K & M Manufacturing is under the umbrella of the Northern Tool + Equipment family of brands.
During my tenure at K & M, I have delivered multiple high-level projects aimed at diverse markets and resulting in significant consumer reach.
Ecommerce
Ecommerce presents specific hurdles in its development. Handling website traffic, ensuring continuous uptime, and keeping customers engaged are essential for profitability. Avoiding missed orders is crucial.
Beyond daily website upkeep, additional security protocols, email server needs, tax adherence, and shipping coordination must be addressed. These operational aspects add complexity to managing an e-commerce platform.
Before and After
Analytics
Data is king. Return on investment becomes easily quantitative once the data is captured and analyzed. I’ve incorporated what I’ve learned from Google Analytics Academy to achieve some amazing results over the last five years.
15% – 20% Revenue growth year-over-year
Major Projects
Built with .Net MVC 5 and C#
The bulk of my work was done using AspDotNetStorefront as our primary platform for ecommerce.
Using this platform requires knowledge of .Net MVC5, C#, SQL, XML, XSLT, IIS, and SQL Server.
My Process
K & M, like many businesses new to e-commerce, didn’t have a formalized development process. I required a system that would allow me to communicate with non-technical contributors and stakeholders in a way that was simple and intuitive. They did not need to learn technical terminology, new systems, etc. (e.g. UML)
User Personas
To understand what you’re building it’s helpful to know who you’re building it for. This is where user research comes in.
Maintaining valuable relationships with our dealers was critical to our sales plan as we moved into B2C sales. We wanted to be sure the dealers were an integral part of the process. I developed and distributed a questionnaire for out-of-state dealers and visited our dealers in central Minnesota. After getting to know users from each of our target audiences I was able to put together User stories to anchor and guide the development process.
Style Tiles
Style Tiles are a simple resource to communicate the essence of a visual brand for the web. This can include visuals, colors, fonts, or even abstractions like feelings and emotions the product aims to evoke.
In any industry, it is crucial to know what will be attractive to a customer and what will prompt them to simply close the tab.
Interactive Sketching Notation
Instead of using UML or other diagrams I chose to go with something I had recently discovered as an alternative to traditional wire-frames and diagrams called ‘Interactive Sketching Notation’.
It was perfect for what I needed in this project. It is great at explaining high-level concepts. It can also drill down to granular detail that explains session state behavior and visual concept.