressed and worried about the possibility that their number one source of inbound website traffic would be suddenly and unexpectedly non-functional.
Finally, each PurposeBuilt Brand had its own website and they weren’t connected to each other, causing their customer base to be unaware of the full catalog of quality products available to them. Their eCommerce team wanted to find a technical team with the chops to create a single shopping cart for their current brand portfolio that can scale as they add more brands.
With their brand’s websites in such a precarious state and the anxiety of potentially losing traffic (and potentially revenue) looming over them each day, the PurposeBuilt team decided it was time to find a solution.
CONNECTING A VAST BRAND PORTFOLIO
First thing’s first, PurposeBuilt’s team knew they needed a website with a much lower total cost of ownership.
They began to seek a Solutions Integration partner that could debug their Adobe Commerce Magento 2 sites, reduce custom code, and centralize their website features. Pat at Weiman had worked at a company previously that partnered with Classy Llama and felt that our team was a perfect fit to solve their pain points.
After an initial discovery period, the Classy Llama team determined making all the necessary improvements to Weiman’s current site would be time- and cost-prohibitive. We determined that, it would actually take less time, money, and effort to rebuild their Adobe Commerce M2 site from scratch. Not only that, a new build would create a website that was much more maintainable for the PurposeBuilt team providing them with the lower total cost of ownership they wanted — and with a lot less stress.
During the new build, Classy Llama was able to help PurposeBuilt think more holistically about being a multi-brand company.
A frustration the PurposeBuilt team and their customers alike had was the inability to shop all of the company’s brands at once. Because each brand had its own website, they also had their own shopping cart. But since one company owns all of the brands, wouldn’t it be easer if they somehow had a shared shopping cart between all of the PurposeBuilt brands?
The Classy Llama team said yes, it would, and created a brand switcher that would allow customers to add any product from any PurposeBuilt site and add it to one shopping cart. Not only that, we created a header functionality to make it easy for customers to switch from brand to brand seamlessly while shopping.
Now PurposeBuilt has the benefit of each of their brands having their own website, while also offering their customers the convenience to shop all in one place.
In addition to creating a stable, connected websites site with a single cart, our UX team created themes designed to help centralize branding fonts and colors without creating a cookie-cutter brand expression, given that each of PurposeBuilt’s brands are all distinct. Now their team has the ability to make one change to their pattern library and have it apply across all nine of their websites, or just as easily make a singular change to one of their brands.
To solve PurposeBuilt’s problems with their WordPress instability, Classy Llama determined that the third-party extension Weiman was using to connect to their blog would not be stable on the Adobe Commerce platform. Instead, our team recommended implementing an Adobe Commerce (Magento) specific extension from MageFan, a hybrid WordPress and Adobe Commerce (Magento) blog solution. As part of this effort, the team was able to migrate a considerable amount of blog data from WordPress to Magento where it could be more easily stabilized and maintained, as well as customizing the blog styling on the blog landing pages to match the rest of their branding themes.
Now the team at Weiman has stability for their current blog content and what they need to continue to develop an even more robust content library for their customers.
Classy Llama also bolstered PurposeBuilt’s shipping solutions by making sure their preferred shipping partner ShipStation was still the best tool for their new sites. PurposeBuilt uses ShipStation to let customers track their order shipments through their Magento website.
After a quick audit to validate their choice, the solutions team began to integrate the shipping tool on Magento. During this integration, some unexpected bugs and challenges were discovered, but our technical experts were able to rally together, solve the issues, and get the ShipStation integration up and running.
FROM CONFUSION TO COHESION
Thanks to the solutions built by Classy Llama, PurposeBuilt Brands now has a stable Adobe Commerce M2 site that’s able to maintain brand differentiation for each product in their portfolio. Not only that, the shopping cart integration allows their shoppers to browse each distinct brand while all of their sites are powered by one shopping cart.
The ease of use for customers to shop all of PurposeBuilt Brands brought cohesion to their portfolio, allowing the company to better connect with their audience and bring them the high-quality products that they’re passionate about developing.
PurposeBuilt’s team has been so happy with Classy Llama’s solution, they decided to sign on to an ongoing engagement with us before the build was even complete. Now that the website has launched, our ongoing services team is in place to provide site maintenance, further relieving the team’s stress.
As PurposeBuilt continues to build their brands, they now have a reassurance that they not only have a website that can expand along with their portfolio but also a partner who can help them with that expansion. Recently, Classy Llama developed a new project that kicks off shortly to add three additional product lines to PurposeBuilt’s website suite.
Since working with Classy Llama, PurposeBuilt now has a stable Adobe Commerce M2 build that features multiple sites in one, cohesive yet distinct branding, and an ongoing maintenance partner in Classy Llama. Now that their team enjoys a better experience for their customers and less daily stress, they’re free to focus on what they love: Developing more sustainable cleaning brands that can bring value to their customers’ everyday lives.
Find out how Classy Llama’s rapid response to security threats keeps client data safe …
Mondays are bad enough on their own but imagine this: you barely have a sip of your Monday morning coffee before suddenly being confronted with an intense security threat on the majority of your clients’ websites.
Unfortunately, that kind of Monday is all too likely for Classy Llama’s team. When it happened recently, they knew it was up to them to put the coffee down and get to work doing whatever they needed to in order to protect our clients from the security risk.
eCommerce Security: More precarious every day
In a world where cyber-attacks are more and more common, it’s crucial for eCommerce businesses to have reliable security systems in place.
If you don’t have someone in-house to monitor cyber-security threats, and you don’t have an outside partner to help you, your eCommerce website data, including you and your customer’s personal identifying information and credit card credentials, are at risk.
It’s not a maybe or a possibility — without proactive measures against security threats, your eCommerce data is in danger.
The Threat: Adobe Commerce Sites at Risk of Hacking
On Monday, Feb. 14, Adobe announced a severe security vulnerability known as CVE-2022-24086. This vulnerability allows attackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable Adobe Commerce sites, and was rated a 9.8 out of 10 on the severity scale by Adobe.
Not only that, by the time Adobe announced the problem and published patches to correct the vulnerability, some 500 hundred Adobe Commerce sites had already been attacked by hackers using the CVE-2022-24086 flaw.
Given that a majority of Classy Llama’s client sites are hosted on the Adobe Commerce platform, we knew immediately that we had to act.
The Response: Classy Llama’s Client Teams in Action
As soon as Classy Llama’s internal teams were aware of this threat, they snapped into action. Step one was to get everyone together and explain the problem while simultaneously creating a deployment plan to patch the vulnerability.
There was only one issue: Classy Llama’s pledge to our clients is to always communicate when we’re deploying work on client sites and getting the sign-off before actually making changes to their code. That way, clients can prepare for any possible outages or slowed response times on their site or, at the very least, they can be fully aware of what’s going on with their website maintenance.
Unfortunately, as the Security Services Team, the Account Executives and Project Managers, and the Systems Engineering Team discovered early Monday morning, this security threat was catastrophic. If a bad actor exploited this flaw against any of our clients before we got the go-ahead to patch the problem, their entire company and client base could be compromised.
As always, our dedication to serving our clients the absolute best way we can won out. It may have been slightly outside our normal policy, but together, the Classy Llama Team decided they couldn’t wait; our clients needed protection now.
The team started implementing the security patch for CVE-2022-24086 on the morning of Feb. 14, 2022 and had finished patching every single client in less than 24 hours. Because client notices were being sent simultaneously to the patch deployment, many of our clients were fortunate enough to hear about the security threat only after their eCommerce site was no longer at risk.
The Result: Safe clients. Happy Llamas.
By the next day, not one Classy Llama Adobe Commerce site was still vulnerable to CVE-2022-24086, thanks to the quick decision-making and execution tactics of our internal teams.
“Everything was handled great. I received alerts from a number of sources but Classy Llama was the first and had the patch installed right away,” Brian Larson, Vice President and CFO of R&R Products, Inc., said.
Our clients at Weekends Only were especially impressed and grateful about Classy Llama’s response to this threat:
“I can imagine that a vulnerability of that scale and urgency would be a difficult thing to manage across all of your clients, but you guys did a great job responding quickly with solid communication and execution. Before working with CL, it was pretty much on us to keep our eyes/ears open for vulnerabilities like this, and that usually meant we would find out about it several days late after stumbling across an article about it online. It sure is great to know you have our back when something like this happens. You guys were all over it and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.” Scott Antrobus, Product Manager of Digital Enterprises at Weekends Only, said.
Of course, as usual in our world, the unpredictable is the only thing you can count on …
Security Threat 2: The Sequel to CVE-24086
Just as the dust cleared from the CVE-2022-24086 announcement, Adobe dropped another bomb, announcing a new threat known as CVE-2022-24087 on Thursday, Feb. 17th.
The silver lining of the Feb. 14th CVE-2022-24086 threat is that Classy Llama already had a proactive game plan for patching flaws just like this new issue.
As soon as the Classy Llama team became aware of the second threat, they sprang into action.
While this threat and its patch followed a slightly more complex process to deploy, our internal teams followed the same protocol: round up the troops, get everyone in alignment on the plan, and then execute. Due to Classy Llama’s pre-planning and quick action, this secondary threat was neutralized for all our clients by the end of the next day.
“You handled things exactly as I would have hoped. In both cases, our internal security teams were already aware and asking about the risks, but you weren’t far behind with your initial communication. The process you used … led to patching the next day.” Jim Twieg, Vice President of Technology for Suttle-Straus, said.
Conclusion
Here’s the thing: Classy Llama’s dedication to our clients’ security will always be unwavering, and our goal is to work tirelessly to address any and all security threats as quickly as possible.
When a severe security threat such as CVE-2022-24086 is announced, Classy Llama’s teams are now more primed than ever to spring into action to protect clients. The quick response time and execution tactics we can implement managed to prevent any major damage from being done to any of our client sites. Thanks to our proactive approach to security threats, our clients can rest assured that their eCommerce site is safe with us and when clients are happy, Llamas are happy!
If you’d like help with eCommerce security concerns, Classy Llama has a specialized Managed Service for cyber security, designed to create a strategic relationship between you and our expert teams so we can protect your site like we did for our clients in the face of CVE-2022-24086. Partner with Classy Llama and rest assured that someone always has your back when it comes to site security.
As the largest lumber distributor in the United States, U.S. Lumber’s plans for the future have always included two things: pursuing continued growth while still maintaining the highest standards for their customers and suppliers.
When their previous Solutions Integration partner wasn’t able to help them achieve their eCommerce goals, they reached out to Classy Llama to help get their site launch across the finish line.
DISTRIBUTION RELATIONSHIPS BUILT ON TRUST
Founded in 1988 by Lawrence Newton, U.S. Lumber is the largest privately held distributor of specialty building materials serving much of North America.
In the more than 30 years since their founder began their brand’s journey, U.S. Lumber has grown by opening new markets organically, and, in recent years, by acquiring several more Lumber brands in their portfolio.
As a brand, U.S. Lumber’s mission has always been much bigger than simply selling lumber products: they consider themselves a values-based organization, meaning they always seek to serve people first, and do what’s right even when it’s hard.
Over time, U.S. Lumber has been dedicated to consistently enhancing their offerings while remaining committed to maintaining the highest standard of trust with customers and suppliers. Today, their company serves over 15,000 customer locations in the United States and Canada with more than 50 categories of unique specialty building products.
That’s why U.S. Lumber’s eCommerce presentation is so important to them: their website should always be another expression of their commitment to excellence and continually help build trust with their customers. They need an eCommerce presence that ensures their growth goals and excellent customer service mission are never at odds, while also meeting their most important objective: creating a brand that can make a difference in our world one person at a time.
As with anything worth doing, though, achieving these goals through eCommerce didn’t come without its share of obstacles.
STALLED CONSTRUCTION WOES
When U.S. Lumber was ready to push forward with their growth goals through eCommerce, they reached out to a Solutions Integrator to help them build and launch a site that met their brand needs now and had the kind of foundation that could grow alongside their business.
Unfortunately, after almost 2 years, that agency partner wasn’t able to come through for them and their site was still unlaunched. With U.S. Lumber’s eCommerce goals out of reach with their current SI and their team feeling frustrated and unsupported, they knew it was time for a change and reached out to Classy Llama.
MILLIONS OF PRICING INSTANCES? NO PROBLEM
After connecting with the U.S. Lumber team about their frustrations, our team immediately engaged in a paid discovery process. Instead of providing cookie-cutter solutions, our team believes in the importance of discovering what a brand’s objectives are and creating custom road map to help our clients achieve those goals.
With U.S. Lumber, this process was particularly helpful as we were able to reassure their team that all our recommendations and work would align with what their brand wanted to achieve in the future.
Following the discovery process, Classy Llama determined that U.S. Lumber would be best served by a phased approach. First, our team rescued their current build by upgrading from an outdated Magento 2 version to the current version, as well as ensuring the code had the foundation needed to scale the site in the future. Once their current site was launched and functional so their brand could maintain contact and relationship with their customer base, our team moved into phase 2, where more customizations to the Magento code were developed.
CUSTOM PRICING DISPLAYS FOR EACH UNIQUE AUDIENCE
Because U.S. Lumber distributes their products all over the U.S. and Canada, that means their pricing and shipping rates are going to be different depending on where their customers live. In order to make this simple and easy for shoppers to deal with, their Magento site needed a functionality called a that enabled the correct pricing to display to the correct customers based on what U.S. Lumber branch their company is located in.
This may sound pretty simple on the surface, but given the large number of branches and products offered by the entirety of the U.S. Lumber catalog, our team determined that amounts to over 11 million different pricing combinations. The solution built by their previous SI wasn’t able to scale with this pricing increase, which also meant it wouldn’t be able to scale in the future as U.S. Lumber continues to grow.
Classy Llama architected a branch-switcher solution that allowed the site to display customer-specific pricing without causing any loading time issues for the customer, as well as provide a mechanism to update pricing data through the ERP daily. Not only that, the solution built is so efficient, the entire process of updating the 11 million+ pricing differences only takes 45 minutes.
Additionally, the tech team was able to meet all of U.S. Lumber’s B2B requirements through native Magento code, making the website cost less to build and maintain throughout their future scalability needs. Essentially, Classy Llama was able to eliminate entire classes of future cost or risk by ensuring that their B2B solutions were architected within the Magento framework, including the branch switcher solution.
MAKING PROGRESS THROUGH A WELL-CONCEIVED PATH
As Phase 2 of U.S. Lumber’s engagement with Classy Llama was nearing completion, their team decided that an ongoing relationship with us would suit their eCommerce needs best and signed-on to a full service retainer. That means that we get the opportunity to become U.S. Lumber’s daily partner in eCommerce growth as they move forward with their brand and scalability goals.
Currently, our team is working closely with theirs to create a strategic road map for the U.S. Lumber brand in 2022 and beyond, including how to add more branches to their current site, as well as create a new website for another brand they recently acquired.
U.S. Lumber’s team went from feeling let down by their previous SI to feeling supported in both the short and long term with Classy Llama as their agency partner. As their brand continues to scale and provide the lumber needed to build America’s schools, houses, and backyard projects, they can rest assured they’ve got someone in their corner who not only supports their goals, but also their mission: serve people well and do what’s right, no matter what.
From March 15-17, Classy Llama will join with digital experience makers from around the world to educate, learn, be inspired, and make connections with merchants like you at Adobe Summit 2022. This global event is an all-digital experience featuring innovative keynotes, more than 200 virtual sessions and training workshops across 10 content tracks, plus countless networking activities.
The best part? The event is completely free of charge for anyone who registers to attend. That means, for absolutely nothing, you can attend sessions with experts like these:
All you have to do is visit Summit.Adobe.Com and register. From there, you’ll be able to save sessions you want to attend to your event schedule portal and know at a glance what your conference experience looks like.
You can even take a quiz once you register to help pair you with sessions you’ll be the most interested in.
GIVEAWAY: Everyone wins!
Who doesn’t love free stuff? Not us!
Since we can’t hand out our signature plush lama in person, we’re giving away a free website health check through a Google Core Web Vitals Audit to anyone who wants one! That’s over a $2000 value absolutely free of charge.
To get your free website health check, register for Adobe Summit here, then visit the Classy Llama event page starting March 15, 2022, to sign-up for your free audit.
BONUS: From our “everyone wins” entrants, THREE winners will be chosen to receive a free Customer Experience Audit for their eCommerce site — an over $5000 value that can provide valuable insights into optimizing your website for revenue growth.
SPRINGFIELD, MO, Dec. 17, 2021 — This week, Classy Llama, Springfield’s only full-service eCommerce agency, has earned places on two of Comparably.com’s top 50 lists: Best Companies for Women and Best CEO.
“I’ve been with Classy Llama almost six years now and it’s very different from just about anywhere I’ve worked. I’ve been in male-dominated industries my entire career and there has always been a level of disrespect toward me as a woman. But then I came to Classy Llama and I was allowed a seat at the table and my opinion mattered. To have that level of respect and care from your co-workers is huge, including other women. At Classy, you don’t feel unnecessary competitiveness with other women. Instead, we empower each other,” Ashlee Colliver, senior eCommerce strategist, said.
Other employees at Classy Llama shared similar feelings about what it’s like to work for the company:
“I started as an Office Administrator and, five months later, here I am, promoted to a Project Manager position. I’ve had so many people pouring into me and fostering my growth. As someone who’s never done Project Management before, this was an awesome opportunity for me to grow into something new and I have had an amazing support system from both men and women here,” Leianna Pavon said.
When asked how he felt about the accolade, Theobald redirected the focus to the employees who provided feedback: “I don’t care about accolades. I care about the hearts behind those accolades. If this award means I’m providing effective leadership to my employees, that’s what matters the most to me.”
An Award-Winning Company
These two most recent achievements bring Classy Llama’s workplace award total for 2021 to five wins, also including:
Comparably Awards are based on feedback provided by current employees who anonymously rated their employers on Comparably.com during a 12-month look-back period. Employees have the opportunity to answer up to 100 questions spanning nearly 20 different workplace topics. Each answer is given a numerical score and compared to companies of similar size. The final data set was compiled from 15 million ratings across 70,000 companies.
About Classy Llama
Classy Llama is a full-service digital commerce agency filled with eCommerce industry veterans passionate about leveraging technology to help online merchants grow and build their business sustainably. For more information, please contact Greg Johnson by phone at (417) 866-8887 or by email at [email protected].
Google Analytics is an important tool for merchants in the eCommerce and Magento communities because it allows merchants to make informed decisions about their website based on their users’ interactions. With the advent of Magento 2, it’s important to understand how the new version utilizes and integrates with Google Analytics. If you’re familiar with Magento 1, you’ll remember that Google Analytics was fairly easy to setup so you could quickly view reporting data. What about Magento 2? Don’t worry, integration with Google Analytics offers additional features with the same setup ease.
What’s the Same?
Universal Analytics – Magento 2 still features the same quick-and-easy Google Analytics setup. It’s just a matter of enabling the Google Analytics setting and adding your account number. Thankfully, the deprecated option of ‘Google Analytics’ (as opposed to ‘Universal Analytics’) is no longer around to add confusion during setup.
Adwords – this hasn’t changed in Magento 2; it’s still just as easy as adding your Conversion ID and Label.
E-commerce Tracking – One very powerful feature that seems to fly under the radar is eCommerce tracking. This feature is a must-have for any eCommerce site and lets you track transaction and product data on your site. If you already use Google Analytics with Magento, you get this feature with almost no setup. The only thing required to start using eCommerce tracking is to enable this feature in your Google Analytics account. Magento does the rest.
Google Tag Manager – Magento 2 Enterprise Edition includes the option to use Google Analytics via the flexible option of Google Tag Manager.
What’s New?
Magento 2 supports a Google Analytics feature called Content Experiments. This feature allows you to setup A/B tests on your Magento site to track how different versions of pages perform. Although its simplicity makes it a good solution for small-scale A/B tests, I don’t think it’s a good solution for complicated A/B testing.
To set up content experiments, (and after toggling the feature on in Magento admin configuration settings), there are only two steps:
1. A new experiment needs to be setup in your Google Analytics account. This is pretty straightforward. (Make sure to select the option to manually insert code and save this for the next step). You can follow the instructions from Google here.
2. Connect the new experiment with Magento. Create at least two new CMS pages, (this can be done with any number of different variants), your ‘original’ version and a ‘variant’. Place the javascript snippet from the experiment setup in the previous step under the new tab, ‘Page Experiments’. Just like other Google Analytics features, Magento handles rendering the snippet in the correct place on the front end.
That’s it! The way this simple example experiment has been set up, half of the visitors will be sent to the original page and half to the variant. You can track how your experiments are trending in the reporting section of your Google Analytics account under Behavior > Experiments.
To learn more about how Classy Llama approaches A/B testing check out this post.
What else?
A lot of our clients are interested in eCommerce tracking. And while the eCommerce tracking provided by Google Analytics provides a lot of good data, it can sometimes be hard to visualize or grasp what you’re looking at. This is where goals and funnels come in.
Setup your goal(s). This can be done many different ways depending on what you are wanting to track and how your user interacts with the site. Google provides documentation on setting this up different ways. A basic example of a goal is a user completing an order (reaching the success page).
One thing to keep in mind: By default, Google tracks views on secure urls separately from unsecured urls. So if you use a destination goal which includes both secure and unsecured pages, you will need to setup cross domain tracking.
The funnel visualization view (Under Conversions > Goals) can provide great insight into how users are moving through your website and reveal pages that have unusual rates of drop-off.
Another common thing to track is cross-selling/upsells. A merchant may want to know how often an advertised cross-sell product is clicked. To accomplish this, an event (or trigger if using Google Tag Manager) needs to be setup to let Google know when a cross-sell product is clicked. You can do this in Google Tag Manager, or by adding some javascript: javascript ga('send', 'event', 'cross-sell', 'click', '{product-id}'); Then in the Google Analytics dashboard, setup an event goal:
Both of these goal examples can easily be modified to include different steps in the flow or more complicated events. You can view reporting details about any of the goals you’ve set up under Conversions > Goals > Overview.
These are fairly simple examples, that just skim the top of what this feature can provide.
Summary
By expanding the features in the integration of Google Analytics, Magento 2 empowers merchants to make informed decisions about their site. And the setup ease of content experiments, eCommerce tracking, and the other Google Analytics features allow merchants to focus their efforts on improving the performance of their website.
If you’re anything like me, every once in a while you just need to try something new. I believe that for creative individuals this is an extremely important practice. When I’m craving something creative I’ll explore tons of different things such as digital painting techniques, photography, or branding a fake company.
This week, inspired by my memories of 8-bit Nintendo characters, I decided to “pixelate” the llamas. At first, this seemed like an easy endeavor. I quickly found that it was exactly the opposite. Working with single pixels, you are obviously limited. The more pixels you have – the more room you have to be detailed, and thus, the easier it is to create a recognizable character. It’s amazing how pixels force you to completely rethink how to portray the subject you’re creating. So, while I was pixelating all of my co-workers, I had to choose carefully what features, quirks, and personalities could be achieved within my limitations.
Although these images are extremely small, they are very detailed. They turned out to be extremely accurate representations of everyone in my office.
