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Originally Posted On: https://www.intuitsolutions.net/custom-responsive-design-development-bigcommerce-1ink-com/
Founded in 2000, 1ink.com has become a trusted name in printer ink, toner cartridges, and specialty printing supplies. The discount retailer offers premium quality products for virtually every major brand, serving a customer base including individuals, schools, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies.
Committed to providing the best shopping experience for a diverse client base, 1ink.com set out to revamp their site based on direct customer feedback. With their needs in mind, 1ink.com partnered with IntuitSolutions to build a single, flexible site that works on any device, helping customers quickly and easily find the right products for their printing needs.
The Challenge: An Outdated, Non-Responsive Design
Like many clients we’ve worked with, 1ink.com was still using a separate mobile template for their site. Aside from providing a poor user experience on mobile devices, this also meant they were losing out on SEO benefits, with the advent of Google’s algorithm update to a mobile-first indexing approach.
“Google has adopted mobile-first indexing, which gives mobile-responsive websites a technical advantage over desktop-only sites.”
In addition to developing a responsive site, 1ink.com wanted to preserve the recognizable aspects of their previous desktop site. They wanted the new site to benefit from improved functionality but didn’t want to disrupt the brand they’ve spent years building or confuse their loyal customer base.
The Solution: Custom Responsive Design and Development on BigCommerce
The 1ink.com project included a collaboratively designed mobile website and an updated theme developed responsively on the state-of-the-art BigCommerce Stencil framework. The entire process was overseen by a dedicated Project Manager and supported by our in-house team of BigCommerce experts in e-commerce design and development.
The new site was developed using the latest responsive coding practices with the primary goal of improving mobile design and usability. This means that phones, tablets, desktops, and laptop computers will all display an optimized, scaled, and usable version of 1ink.com.
The Design
With a responsive site layout on any device, customers can browse top brands, filter by category, and shop the full breadth of 1ink.com’s offerings in seconds.
Highlights of the new site design:
- Mobile responsive redesign creating a seamless site display on any device.
- Updated desktop design to match their previous website.
- Custom homepage header with improved search bar and more organized layout.
- Custom “1 in cart” feature that displays quantity of current product in shopping cart.
Feature-Rich Development: IntuitSolutions’ Base Theme
Like our other projects built on BigCommerce, 1ink.com was built using our proprietary “Base Theme.”
IntuitSolutions has dedicated hundreds of development hours to further optimize the already powerful “Cornerstone” Stencil theme, resulting in drastic improvements in accessibility, page load speed, and overall code base. These updates include:
- Significant upgrades to ADA & WCAG accessibility standards
- Better 404 crawler instructions
- Improved ‘quick search’ results
- Resolved native bugs
- Improved blog layout
- Photoswipe product image viewer
- Popup login
- Product data page custom tabs
- Image swap on hover
- Mega menu
- Improved cart page layout
- Additional page builder region points
- Slide out preview cart
- Slide out search
- Brand carousel
- And much more!
BigCommerce Stencil Advantages
From the outset of this project, a build on the BigCommerce Stencil framework was the clear choice for 1Ink.com. Through its many native features, the BigCommerce Stencil framework incorporates the latest modern technology, design, conversion, and SEO practices – setting the foundation for a high-performing storefront.
- Improved Website Performance
- Faster page speed
- Akamai Image Manager to optimize images
- Upgraded title and alt tags for images site-wide
- Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
- Advanced rich snippets and added markup
- Developer-Friendly
- Improved Theme Editor for safer, cleaner, and more easily managed updates
- Upgraded coding languages and integration support
- Minification of CSS and JS for cleaner code and industry coding best practices
- Enhanced Functionality
- Flexible page builder capabilities
- Additional payment options supported
- Powerful marketing features, such as Google Analytics Enhanced E-commerce Tracking
Web Accessibility Remediation
Web accessibility is a set of rules, behaviors, code standards, and design guidelines that allow people with disabilities to use websites effectively. Accessibility involves various disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities. Read more about the latest Web Accessibility Guidelines.
Our team of BigCommerce Elite Developers focused on improving 1ink.com to follow the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance standards. Using a range of Accessibility Testing Tools (Google Lighthouse, Axe, etc.), our team monitored results, applied changes to their site, and repeated the process until optimal results were achieved.
The Solution: A Fully Responsive Custom Design on BigCommerce
When their customers spoke, 1ink.com listened. Focused on the needs of 1ink.com’s target demographic, our team of BigCommerce experts worked to redesign a site that was both practical for user experience and pleasing to the eye.
1ink.com now has a modern website that shines on any device — pairing a clean, modern look with dynamic functionality to support more traffic, engagement, and boosted sales.
Could your BigCommerce store design use a refresh? Are you considering migrating to BigCommerce from another platform? We’re an Elite BigCommerce Partner Web Design Company and work exclusively on the BigCommerce platform. Send us a message or give us a call at 866-901-4650 to discuss how we can help your business succeed online.
