Tria Foster 0:43
Nice.

For those of you just joining us, Ben was just waiting a minute for other people to join.

Yeah, true. You wanna? Okay. Absolutely. Thanks, guys, for joining today. For our next great b2b e commerce website, roasts, we’re super excited to get started. Right. Let’s

get my everything going here. Introduce Andy Clark. Andy, do you want to introduce yourself for us, please?

Andy Clark 1:32
Thank you. Hey, I’m Andy Clark, I apparently haven’t figured out how the mute button works yet. So well. I’m in Temecula, which is about 60 miles north of San Diego have been here at Magento. Three and a half years for that, as it says 10 years with a few different ecommerce startups and in 10 years and telecom before that. So I’ve been around the block.

I am also cyclist, a guitarist, the father of two and

content creator, I have a little YouTube channel on the side. So I

have been working with bluefish about a year now. And we came up with this idea kind of as a response to what’s going on in the world right now. And we just wanted to like create a series and create some content that was generally helpful and wasn’t too heavy handed and very sales pitchy. So we hope that you learn something today that is beneficial in that

fight, you find this helpful, and you come back next time.

Tria Foster 2:31
Right.

And we have Jasmine, because

Jasmine Ellsworth 2:38
I came to e commerce and digital marketing via way of entertainment design, experience design and interactive design, how it potential user, so tend to have a longer look as to what the user is expecting when they got there, what they had the experience, and then what they received on the back end.

That’s why I have the most fun title because they let me you know, pick my own. And that’s what you get.

Tria Foster 3:03
And I’m Tria Foster. I’m a solution architect. And the e commerce practice lead here at bluefish I’ve been with Lee fish, about a little over a year, actually was here about 10 years ago and came back home. And in between times, I’ve had 25 years of experience in e commerce and had the opportunity to lead large companies like Kendra Scott, I was early on with them and was the VP of e commerce for Kendra Scott. And then also had the opportunity to work with companies like you know, Lenovo, Under Armour or to snowboard some really fun, fun companies. And what I like about what I do is I get to kind of straddle that line between e commerce and the marketing side. And, you know, mean, let’s be realistic, that’s kind of we have to these days, right? If you build it doesn’t necessarily mean they will come. So it’s kind of fun to actually have the opportunity to be a part of the e commerce space and also part of the marketing space. And I’m super excited about what we’re going to talk about today. Which leads me to Yes, like, like Katie said, you know, our goal is to provide some basically snackable content, where you’re going to try to just dive into a website, in a really fun way, tend to take a look at it from a UI perspective, that’s our goal this time is just look at what the user interface looks like. How that? How does it navigate, all of those kind of fun things? You know, we’re, we’re kind of using our experience here. So that hopefully you’re going to learn a little bit of something just based on kind of our background and our knowledge. So let me reveal what we’re going to we’re going to

I’m going to an incognito window. Oh hi guys. I’ve been googling the site way too many times. So

the company’s name is Engenuity.

So, first Lakers complex, right? So when I’m looking for the site, if if if you tell somebody about the site or you’re taking a look, and you want me to just do a Google search, I’m finding a lot of other things. Quite frankly, my daughter uses this this site, but um, the ingenuity site is not there. And I keep scrolling. Jasmine, are you saying it?

I’m not seeing it yet. And we spell it right.

No, it thinks that we spelled it incorrectly. But we actually spell it correctly. I know. All right, guys, I just

was lost. So let me go to the real site. Maybe there’s an opportunity there for some Seo? Definitely, when you’re searching, you want to make sure that your site comes up when you’re in Google. I’m not going to go into that today. Yeah, direct name match should be a little easier to find at least on first page, second page, because it’s not I don’t feel like it’s heavily competitive word, though, you do seem to have some educators after you for edgenuity? True, true. So here’s our site, before we kind of jump in, one of the tools that we like to use around here is built with just to kind of see what the site how, like, Where’s their platform? Where do they What are they built on? So we can kind of scroll down, they are using Google Analytics, which is great. They are a Magento or Magento. One. So you know, that’s, that’s a little bit older version. But I’m sure that there’s a plan and a plan in place there. Let’s do a little bit more. So we’ve got some WordPress plugins, some Facebook sharing. So some some basics here we are missing, probably some things that we could be doing from a marketing perspective.

Jasmine Ellsworth 6:53
But I mean, overall, like, we’re on Magento, great platform. So let’s talk about the home page. Let’s like what’s your first? Like, what do you think in Jasmine? Well, I don’t, I don’t think I reached a website. I know, I don’t know where I am really, maybe a library system something. Now, obviously, this is just a COVID response, they probably threw this up there. And we now that we’ve kind of passed in to the initial shock and error of COVID, you can actually start covering these with a small button in the top, where you’re able to just click through to any questions you might have. But at this point, kind of over it, right? I mean, your homepage is important, it should tell us something about who you are gives give a story, at least most people aren’t going to necessarily land on your homepage, unless you’ve given them your direct URL, or they found you through Google. There probably be landing on some other pages that we’ll talk about a little bit. But as we scroll down.

Tria Foster 7:52
I so we’ve got a little bit of something enabled smart.

And some products that feels like fragments. Mm hmm. Isn’t it enables smart, but it doesn’t. It’s like a fragment with a cliff.

Jasmine Ellsworth 8:06
Because I’m still not sure what they do. It’s right to the very top, the logo doesn’t really tell you the header doesn’t really tell you COVID responses and really tell you this picture, if you scroll back down doesn’t really tell you Sorry, right? I mean, this picture is one of these very classic stock photography, photos about connectivity. So they might be selling the internet, they might be selling broadband, on cell phone service, maybe a booster

Tria Foster 8:31
is down, you know, a little bit more. I mean, I guess he was kind of going on here. Right? But like are these

are these are products that sell the most I mean, what you know, I’m not quite sure about why they’re featured. Right. And I’m one of those people that is more of the opinion that a homepage is really your About Us page because no one comes to the homepage unless you force them into that funnel, especially on good. Good point. And let’s look at it. Oh, all right. What do we got in the About Us and go for? Absolutely.

Jasmine Ellsworth 9:04
Okay, I like this. Connecting parts with smarts makes a lot more sense to me. And I like it. And if you paired that with the logo, ingenuity systems, connecting parts with smarts now I’m starting to see there’s like, a thing you guys are building things like

these things seem to work together better for me. So from the get go, like how it looks? What would you mean? like would you put it up here? Like what do you think? connecting smarts. That’s why I know why I’m here. Like that’s what I’m here to do. I’m trying to I’m trying to connect things. I’m creating a universe of some kind. And maybe that’s connected photo was more about very high light. Very good. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And just having a little bit more right here. Something like ingenuity systems connects. Yeah. parts with smarts. Just something appears you know that you are. You’re on the right. You’re right. You’re in the right space, right. Yeah. And that’s why I mentioned library.

I saw ruler, you’ve already got an education group that’s really got your name under control, like with the education now you got a lot of COVID. So maybe clearing that up parts with smarts. I know smart still might be educational, but it still does speak to kind of building technology, some kind of connectivity parts with smart site smart technology. I mean, there’s opportunity there for sure. So let’s dive in a little bit, because I know we only have the header right here. So let’s Yeah, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about navigation. And I want to start, I just feel like I want to start the category stuff. So let’s kind of dive in there. This is kind of interesting. So it seems that these people sell they do sell something. So that’s not so these must be the parts that connect the smarts.

Tria Foster 10:51
True. controllers, that switches, right, okay. Okay. I mean, you get Yeah, smarts, I get it now. Got it. Now, what about the the icons here? What What do you see? What’s your feel? Well, I really like these icons. I’m usually not a fan of clipart. But it looks like I don’t know, if they were able to get a designer to make them all these icons, you can see there’s a lot of them, they all match. They’re not, you know, they’re all matching the brand, color and style, they seem really very representative of the actual object. They’re not trying to be like, the whisper of a ghost of an idea.

Andy Clark 11:24
iconography I’ve seen it’s really, it really is it’s it’s sharp. I mean, so I mean, I’m interested to find out though, if it actually they’re using it throughout the entire site, which would be interesting. And I would say like, there’s under controllers, there’s some information here. But we don’t have information around the rest of them. I think feeling kind of lonely. Yeah, I would say either do it for all or do it for non when I when I feel like the icons can stand alone and can kind of do without the redundancy of the word true links below them. The highlight is duplicate and to get people deeper into the page, for sure, for sure. I mean, I like that. So let’s just let’s look at the controllers. Let’s go into they’re

Jasmine Ellsworth 12:16
cool. They look just like the icon. So I’m already happy. Yeah, well, I mean, it would, would it be kind of cool to keep I mean, like, at least get the icon there somewhere, like, let’s just kind of just follow it through something along those lines might be interesting. Um, you definitely seen the controllers here, there’s an opera, I like the fact that you can actually shop by category shop by manufacturer, the price, I like that to what you think in here, though, Jasmine, I’ve never been a fan of the radio button situation, because I always feel like if it’s $1, off my 190 999, and it’s the better option. I don’t know, I always wish you could pick a range. Like if you could pick two or three of those. And not just one, because the better option might be $1 cheaper. So I’d rather build up than just be the segmented rows. I’m struggling a little bit too though with it’s like zero to almost 1000. And all the products are really in that category. So it’s true. It’s not really helpful.

Okay, all right. There’s only three or what is it? 35? You know, very good products under $1,000. So, first over $1,000. So, search, let’s talk about that. So like we didn’t, we’re on the category page. That’s great. We can dive into this. Like there’s a safer layer, there’s an add to compare.

Tria Foster 13:42
What happened, I guess what would happen? So these look pretty similar. I guess from an add to compare for this kind of site, I would be interesting to see the analytics behind this. So and you can do that, right? Like we can, you can put something in place so that you can actually measure how many times are people actually putting to save for later or add to compare. But let’s let’s do that mean for this, it kind of seems like that might be something that people might want to do. But let’s just kind of do that really quickly. So that we can compare and let’s just see what happens. So we have them up here. I like that. Oh, and then I conductor it again. Okay. Right. Okay. Pulls up another one. I wondered where they were gonna go. Because sometimes you will drop them all the way to the bottom. Right. I just I actually like how that works right there. It’s kind of nice. And you can bring it up here, you can actually see the differences. I not sure that there’s much difference in the dis short description. So maybe that would be something that can be added because one is clearly, you know, almost $50 more. So that’s something to consider when you’re actually taking a look at that maybe people are looking at they might actually know, I feel like engineers know the difference. Yeah, it’s just gonna come down to that the model number is slightly down. difference. So I don’t know if one is like the more updated version of that same model number or if you’re trying to replace the exact model number. Absolutely. Well, let’s do it. Let’s do the slicer. So I’m actually kind of interested in searches, I would assume a huge part of the site. And people are coming into site, they want to be able to search, they want to be able to find what they want pretty quickly. So let me just search for control or here and I know I’m on that category. But just curious what happens here.

Well, this is interesting.

Unknown Speaker 15:34
Login to add to cart and the other ones like to actually enable. Yeah, I have to log into actually see that. Oh, that one’s special. The other ones you can see the prices, but not that. I know. Maybe. That’s that’s kind of just interesting. I there may be a reason behind it. Maybe it’s something that’s put together and it requires a different pieces. I don’t know that’s that’s kind of interesting. From that perspective. Let’s see. Let me actually, let’s go look at it. Let’s see on page go in there. Totally with you. Well, let’s actually let’s go to when we actually say price. Let’s do that. How about that? All right. Cool. Look, I still have my comparison over here and my recently viewed Mm hmm. Now you can always go back and clean. I’m sorry, this is super clean to me. So I’m not seeing like any other exits. I clearly know what I’m doing. You can download the docket document. datasheet. If anything, the Add to Cart button should be at the top of the page there. Yeah, yeah, you can have it right under the price. Just put that add to cart button, just, you know, make it easy. Don’t make me scroll. Let’s see if they’ve done me. What additional information? Oh, well, maybe we can email them to see if they have anything in stock email to a friend. Okay. And you cannot email this to a friend. You must fill out a form. I mean, yeah, that’s that seems like that’s either just remove it unless they need it. Or definitely don’t make them because we’ve got that kind of a Yeah. form. Yeah, you have a form on your website that you’re trying to make people fill out yet. At the same time. If you went to the About Us page, I could just get your email. So if you’re going to have an email icon, just let me email you. Or, or then I can send it or email it to someone else. But I’m going to look at the nav bar to see yes. Again, what does this company do? They’ve got shot by category shot by manufacturer, so they clearly sell something, then they have this which looks like really good. I’m not sure. It. So it appears to be something that is trademarked. And it looks like it was a building automation and management system. Yep. Yes. All proprietary, we kind of already know they have a software elements. So we do kind of wish on the board said, you know, let’s solve your problems. Like, do you need parts? Do you need software to run your company? Do you need a custom board? What are the solutions that you are giving the customer to their problems? So we have we have some more information, which is great. But what do I do with this information? Oh, did you sign up? Well, can you sign up for what for a newsletter about why? But I mean, so there needs? What are we missing? I think what we’re getting at is an action item for you to get a consultation or an estimate, to run the software yourself and to see how the software could solve problems for you. Absolutely, let me see some kind of call to action. I mean, it’s great. So we’ve got this now we’ve got panel fabrication. This is pretty, this was my favorite page. Because this is the first time I really started to understand what this company does. So I guess this was included a little bit more either in the home or the About Us page where you have those four things. We sell parts to help connect the smarts, we have software to help you run the brain. But we can also build you a brain. So these three things, there might be a fourth stream of revenue, engineering services. So there are a few different things this company seems to do in this space. But I had to dig for it. So on the homepage, I’d rather see like these are the four ways we can help you click through to the solutions. And on every single one of these I mean, this is great information. But if somebody is that I guess it would make it go down to the bottom. They could call him number they could

Unknown Speaker 19:38
About Us page. Yeah, right. I mean that those are a lot but in the footer. Yeah, just put in the footer or just at least right here. Right. When you put in a call to action, like get in touch with me. My call to action should be Come on. Yep, scroll back up to the top. What do we got? We got a search bar and nothing else. like where’s the button that says contact like there’s Contact Us page. But is there live Is there email? Is there a phone number on the mobile? Which I didn’t look at the mobile on this one? I’m sure it hopefully there’s a phone number you can just direct call. Right? Right. But this is all at this point. At this point, like there needs to be something here. Like, there’s a lot of information going on about us. There’s a tech support page. So about, I guess, an homepage could all be the same. And if you go back up to the top, I think you can actually make that. So shop by category and shop by manufacturer, that’s a shop there shop software, panel fabrication and support. And you can have your about us homepage, we’re kind of goes over the four or five things and solutions you provide how long you’ve been in business, how you’re so reliable, how long your engineers have certified, where you can be reached, yada, yada, yada, but then you have less choices so that people can get to know basically giving you their money faster. Absolutely, absolutely. So let’s just I want to, before we end, like I want to make Oh, just image on it, Oh, you know what, this would be a good place for that icon. Any of the icons of any of the ISO that right? So when you go shop by category. And you have these little icons, if you don’t have the image? Totally fine. You got your icon, user icon, otherwise, no, it’s not a real image. And look, yeah, it can look broken. So you should have your icons. And then you can also keep being seen as like the provider and the best out there for that service. Really green really put together buttoned up paying down details, and I feel like these guys pay attention to details. Oh, there’s no doubt. So when so I can add to cart directly from here. So what happens when I add to cart? I go directly to the cart. Why did they do that to me, I was very happy on my page shopping. Now I have to click back. I know No, I want to work. I want no hardware like back. I know now we’re gonna go back. Remember I was just want to keep going? I think I was Yeah, yeah, I have better solutions now where you can actually see it be added to your cart, you get that little notification, you can go there if you want to. But we’re not going to keep forcing this journey because I maybe it’s just me, but I’m not usually there to buy one thing and leave. Right? I feel like that’s my dad. And maybe my dad is an engineer that works on panels. And he just buys one thing and leaves, I don’t know. But let’s give me the opportunity to just have the opportunity to finish my job. Especially if you have purchasers people who are in charge of the purchasing for the company, they are not going to buy one thing and leave. But if you do that to them every single time they add something to their cart is super frustrating. Right? And you want you want those big lists as big dollar bills. I do like being able to estimate my shipping, like if there’s some big items. That’s that’s pretty cool. So I could I could do that. I hope I don’t have to though. I just proceed to checkout. I so I need to create an account or I need to be returning customer. So I don’t know, the business to know if that’s required. Yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t make it for guests checkout when possible. Yeah, if you can mean that. That is that’s completely ideal. I know I get their email Anyway, you know, when they check out you’re going to get their email anyway. No reason to like do this. You know, there’s other solutions to make the account

Unknown Speaker 23:32
creation as part of the checkout after the purchase, like assigning, you know, there’s just other ways than forcing as I was about to give you money, and now I’m having a coffee break I’m gonna forget. Right, right. So check out let’s just look at it really quickly. And then I want to I want to look at that lower navigation just a little bit. And because I know there’s some things in there. So check out It looks to me like, I mean, it looks like I am hoping this is just going to be kind of open up each one kind of a one page checkout experience, which would be kind of nice. This feels clean. Overall, those pretty much not bad about that you’re subscribed to newsletter is is like constantly here. And your back action. Yeah, I mean, like, Is that a real thing that if there’s like some really cool news coming out, like are you really doing newsletter? No one’s your newsletter anymore. Everybody’s Yeah, they just want your email. No, I did see that they have offer some webinars. So maybe that would be better. like to be notified for our next webinar. That’s the reason I want to go to this lower nav, right. So there’s some like cool stuff down here. Right. So it talks about industry served. So we’re in here and like, this is cool. This also tells me Mm hmm. It tells me building automation on that Yeah, software page, because then I can see what I’m doing here. Yeah, this totally makes sense for me like I can totally See putting something like this onto the homepage, like you can bring information in like, this. This is I like this page, this is pretty good. Um, they also have a Oh, safety compliance. So Oh, oh me Google this the UL certificate, it’s a random Lego with a big ul in it, put that on everything, put that in your bottom header, like I’m certified, I’m extra certified, I do green stuff, like, be be just generous with any or awards, any of your certificates, any of the things that make you stand out any extra programs you’ve finished, just keep driving home, that customer value of totally, totally, obviously may fix some issues and submit images here, which is cool. I mean, it happens, it happens. And then the here’s the one other thing, and then we’ll open it for questions, because I know we have a tendency to talk a little bit, just as we are, um, webinars, look, they’ve got webinars, they’ve got case studies videos, like, where would you put this job? And like, this isn’t the footer? Yeah, that’s too bad. Because you could just have like, again, on the header shop, you know, or even under more sometimes, or even assessing that vendor about us could be like this kind of stuff, like

Andy Clark 26:17
resources up their

Unknown Speaker 26:19
education. Absolutely. Andy’s resources is

Andy Clark 26:22
perfect or something like that.

Unknown Speaker 26:24
Yeah, absolutely. So just having something that you can actually go and find out more information. And like if you’re, if he had some webinars, and he had some case studies, like that’s, that’s cool. Like, let’s put that front and let’s put that up there so people can access it. And I saw the videos, don’t hide them behind a link, put the video up. Let me watch it now. Don’t make me go click around look at Andy’s eyes. He’s like I’m a content creator, stop hiding content. Totally. Bring this unless it’s bad, then hide it just don’t even link to it. Love that. Love that. So well. We’re getting pinged. We’re three minutes away. I’m sure that there’s more things that we can talk about. I don’t know, Ben, if there’s any questions or anything like that, or we could just we could keep doing this all day.

Ben Choy 27:13
No questions so far. But right now let’s open it up for the q&a section. If you can use the chat, if you have any burning questions, and our panelists will, will answer. If not, you can just go ahead and keep going up until the two wire Yeah, 330.

Jasmine Ellsworth 27:30
Not a lot to roast here. Just some like simplifications and polish, some trimming down on the funnels and speaking to your audience and how you can help them.

I feel like there are a lot of engineers involved here. And the designer was involved at some point, but it’s still very regimented. So like, making that a little bit more friendly. I don’t know maybe they don’t one friendly, and they just want the facts. So you got to know your own audience. But I feel like there’s a little bit more that we could be doing. Alright, finishing this company as the leader. I mean, certainly routing to change the homepage a bit. Provide someone for more information. There’s, I think there’s opportunity searches here. Maybe there is an opportunity to put it up here. Make it more prominent, instead of just having ingenuity systems actually.

I was gonna say, Don’t you have a time? So even concept taglines, right on the car, protect and serve in big letters. Like, where’s your tagline? I think I think there’s completely there’s a ton of room up here for that changing out the navigation. And we’re not talking about like, major changes, like this site needs to be thrown away and put back together. I mean, this is there’s a lot of great constant. Yeah, there’s a lot of good content here. So there’s a lot of there’s just, there’s just some tweaking and some maneuvering that we can do to just take some of the information that’s down at the bottom, take some information like let’s restructure this. I mean, the products are important, but like figure out what what do you want to show?

My phones? I know, we always have to say the last time this artist for lose. And when you’re packing your house, it’s like that line about a clutter. Like the hangers you don’t want to throw that away, because it’s useful someday we’ll just just be brutal. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. My question is, is there someone from ingenuity on on the call with us today? Or? Oh, good question, Andy.

Ben Choy 29:27
Yeah, it looks like Mike was on I would have if I would not come to my own roast. I would. I would get I would get the video recording. I’d be like Mike McKenna that I’m engaging with on q&a.

Could be I don’t see.

Andy Clark 29:45
I don’t see him in the attendees. Is he still on? Is he still talking to you? I don’t know if he’s still an hour because a couple people drop off. Let’s see. Yeah, it looks like he dropped off after he asked a question.

Tria Foster 29:56
So I think what one of the questions is, is there a template something that

They can use? Or do they have to have something completely custom? I mean, I think there there are obviously, there’s gonna be templates out there. Right, Andy, that you can

Andy Clark 30:09
learn about the front end. And sure there’s a couple of

templates you can use. On the back end. You know, there’s a lot that you can do with back end development, you know, stranded on Magento, too. So, sure, yeah. It just like, it depends on your site, right? If it’s, if it’s something like this, the site then yeah, it could definitely benefit from just kind of a standard, you know, template that we have is there’s probably hundreds of them, right? Yeah.

But if it’s, if it’s something that’s a little richer, that has configurators and customizers, and you know it, maybe not, so it just kind of really depends on I think the level of complexity in your, your browsing experience, your customer experience. That’s my take. And I yeah, you guys on what do you think? Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, I think some of the changes that we’re recommending are like major. I mean, there’s, there’s some tweaking that can be done.

Tria Foster 31:14
A lot great with the site. Overall. I know we’re live past time. Definitely want to thank everybody for coming. Let me just put like our contact information up here again, if anybody needs to reach out to us or wants to, we are definitely here for you. I so appreciate Andy, thank you for so much for joining. And Jasmine is always a pleasure to hang out with you and have a little fun.

Jasmine Ellsworth 31:38
Yeah, it’s always fun to see what other people are doing because we get so mired in our own projects.

That and we look at a variety of sites like good bad this one is, I think, nice. It’s just nice to see that something so clean, really doesn’t need to polish the distance. Learn something and you know, we learn something every time we do one of these two. Yeah, absolutely.

Tria Foster 32:00
Well, thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai