Maxilite is a lighting fixture manufacturer in British Columbia, Canada. They sell a wide variety of unique lighting fixtures to restaurants, hotels, and other businesses each year. They also design and manufacture custom-made fixtures.
Problems with the existing website
Custom-designed lighting, Maxilite's #1 specialty, was poorly promoted. New customers coming to the website were unaware that Maxilite even offered custom-designed lighting, and information about this service was hard to find.
Irrelevant clutter on home page. The original website was created using an out-of-box template and included a lot of unnecessary features that were irrelevant to Maxilite's business.
Product details were hidden. Product specs and information were divided among three tabs. Maxilite regularly received phone calls of confused customers looking for information that was already on the website – they just couldn't find it.
No e-commerce capabilities. Maxilite was traditionally focused on wholesale. Now, they were looking to expand to a consumer market, which meant setting up an online store where people could easily order fixtures to their door.
The solution: a brand new online store
To meet Maxilite's needs, I helped them create a stronger online presence with a new online store to sell their wide variety products.
Clutter was removed from the homepage and the beautiful lighting fixtures are showcased up front. Maxilite's custom-design services are promoted right on the home page. The new home page also shows off the installation photos of Maxilite's lovely fixtures being used in real-life settings.
The new homepage has less clutter and features their products better.
The product page has a fresh new look. Customers can choose finish options and immediately add items to their cart, or request a quote for their specific project.
Before, important information was hidden under different tabs. In the new version, all product specs and details are elegantly displayed together.
Other features
Advanced filtering. Maxilite has hundreds of products and thousands of variants. Customers needed a way to sort through the options and find exactly want they wanted.
Filtering products on the new website.Bulk-management of products. Maxilite had over 7,000 product variants, each one with its own set of metadata (finish, material, shade, number of bulbs, height, width, depth, etc.). As such, the client needed a way to easily add, remove, and modify products in bulk.
Shopify's default product editor is great for editing one product at a time, but cumbersome for managing thousands of variants. Using an add-on called Excelify, I created a customized, color-coded spreadsheet for the client to easily make changes as needed. I used the power of Excel formulas to automatically generate values such as image URLs and tags. This makes updating the spreadsheet as easy as possible for the client.
I created a customized, color-coded spreadsheet for the client to easily make changes to several products at once.
