A.J. Ellis

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Problem

Rising shipping costs had made it no longer feasible to offer free shipping on most products. Many items were overdue for a shipping audit. However, the existing process was slow and prone to error.

Solution

Over 1,200 products needed to be reviewed. That meant calculating shipping rates for five representative zip codes per product, a total of 6,000 manual lookups. Each lookup took roughly 45 seconds under ideal circumstances, meaning the entire task would require 75 hours to complete. The repetitive nature of the task made it an ideal candidate for automation.

I decided that a web app would be a flexible solution since it could be deployed locally on the Company's servers. That way, other team members could access the information without going through me. Additionally, it would reduce the amount of time required to develop the solution.

Resolution

The end result was a simple three-screen app that accepted .csv files as input and produced a .csv file download with the desired results. The application reduced 75 hours of labor to a 2.5-hour automated process.

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Problem

Our promotion coordinator needed to know what items sold best, and when. My job was to compile sales data into a format that she could use. However, the task was both time-consuming and inefficient.

Solution

Because our promotion coordinator needed to merge sales data with other information, she needed the ability to not just view a list of recommendations, but to explore further. What we needed was something that was not static but interactive. We needed a tool, not just a spreadsheet. What we needed was Tableau.

Before switching to Tableau, I would easily spend 3-4 hours just compiling the data and then formatting it in an Excel workbook. Follow-up requests for clarifications or additional data could add another hour of work, depending on the level of detail required. Tableau took the tedium out of the task. After switching, all I had to do was refresh the data and export the workbook to a network location for pickup.

The dashboard also enabled deeper analysis. Its interactivity and advanced charting features made it possible to display year-over-year trends in a meaningful way. Packaging related data in the same workbook also became easier, enabling us to display and analyze the terms that people use to search our website.

Resolution

All said and done, one Tableau dashboard saved us 36+ hours per year by simplifying this one task. Aside from providing benefits to my own team, personnel in other departments expressed an interest in the dashboard and began to use it for their own analyses.

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Problem

The Company had built several Wordpress websites for its house brand products. However, the products pages were functional, but not beautiful. Images were good, but the content was not optimized to impress viewers.

Solution

The original pages had some good points going for them: they had few elements to distract the viewer, images were high-quality, and they had a tight focus on the information that they provided.

I took these strengths and made them stronger. I changed the layout of the page's content to a more vertical flow. This made the image more prominent, and also made it easier for users to scroll through discrete pieces of information.

Because I wanted the design to have potential use on the Company's primary website as a focused landing page, I also added some ecommerce elements.

Original Design

New Design

Resolution

This was a very recent project and is currently pending review. However, it was well-received by the Company's marketing team. It will most likely find use on the subsidiary websites as a proof-of-concept before being applied to the Company's current website.

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Problem

Prior to my arrival, The Company had never conducted an SEO audit. This made it difficult to measure progress, identify opportunities, and gain insight into the Company's web traffic.

Solution

The only way to rank well in search engine results these days is to retain strength across many areas of web design. This includes business listings, technical optimizations, and backlinks. Therefore, an SEO audit would need to be comprehensive to provide any lasting value.

Using metrics provided by various Google resources, as well as the Company's internal data, I benchmarked the Company's performance using KPIs that Google lists as ranking factors and calculated the value of optimizations that the Company could implement.

Resolution

Estimating the value of SEO for the Company was a nuanced process. In the end, I opted to use conservative estimates that excluded phone/email transactions. In this model, optimizations were worth approximately $169k annually. Because many of them were rather technical, they were broken out into their own projects to make implementation more manageable.