Their Story:
AP Electric & Generators was founded in 1999 in the suburbs of Chicago. They started as electricians focused on selling, installing and servicing home standby generators and backup power solutions. In 2005 they became the pioneers of internet sales in their industry. Since that time, they have grown to be one of the largest on-line distributors of backup power generators in the country.
In 2013 the company’s headquarters were moved to Wisconsin. Their move was facilitated by two primary business drivers:
- The need for a larger facility to support their growth
- The desire to be in closer proximity to the major manufacturers of generators. They are now located within 90 minutes of four of the leading manufacturers of home standby, portable and commercial generators (Generac, Kohler, Briggs & Stratton and Westinghouse).
The Challenge: BigCommerce Blueprint
AP Electric approached us because their store was based on BigCommerce’s now older framework, Blueprint. BigCommerce upgraded their platform framework to a more modern, flexible, and future-proof framework, called Stencil, back in 2016. Being on the antiquated framework, Blueprint, AP Electric was losing out on the features that BigCommerce had been releasing for its merchants, which you can read more about here.
Being on Blueprint, which is officially not supported by BigCommerce any more, merchants often begin to experience issues with their store. Features break, functionality doesn’t do what it used to, and even website traffic can begin to suffer.
With such a strong customer base and brand recognition, AP Electric wanted to ensure their new theme looked and felt similar to their prior theme. As well as a general upgrade and refresh, they needed a more responsive design. Many customers use their mobile phones to do their online shopping, so by having an only semi-responsive design, AP Electric may have been missing out on sales.
The Solution: Upgrade to Stencil with a Similar, Refreshed Design
The best solution for AP Electric was to upgrade to BigCommerce Stencil with a design that incorporated a similar look and feel to the blueprint site, yet had a refreshed and modernized look, better user experience, and a higher degree of responsiveness.
To do this we upgraded the site to the new Stencil framework. For improved visibility we implemented Google’s AMP pages to optimize for mobile users, upgraded key components to help organic SEO growth, and enabled Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking for improved analytics and evaluation. For conversion, we implemented a new, optimized site design, improved the user experience to make the most of the site’s traffic, and sped up the site with cleaner, faster code.
The Results:
The new AP Electric launched on May 12th, 2021. With the help of Stencil and our team of BigCommerce Development experts, AP Electric is now equipped with an ecommerce storefront that loads fast, includes all of the latest industry SEO and coding best practices, and is optimized for mobile devices.
Intuitsolutions is an Elite BigCommerce Partner that works with businesses of all sizes. Interested in upgrading from Blueprint to Stencil? Contact us or call 866 901 4650 to speak with one of our Specialists today. Hurry, before your Blueprint site experiences major issues!
