Managing a website roadmap & prioritizing items
Timeline: February, 2022 - December 2022
Company: OK Tire Stores Inc.
Situation
The WordPress and Magento websites were in a fragile state. For instance, AWS hosting resources had several opportunities for improvement, SQL queries to display products on the shop had significant code debt, and there were other issues too. Overall, stakeholders, including customers, were dissatisfied with the web experience.
I understood that the business had to continue, so it made sense to avoid stalling business operations by working on a new website and e-commerce. I took an agile approach to address issues to stabilize the then website and e-commerce backend to withstand a new site. Below is the roadmap's major tasks.
Tasks
Task 1: Prioritize Key Issues: I organized the bug backlog into categories. The purpose was to create a list of goals from stakeholder consensus. After discussions with stakeholders (executive team and board of directors), the following six goals were confirmed, which aligned with business needs and seasonality.
Goal 1: Fix the accuracy of product data and web issues.
Goal 2: Technically stabilize the website and e-commerce.
Goal 3: Assess the website and e-commerce state to identify what can be accomplished to make user experience improvements where possible.
Goal 4: Add value to the website and e-commerce by implementing quick-wins.
Goal 5: Improve web security.
Goal 6: Design and develop a new functional website and e-commerce.
Task 2: Stabilize Website and e-Commerce: Stabilizing the website and shop was a highly prioritized item. That said, my team and I reviewed the applications thoroughly to identify the items that can be fixed and refactored with the then state.
Task 3: Proceed with an Agile Roadmap: After establishing the primary goals, we worked on tasks 1 and 2 simultaneously, along with the roadmap plan. The roadmap outlined two-week sprints and tasks per month to make further backend improvements. The primary objective was to fast-track the development work of the new website and e-commerce.
Actions
Tire and Wheel Fitment Relevancy
I analyzed the then fitment tool's search queries and third-party API documentation. In addition to this, I organized UAT testing from a group of tire and wheel experts. The purpose of these steps was to identify the root cause and create a plan to correct the fitment product matches.
The work revealed that the search queries for tires on the company's end were incorrect. The wheels portion was the cause of the website giving 502 and 503 errors. This resulted from the architecture of the SQL queries, causing an overload on server resources.
Another issue arose from the auto service appointment forms. They did not integrate with the store's POS systems, causing customers to check multiple calendars and becoming upset because their preferred time slots were already booked via the store's shop management system.
Additionally, the group of 300+ stores used different POS systems. I discovered that the majority of the stores used a particular system, which was not cloud-based. Understanding that operational changes were not welcome, I implemented a pilot test with selected stores using an appointment scheduler solution from the system used by the majority.
This was the starting point of establishing integrated appointment scheduling solutions to streamline the group of stores to 2-3 shop management systems. Also, the AcuityScheduling form was removed from the checkout process, as the majority of the stores did not manage their Acuity account to serve customers well.
eCommerce Issues
In addition, my team and I fixed the following e-commerce issues to provide shoppers with a more satisfactory online shopping experience:
Tire filter quantities: The correct quantity displayed via the filter count matched the number of products displayed.
Stock availability: We optimized the order of products shown to display products in the following order: in-stock, limited quantity, and out-of-stock.
Discontinued items: The logic for discontinued items was fixed. As a result, when items were discontinued and had quantity available, they would be displayed.
Parent stores: In several cases, certain stores owned other stores. Therefore, when e-comm sales were acquired, the parent store had to be accounted for. This business operational need was fixed by making simple changes to the company’s CRM fields to sync with Magento and integrate with the company’s ERP.
Out-of-stock disclaimer: Before, all product display pages showed an out-of-stock disclaimer, which of course caused shopping confusion. This issue was fixed by using PHP conditional statements. As a result, the disclaimer only displayed when there was ‘0’ (zero) product availability.
Core web vitals: The loading of content and layouts was optimized to increase performance speeds.
More than $1Million in Cost Savings
To improve the return on investment from development work, I took on the challenge of streamlining processes, resources, infrastructure, and establishing a software engineering team.
After analyzing AWS S2 instances, I looked into other suitable cloud hosting services. As a result, my team and I agreed that moving the integration and staging environments to DigitalOcean and leaving the production environment on AWS made sense to save 95% and 192% in costs respectively.
Furthermore, as a result of establishing a hybrid software engineering team, I saved the company 155% in costs.
Result
The server 502 and 503 errors were fixed, the website and e-commerce technical performance was improved to load content faster, common shop expectations were met, and more than a million dollars were saved in development costs.
Moreover, the work done to improve the backend configurations and templates allowed my team and me to fast-track the work for the new website and e-commerce.
My Role
Web product manager / Project manager
Solution architect
Leading a team of software engineers
Managing the website roadmap
Updating stakeholders on progress
Conducting QA testing