Infiknit are distributors of wholesale knitting patterns, yarns and accessories to both Canadian and US  retailers. Both demographics have their own pricing in their own currencies which is not linked to currency conversion rates.  

In addition to selling to Retailers, their site acts as a Catalog for the general public.

Infiknit had been running two separate implementations of osCommerce coupled together with a custom landing page  to manage their business model.  While it worked, it meant that they did not have a central repository of customers, orders or even products which brought a duplication of effort when it came to product and order management not to mention marketing.

When we redeveloped their site, we combined the two sites into one keeping the landing page concept.  When customers come to the site, they are asked to choose an entry to the site that matches their profile.  If they choose Canada Retail they are shown the pricing for Canadian Retail stores.  If they choose US Knitter they are shown the prices for US Knitters and so on.   Each entry point has its own osCommerce welcome page.

The site owner can not only set pricing for individual customer groups, she can control payment methods, shipping methods and discounts as well as whether they are taxed or not.  She can then refine that for individual customers giving her total control over how a customer will interact with her business.

For customers they now have an easy A-Z navigation on products,  an AJAX shopping cart as well as a slide down cart from the cart tally in the header that shows them what is in their cart.  Making it all too easy to buy multiple products without unnecessary navigation steps getting in the way.

When you make a massive change like this, you naturally have to think of the SEO impact.  With careful planning, we were able to replace the old sites with the new site while maintaining their page #1 rankings for their keywords.

If you want to know more about this project, then please leave a response.