Fontana Forni USA Ecommerce Site
Fontana Forni is one of the world's leading manufacturers of stainless steel outdoor pizza ovens. In 2016, I was hired by Kirk Laing, owner of Tuscan Imports, who served as the North American distributor for the Italian brand Fontana Forni, operating under Fontana Forni USA. One of my major projects was redesigning and migrating our ecommerce site from Magento to Shopify.
Fontana Forni USA | Florence, SC
Jim Stephens | Design
Envision | Development
National Positions | SEO & PPC
The ecommerce site in use when I joined the company had been built by a third party using Magento prior to my arrival. Not only was the site overdue for a refresh, but its ecommerce conversion rate was below the industry average. The site was a source of frustration company-wide. In mid-2018, I began researching other ecommerce platforms and ultimately settled on Shopify as the best fit for our company at the time.
Next, I researched and interviewed developer candidates, given that Shopify's Liquid programming language was new to me at the time. I hired a certified Shopify partner, Leighton Taylor of Envision in Charleston, SC, to guide us through the developmental side of the migration.
I consulted with our SEO partners at National Position on best design practices for ecommerce conversion and SEO visibility. With these goals in mind, I drafted a new site map and designed an improved layout utilizing best practices for SEO visibility and ecommerce conversion.
The entire redesign, development, testing, and launch process spanned from September 2018, with the site launching on time in February 2019, at the start of our busy season.
I not only designed the user experience, but also managed the project to ensure that Leighton (development) and Jill & Ted (SEO and PPC) were on task to meet project deadlines, while creating, gathering, and formatting assets (images and body copy). I trained company staff on the order management of Shopify so that orders were understood, fulfilled, and archived. Additionally, I trained staff on how to draft custom orders so that orders could be taken by phone. I also trained the creative staff, responsible for our social media, on how to create blog content that reinforced our SEO strategy.
Maintaining a healthy site was also part of my responsibilities. I was responsible for adding (and removing) products on the website, which required designing new product page layouts, product photography, and product copywriting, as well as integrating new products into our existing SEO strategy. I also oversaw online bi-annual sale initiatives.
An effective site requires a results-driven SEO and PPC strategy cultivated long-term. I served as the company liaison with our SEO and PPC partners to ensure that our online strategies translated into growing sales. I studied our analytics and strategized with our partners on adjustments to improve our SEO rankings and PPC revenue. We identified the best times of year to increase our ad spend budgets with Google and Bing to optimize our return on investment. Leveraging our analytics, we intentionally served ads at times and locations where the data indicated our products sold best. All of our efforts translated into record-breaking sales growth, which you can see below.
