sineLABS LLC

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your company?

We design and manufacture home theater furniture, meaning consoles primarily, and matching furniture pieces out of real wood, fully assembled, and we distribute largely online.

What is your position?

I'm the founder and owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the project with sineLABS?

We were selling a rather high-end product that customers can't actually touch, which can be a deciding factor for many consumers. We needed to have a highly visual and very information-comprehensive site that we could still convey the right message to the user.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project? For instance, did it include custom design, development, training, or support?

The project included Web design, and there were a couple of development aspects to it, which I could get into, and I actually worked with the developer and learned what I needed to learn, so there wasn’t an orchestrated training regimen. They also provide ongoing support.

In terms of the development, that was actually our number one priority. As I mentioned, we do this high-end furniture, and very often we're looking in a back-order situation where we don't build it until the customer orders it, or we have them in process. We don't keep a lot of things sitting around the warehouse, and Shopify does not have that native capability built in.

One of the things we developed with sineLABS is how to, in an efficient manner, convey to the customer when they can expect us to ship. Once an order has been placed, we then need to convey to the buyer when they should expect to receive their purchase.  

The other thing that they did for us was create an application that communicated with the website of our freight carrier in order to generate reliable, accurate shipping documents. This was accomplished using the store data and other parameters that we input, and that's a huge time saver. It also goes a long way in terms of bringing value to the end user.

How did you select sineLABS as your service provider?

I was looking to move our web store after six years to a different platform. I tested a whole number of different shopping carts, and I grew a natural affinity toward Shopify. I found sineLABS and several other potential solution partners using the Shopify Experts directory.

Could you give a size or the sense of this initiative in monetary terms?

In the end, we spent between $7,000 or $8,000.

When was this project completed?

I believe it was June of 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, do you have any statistics or metrics you could share with me that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

We’re a small company, so I really don't. We’ve received, compared to our old site, far fewer questions about different aspects, so I think we did a better job of presenting the information through the design of the website. But I don’t have any specific metrics or analytics to share with you.

When working with sineLABS, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other developers that you've worked with?

They’re the primary people that I've worked with in terms of Shopify, so my vantage point really relates to that. I would just say that they've got a strong team there that has a good mix of the skills that you need in order to do custom work on Shopify. Anything that requires basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can certainly be done by sineLABS, and they’ll do it very efficiently.

I think the biggest one would be just an inside-out knowledge of Shopify, which is a great platform in many ways, but it's also limited in many ways given its nature, and where it comes from. Well, sometimes when you make certain things very easy, you end up with an environment that has some constraints, and I think that they're creative in working within those confines just to get things done.

In retrospect, are there any areas that you think sineLABS could have improved upon, or things you might have done differently as a client?

There's nothing major that leaps out to me. The process flowed very smoothly, and we didn’t run into any burning issues along the way. They were able to deliver and then exceed my expectations going into the project. In terms of doing things differently, I can’t think of anything either. I’ve been very pleased with how things turned out.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your company?

I work for FiftyThree. We make an iPad application called Paper, and we just released a stylus for the iPad, and that works with Paper. It works with other tablets, too, but it’s mainly designed for the iPad and Paper. It’s called Pencil.

What is your position in the company?

I’m a dev-ops engineer. I work on systems, infrastructure, and our Web services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What businesses challenges were attempting to address before you initiated the project with sineLABS?

We had no eCommerce experience or presence before this, so we were really starting from scratch. We were developing this product, and wanted to sell it, but also make sure it was on a reliable platform. Our company is very design oriented. The way things look, feel, and work is of paramount importance to us. It’s in the DNA of our company. So, the design and the look and feel of the store had to be done really, really well. We knew that we could do that from the design perspective, but we’d never set up a Shopify store before. We’d never set up the eCommerce side of things. We were going to do a little bit of a preorder launch of this product, and so we had questions around that. Our goals were to have a smooth launch of this product having very little experience, and to find someone who could really not only do some of the front-end work on the site, but also help us answer questions, and hold our hand through different scenarios that we wanted to accomplish.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project in terms of components? Did it include custom design, development, training, or support?

Yes, it was two main aspects. The first one was actually putting together the store based on our specs. The project involved a lot of iterations and back and forth, but in essence, we were giving them designs, and they were implementing them, and making the store look and feel the way that we wanted, and also making it responsive, which was of great import to us. A huge amount of our traffic comes from iPads, and we wanted to make sure that the store looked good on mobile devices. We wanted their help with that. Secondarily, we hired them on a consulting basis, to be available to answer questions with things like capturing customer emails when a product is out of stock, so we can inform them later or, “What are the issues around foreign customers?” “If we want to display this message on this page, how do we do that?” They were more logistical. Actually, here’s a really good example. Integrating with other services, we asked them for help in just knowing what our options were and integrating with other services like Shipwire or MailChimp or third parties. They would also advise us if we had questions on how to do something.

Why did you select Shopify as your eCommerce solution over to some of its competitors?

We had heard good things about them. We knew that they were used heavily. Their customer support was fantastic. I was the one who started doing research, and I looked at some of the big platforms. I think three things impressed me. Number one, the customer support was immediate, responsive and knowledgeable, and that probably made the biggest difference. Second of all, they were well known, and we knew of other big companies that used them for their stores and were happy with them. Third, it seemed as if their interface and their setup was one of the easiest to use and get used to.

How did you end up selecting sineLABS as your solution partner?

We knew we needed someone to help us. I don’t remember how we found them. It may have been customer support that told us, but I don’t remember how I became aware of them. Once we found out there was a Shopify Experts directory, I went through it and I started looking through all the experts. I went by the top-rated ones, and I called a few of them. I ended up speaking to Joe at sineLABS, and he was just great to speak to. He wasn’t lying or shining us on or telling us what we wanted to hear. I could tell from the way he was answering my questions that he really could do it. It just felt like a really good fit.

What parts of the project did you contribute in-house expertise to?

Myself and one other person became very involved with the dashboard, configuring different options, setting up our shipping, payment, looking at orders and running tests. We weren’t involved in the actual implementation outside of our management and guidance roles. sineLABS handled the technical aspects, and we contributed to the design and administration.  

Could you give me a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?

It was a significant project. It stretched over the course of about three months, maybe three and a half. The entire project probably cost between $25,000 and $50,000.

When was this project completed?

To be honest, we’re still working on stuff with them. We’re so happy with them that we’ve got an ongoing relationship. We launched our site on November 19, 2013. That wasn’t like a cutoff point. We didn’t shake hands and say thanks. There’s some ongoing tweaks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, do you have any specific metrics or statistics that you could share that might demonstrate the effectiveness of the work that they delivered to you?

Well, it’s hard to distinguish it between the work that our PR team did, and the work sineLABS did, but I can tell you that our product was hugely successful. We had thousands of product orders on the very first day. Overall, I can tell that the project, and the launch was successful by any measure.

Do you believe Shopify was the correct platform for your business needs?

Yes, I do. We’ve been very happy with Shopify.

Is there anything you would consider unique or special about sineLABS compared to other service providers you’ve worked with in the past?

There are two things that I didn’t mention previously. First of all, there’s not anything they said, “No, we can’t do that,” or “We won’t do that.” They knew how important this project was to us, so they really bent over backwards, spent extra time, and worked late nights to get it done on a tight timeframe. They really took this on as if they were a part of our company and we really appreciate that. Second of all, we were very new to this, and they never made us feel stupid. They really worked us through every question. Their flexibility and patience with us was phenomenal.

In retrospect, are there any areas that you feel sineLABS could improve upon or that you as a client might do differently before approaching this type of project?

From our perspective, we could have planned and started a little bit earlier, but that’s actually irrelevant. No. Off the top of my head, nothing comes to mind that I would say I would have done differently. I really think they jumped in with both feet, and really helped us out.