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We build custom web solutions that are unique to each of our clients and their businesses.
What do we do?
We build custom web applications for businesses. These web apps serve various useful purposes, which include:
- Traditional websites to portray information about the business
- Internal tools for employees to run the business more efficiently
- Acting as part of the business itself, by completing tasks through automation
How do we do it?
We employ a UX Design Process to ensure we design and build solutions that are functional and truly serve the personal needs of end users. This involves taking an iterative approach where the end product evolves throughout the entire project based on testing and feedback. We proudly utilize groundbreaking no-code and low-code tools, which enable us to build complex web applications in a fraction of the time compared to traditional development.
Who do we serve?
Business owners, managers, and executives, who are looking to do any of the following:
- Improve the performance of their business
- Spend less time on tedious & repetitive tasks
- Improve their business' online presence
Read our Case Study.
See how we helped Riverstone Industries transform the digital experience of their business.
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Case Study: Riverstone Industries
A UX and Web Design Case Study by RKZ Digital
Reading time: 4-7 minutes
Prepared by Dominic Rzepecki, Founder at RKZ Digital.
RKZ Digital builds custom web solutions for businesses.
Overview
Riverstone Industries manufactures, imports, and distributes various products in the gardening and outdoor industry. Riverstone Industries approached us, RKZ Digital, with the intent of completely revamping their website by modernizing the look and experience of it. Their previous website was severely outdated, both aesthetically and functionally.Dive into this case study to see how we worked with the Riverstone team to create a new user-friendly, pleasing, and modern digital experience for everyone and anyone that interacts with Riverstone.
Objectives
- Design a clean, easily navigable, and modern website for Riverstone
- Create a user-friendly and functional digital experience for all user types including customers, employees, and retailers
- Build a digital customer support experience
- Implement responsive design to ensure usability on any type of device
- Employ a User-Experience (UX) Design Process
Background & Problem
Riverstone Industries is a manufacturer, importer, and distributor of home and gardening products such as greenhouses, composting tumblers, garden beds and tables, gazebos, irrigation, and more. Instead of selling directly to consumers, Riverstone sells their products through retailers. These include national retailers such as Home Depot, Walmart, and Amazon, in addition to independent retailers like Greenhouse Emporium and EarthEasy. Riverstone manages the fulfillment of its product orders through these various retailers, in addition to managing customer support for all of its products.
Problem
There were several problems associated with Riverstone’s previous website and online experience. As mentioned in the overview, the old website was quite outdated in terms of aesthetics and functionality.The layout of the old website was not user friendly as it wasn’t organized efficiently. Issues with aesthetics included font & color choices, use of text links, using images with text in them, and the use of Flash player, which is outdated and no longer supported by modern web browsers.In addition to the website being outdated in a visual sense, it also lacked in offering users a good experience. If Riverstone customers had trouble with their products, the old website offered no help besides a simple “Contact Us” form, a phone number to call during business hours only, and some links to YouTube videos. The employees at Riverstone were also looking to spend less time on the phone with customers in order to focus on other important tasks.
Approach & Process
Since we set our focus on user experience, we took a UX Design Process approach to tackle this project effectively. By doing so, we ensured that the end users stayed in the forefront of our thinking throughout the entire project.
Our UX Design process is made up of 5 general phases:
1. Research - Getting to know the client, their business, how they operate, and what their needs are, and learning about the various roles of individuals that interact with the business.
2. Analysis - Forming our understanding of the business and the needs of the project by analyzing the information we collect in the Research phase.
3. Design - Creating an information architecture, sketching and wire-framing UIs, and building initial prototypes. This phase is where we begin to bring what we learned in the previous two phases to life.
4. Implementation - Building the end product itself and making it truly functional. End users begin testing, starting with the client and their employees.
5. Validation - Testing and validating the product, collecting data on its strengths and weaknesses, and then using that information to improve the product. This phase is iterative as we polish the end product to ensure usability and functionality.
In addition to utilizing a UX Design process, we are proud to have used Bubble for designing and developing Riverstone’s new website and digital experience. By doing so, we were able to build fully custom responsive web pages without sacrificing the complexity required to meet Riverstone’s needs. Being a no-code platform, Bubble also saved us a lot of time, as coding is a tedious and time consuming process. Bubble also provides hosting and a dedicated database, and offers the ability to integrate with other apps through APIs.
Solution & Results
Once we completed and launched their new site, Riverstone’s digital experience was completely transformed for the better. All people that interact with Riverstone now have a much easier way to do so, thanks to their new website. Customers, employees, retailers, and those just shopping around, are all able to accomplish what they need by using the website, which could be done on any device with a web browser and internet connection.
The finished website can be visited and explored by going to RSIWW.com or RiverstoneIndustries.com
Highlights
Here are some highlights of Riverstone’s new website and digital experience:
- Product Exploration: Website visitors can easily explore Riverstone’s various categories of products and narrow down what they’re looking for. Product pages display images of products as well as important information and descriptions.
- Where to Buy: Visitors can see what retailers sell Riverstone products, and directly visit their websites by clicking on their logos.
- Customer Support: The new website gives Riverstone customers a wide variety of support resources, including the following:
- Product Support: Access to videos, manuals, documents, and a direct submission form for help with specific products
- Part Order Requests: If a customer’s product is missing or has a damaged part, they can submit a request to order their specifically needed parts
- Common Assembly & FAQs: Documents that offer more detailed help with certain issues customers may run into when assembling certain products, especially greenhouses.
- Product Manuals: Customers have access to PDFS of product manuals for all Riverstone products, in case they lose or damage their own physical copy.
- Employee Portal: Riverstone employees have their own password-protected accounts. In the portal, employees could respond to and manage incoming customer support requests and contact submissions, fulfill part order requests, and manage content all across the website.
- Retailer Portal: Retailers of Riverstone products also receive password-protected accounts. In their portal, retailers can access Riverstone’s product manuals as well as product content including information, descriptions, and images. Additionally, retailers have access to Riverstone’s inventory and pricing feeds, where they can export data.
- Postmark Integration: When customers submit requests on Riverstone’s website, they receive confirmation emails. Additionally, employees can respond to these requests by email directly in the Employee Portal of the website. This is thanks to the API integration we added connecting to Postmark, which is an email delivery service.
Testimonial
David Schnurman, Vice President of Riverstone Industries, shared his thoughts on the project:
“Our company was in need of a major upgrade to our website and digital exposure. We met with Dominic to discuss opportunities and different directions we could go in. After consulting with our team about our online needs, designs, and attributes, Dominic returned with a full proposal and presentation that addressed all our needs.Working directly with our team, Dominic listened to our needs and started to build our platform, making it interactive as well as easy to use, helping us get our messages out to our customer and end user base.The most impressive part of working with Dominic was that he was always looking for a better way to process and build what we were looking for. All along the entire process, Dominic would reach out and make additional suggestions regarding things that we were not even thinking of that customers would like to see.Overall, this was a very good experience and our company is much better off with what Dominic has put into place for our growing business that allows for a fully automated customer service response system that is much more efficient than what we had prior.Thank you Dominic.”
Before Images
Here are screenshots of Riverstone's old website for comparison with the new website:
After Images
Here are screenshots of Riverstone’s new website we built for them:
Conclusion
At RKZ Digital, we are passionate about designing and building custom web solutions for other businesses, helping them transform their digital presence and improve their efficiency, growth, and success. This case study exemplifies our ability to adapt and cater to the specific needs of our clients. Before Riverstone Industries hired RKZ Digital, their website was outdated and offered a poor digital experience for both customers and employees. RKZ Digital worked closely with the Riverstone team to precisely understand what the end product required. The result is a web experience that offers much more than just a traditional website:
- Users can explore Riverstone’s products and categories
- Customers can easily access product support when needed
- Employees have a custom-built tool for running the business more efficiently
- Retailers get easy access to needed information, content, and files
- And much more
If you own or run a business and are looking to transform its digital experience, RKZ Digital can build a custom solution specific to your needs.Contact us today, either by email at dom@rkzdigital.com, or by booking a call here.