we create value for our clients
Knight Optical has been operating for over 30 years, with managing director Colin Overton at the helm. Over this time, Knight Optical have become a global leader in the production and distribution of scientific optical components and bringing quality into focus for all of our products and services that we provide.
why wirebox?
Knight Optical’s existing e-commerce website had been developed over 5 years. It was a custom written website which integrated into their SAP ERP system.
The website worked very well when initially developed but technology has evolved and the system had to be updated, some of the issues included:
- The website stack was out of date, updating this would mean significant code changes and a large investment in time and money.
- The software version was outdated so new features which would provide huge benefits such as quick loading was not available on their current versions.
- The SAP ERP version was being upgraded, so the module to sync this data would need to be rewritten.
- Front end of the website had an out-of-date design, and a new design would require a complete rewrite of the front-end code.
- The sites user journey did not work well.
- Analysis of the site found the main users were struggling to find the products they required.
- As the legacy site was not developed to be responsive, users on mobile devices encountered visual errors and hard to control/view elements
With all the new features that Knight Optical required developing a new site was the most efficient option for the business.
our approach_
Wirebox needed to understand Knight Optical business, the current scenario of the web presence and how Knight Optical would like to be perceived and by who in terms of the users of the website.
From a consultancy perspective we were able to find the key frustrations and document the key goals and objectives of the business online.
The User Journey and Personas was a key part of the initial delivery. Consultancy allowed Wirebox to understand who were likely to be visiting the website and for what reason. Users varied from engineers looking for a single “off the shelf” product to a Project Manager looking for bespoke / custom solutions for a new project.
With the key objectives in mind, Wirebox moved to phase 1 – wireframing the proposed solution on both a mobile and desktop environment.
the project included:
- Phase 0 – scoping and understanding – information gathering, key objectives
- Agreement of goals and understanding what “success” looks like from all angles
- Multi Territory website, targeting traffic in different territories within one Content Management system (CMS).
- A combined solution utilising Magento for
- Product display and the WordPress CMS for non-product related content
- Hosted solution on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
outcomes_
The new Knight Optical website was launched in March 2020.
The content pages were developed using WordPress and the e-commerce part of the site was in Magento.
our approach delivered_
- Multi-currency eCommerce platform providing global exposure.
- Increase of organic traffic to the website of 25%
- Solution hosted and managed by Wirebox on AWS.
- Integration with SAP ERP which allowed updating of products. Stock and prices among other datasets.
- Platform to develop more features such as multi product basket links.
- World Pay Integration for payments.