Their Story
Headquartered in Long Island, New York, Empire Abrasives is an industry leading distributor of premium industrial abrasives from around the world. Using an elite team of sourcing experts, Empire Abrasives is able to secure products from some of the world’s top manufacturing facilities. Empire selects suppliers that produce only the highest quality, economically priced abrasives that cater to metalworking professionals and do-it-yourselfers alike. They pride themselves in providing their customers with top of the line abrasives at exceptional prices through an easy to use online platform.
The Problem: BigCommerce Blueprint
Empire Abrasives approached us because their “easy to use online platform” was becoming less and less easy to use. They were still on BigCommerce’s antiquated framework, Blueprint, and needed an upgrade to the latest and greatest technology that any business could ask for from an ecommerce platform – the BigCommerce Stencil framework.
BigCommerce Blueprint & Stencil Frameworks – what are they?
“Stencil is BigCommerce’s current theme platform that incorporates the latest best practices in technology, design standards, conversion, and SEO. It allows you to build a stunning storefront that engages shoppers and encourages checkouts on any device.
Blueprint, our legacy theme framework, was built on a rigid, proprietary codebase, making it difficult for developers to customize and extend theme functionality. Stencil themes are built on non-proprietary, open-source code to minimize the learning curve for developers and to provide access to the best developers in the industry.”
You can learn more about the differences between Blueprint vs. Stencil here.
The Solution: A Custom BigCommerce Design on Stencil
A Custom Design
Empire Abrasives saw the migration from BigCommerce Blueprint to Stencil as an opportunity to redesign and rebrand their website. Oftentimes our designers start with a blank canvas and are required to get as much direction as they can from the store owner. But when Empire Abrasives approached us, they were prepared with a new logo, a branding guideline, and several assets.
“Preparation is key in streamlining the design process. The branding guideline really helped get the ball rolling in terms of aesthetic direction and UX.”
– Lu Cordero – Lead Designer
Laying an SEO Foundation
During the design phase it was evident that a more research driven approach to the website structure and layout was required. Our BigCommerce SEO experts began their SEO Foundation project process with their focus being on the new site structure, URL optimization, and meta content optimization.
Not all websites need to be restructured during a redesign. In fact, restructuring your website should be approached cautiously as it can negatively impact your SEO and will require a lot of work to do it correctly.
-Eric Hansen – Director of Marketing
BigCommerce Apps & Add-ons
Being that Empire Abrasives sells both B2C and B2B, we were able to provide them with additional BigCommerce add-ons and apps that catered to both of these shoppers.
- Reorder button – once logged in, it allows a previous customer to place another order for any items that has been previously bought with the click of a button
- Frequently bought together – display a set of products that other customers also bought with the product you are currently viewing.
- Mega Menu – do away with basic navigation and display a menu with photos or custom features.
- ThemeBridge™ – the first and only true production-like staging environment built specifically for the BigCommerce platform to help view your in progress website.
The Results: An Easy to Use Online Platform
Empire Abrasives Stencil site was launched on September 26, 2019 and has ensured that they stay true to their mission of providing their customers with an easy to use online platform.
Empire Abrasives continues to work with our BigCommerce SEO experts in improving their organic rankings, optimizing their user-experience and conversion rate, and ultimately helping the EmpireAbrasives.com business grow.
