2017 MS Commerce Server Migration to Magento

The Brand:

Pajamagram
A pajama and loungewear company that got it's start as a gifting brand. From Christmas to Mother's Day, the focus was on selling high quality presents.

Todd's Role:

At this pivotal point in the lifespan of Pajamagram.com, Todd was the website's sole UI developer. His responsibilities were driving initial research, proposing the project, conceptualization of the deliverables, and completion of website redesign.

The Team:

Todd worked in collaboration with external development partners, in-house graphic designers, merchandisers and marketing teams.

In An Era Where Technology Advances On A Daily Basis, It Is Absolutely Essential To Update Systems Regularly.

Initial Research:

With an understanding that MS Commerce Server was at the end of its lifespan and would be obsolete within a few years, in 2017, Todd and his team began taking steps to migrate Pajamagram.com to a new platform. To begin the process, the following needed to be addressed.

Competitive Analysis

• What platforms were competitors using?
• What were their user experiences like?
• What functionality did they offer that Pajamagram.com did not?

Internal Future-Thinking

• What were the current business needs in terms of systems?
• What role did the eComm platform play within all of the business needs?
• With an eComm platform that was central to all business systems, what would be impacted if it changed?
• What did Google Analytics reveal about the visibility of the website?
• How could a new platform help promote the brand?

Platform Option Review

• The Pajamagram.com IT team was tasked with creating a short list of viable eComm platforms to consider. Parameters were based on budget, functionality, and forward growth.
• From this list, smaller teams were created and tasked with exploring each option in depth.
• Based on the top selected platforms IT worked to find an outside development partner that would be able to assist with the migration.

Proposing The Project:

Following the initial research stage, it was time for Todd and his team to present to the board how the old system was preventing Pajamagram.com growth and what the new platform could deliver.

Issues Found With The Old System

• User experience was inconsistent and confusing with many bottlenecks that lead to users failing to complete purchase. In short, traffic volume was increasing, but conversion rates were dropping.
• There was no support for growing mobile audience and no plans to add support.
• Inconsistent brand experience
• No insights into user behavior
• No a/b testing abilities
• Outdated tech stack limited business opportunities
• Lengthy in-house development cycles kept Pajamagram.com behind industry standards
• Massive tech debt.
• Brand visibility was limited to the website, print catalog, and minimal social media. Google Analytics revealed that the website was not visible within search engines.

Magento 1.0 Was Chosen For

• Out-of-the-box functionality met 2017 competitive standards and helped minimize the initial development time. It allowed the dev team to focus on user functionality like developing a stronger Gift Experience.
• It was the brand's first truly mobile experience, which was essential at this time with cell phone users growing.
• Capability to integrate with existing backend systems. This allowed the team to delay the expense of replacing systems that controlled shipping, order fulfillment, and other in-house operations.
• Centralized CMS: A cloud-based site admin afforded more flexibility in managing the website.
• Prior to this, any website updates - from a catalog update to a simple image update had to go through the internal development team. This was a very bulky and risky process with the potential to bring the site down.
• Without support from the old platform devs, website updates became a very fragile and risky process.

Conceptualization:

Working alongside the chosen outside development partners, Todd and his team began to shift the website. The goal was to deliver a more normalized shopping experience by realigning overall UX to meet 2017 industry standards and trends. This included the creation of brand identity within style guides and systems for both the website and email.

Issues and Solutions

• During the website migration to Magento 1.0, email was migrated to a new ESP called Bronto. This provided the ability to remarket to users using abandoned cart/checkout emails. Todd was required to map out user journey and new user experiences.
• The finalized design and style guide that the outside development partner delivered required the use of far too many fonts that would cost thousands of dollars per year to license. Tood recognized this and created a revised style guide using Google fonts that balanced business finance needs.
• All image assets needed to be resized to work on the new platform and framework. Todd provided direction to his Graphic Design team that included production process, file naming conventions, file sizes, and image optimizations.

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