| Customer: A public safety company based in Orange County | Profile: The government agency provides Emergency Medical, All-Risk Fire and Rescue, Fire Prevention, and Community Education Services
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| Industry: Public Safety | |
| Services: E-commerce Redesign and Redevelopment | |
Business Need
The public safety company that was formed in 1985 as a small group of firefighters has, over the years, grown into an organization providing multiple benefits and services to a membership body exceeding 1200 people. In 2012, the company had launched a new website (WordPress integrated with WooCommerce) in partnership with Synoptek with the main objectives of introducing online membership management, an online store for purchases, and a CMS for ease of updating content by company personnel.
However, over the past 6 years, the plug-ins and technologies used to build the original website started to become unstable, and a more recent upgrade by UPS resulted in the plug-in to stop working entirely. Additionally, an update by the Events Manager Pro plugin caused further issues with the website.
The public safety company was looking to enhance the functionality of the existing site, redesign certain elements, and resolve bugs. Upon extensive troubleshooting and research, it determined that building the site from ground up using the latest technologies and plug-ins will be the most cost-effective way to resolve issues it was facing. At a high level, the client was looking to:
- Redevelop the site using the latest technologies available in web development.
- Build all features and capabilities that exist today in the public site, shopping cart system, events manager, and donation system.
- Resolve areas of the site that have bugs or inefficiencies and implement new features as required.
- Add reporting capabilities to replicate the capabilities available in the original Access database.
- Migrate the website to a new and upgraded hosting environment with greater security measures.
Solution and Approach
Synoptek followed a structured systems implementation program. We combined both best practice project management approaches from the Project Management Institute and systems design and implementation methods to provide the right mix of resources, skills, and capabilities.
To meet the client’s e-commerce redesign and redevelopment requirement and deliver the highest value and ROI, we provided the following services:
Existing Site Re-creation
Using the existing website as a model, we recreated the same web structure for the following main categories:
- Home
- About
- Fire Store
- Returns & Refunds
- Privacy
- News and Events
- Resources
- Links
- Contact Us
- Privacy
- Donate
- Shopping Cart
- Login to Membership DB
Bug Fixes and Enhancements
We carried out a number of bug fixes and enhancements across users, events, stores, donations, posts, and more.
- Enhancements to user experience
- Elimination of duplicate entry
- Improved search results
- Automatic profile updation emails to admin
- Improved event booking
- Enhancements to shipping fields
- Link web store to POS for inventory
- Enable Zoom option for products or 360-degree view option
- Auto receipts to donors with details
- Auto emails to admin when a donation is made
- Ability to add photo albums
- Ability to send emails to names listed in Roster
Reporting
We created a number of reports using template files and custom code for some reports. These include:
- Envelope to members’ home address
- Birthday report
- Birthday labels
- All withholdings
- Flyers to members’ work location
- Mailing labels to members’ work location
- Members by battalion/station/section
- Membership data confirmation
Website Hosting
As part of a re-write of the current site, we migrated the website to a new hosting environment by making a stage and a production environment available. We provided the following capabilities:
- 100 GB Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Website Security – Powered by Sucuri
- Protection for unlimited pages within a single website
- 30 minutes response time
- Malware removal and hack repair
- Advanced security monitoring
- Google blacklist monitoring & removal
- Security analyst
- Trusted site seal
- 24/7 support (phone, chat, email)
- SSL certificate management
- Advanced DDoS mitigation
- Web Application Firewall (WAF)
- Performance accelerator (CDN)
Business Benefits
With Synoptek’s support and guidance, the public safety company has been able to:
- Improve website performance and functionality
- Overcome bugs and issues
- Easily create reports
- Improve end-user experience