Our Blog

Should You Refine or Redesign?

For any regional or national brand, a website redesign is a substantial project on many fronts. It can take months, even years, of fine tuning design elements, content and messaging to get a website in the proper state for optimal conversions. Rebuilds involve designing, developing, copywriting, IT, security, branding, user experience, marketing...you get the picture. These projects can easily stretch into six figure investments (often higher for large enterprises). As such, it warrants the “time needed to do it right” approach, which often takes a year or more to complete.

A Culture of Caring Part 2: Managing Your Newly Remote Team in Unprecedented Times

Many of us had no idea that our work worlds would be turned upside down when we first heard “Covid-19” on the news. Yet here we are now, trying desperately to adjust to “new normal”. If you’re a manager, there’s the added pressure of finding a way through the clutter and leading your team in a productive way, so that work can still get done. It’s daunting to say the least, especially considering the amount of distractions around us.

A Culture of Caring Part 1: Managing Your Team in a Work from Home World

Not too long ago, the concept of “working from home” was out of reach for the majority of Americans. Resources didn’t allow for the flexibility needed, managers lacked the verification processes required to prove that productivity could happen at home, and, in many verticals, culture didn’t deem it necessary. Much like the open floor plan vs cubicle debate, data could be compiled to support either camp.

COVID-19: Free E-commerce Support for Retailers in Need.

The Refinery has felt our share of economic struggle over the last 19 years. I started the company in 2001 during the recession that followed 9/11. My partner Dave joined the company in 2005 and together we also weathered the 2008 financial crisis. In moments like those, hope and determinism aren’t always enough to get through. The only way our business survived was because of the generous support and mentorship that we received from our local business community here in Cleveland.

How to Increase Your E-commerce Conversions & Sales

As any business owner or marketing manager who deals with e-commerce knows, increasing website conversions and sales is vital to the growth and success of the company. It’s an obvious statement. What’s not as obvious is how to increase conversions. This in-depth guide will show you, step-by-step, how to increase conversions on your e-commerce store.

Supporting Your Team When They’re Working Remotely

The status of the Coronavirus has now reached the level of a pandemic. Major sports leagues, concerts, schools and businesses are all shutting down as a precautionary measure to stop the spread of this virus. This means that, if it hasn’t happened already, employees will likely be working remotely.

Use Brand Story to Build Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is earned by telling a brand story that emotionally resonates with your customers. We all have our favorite brands in fashion, technology, food, cars, etc. In this article we’ll break down what makes customers loyal to a brand, how you can position your own brand to earn that loyalty, and how to improve the design of your e-commerce store to capitalize on it.

Safari to Limit SSL/TLS Certificate Validity to One Year

On February 19th of this year, Apple made a fairly big announcement during a face-to-face meeting of the CA/Browser Forum (CA/B Forum). This forum is where the industry standards group convenes, and it consists mainly of certificate authorities as well as several of the major browsers.

7 Ways to Optimize Your Ecommerce Product Pages

Our Path to Purchase Map provides key metrics, benchmarks and best practices when evaluating the overall effectiveness of your online catalog. Through the development of this map, we’ve identified 7 critical components the best converting product detail pages have and created an actionable checklist for you to reference on your own product pages.

How to Help Increase Ecommerce Sales Using Google Images

Did you know that approximately 75% of internet users in the United States regularly search for visual content before they actually make a purchase? This number continues to increase each year, so if you haven’t properly optimized and configured the images on your website for Google Image searches, you’re definitely missing out on creating an additional traffic channel that presents some great opportunities to generate more sales and increase your brand’s reach.

How to Improve User Experience Using Path to Purchase

Each consumer has their own unique customer journey when they buy from your online catalog. Similarly, there are paths of abandonment, where potential customers leave without purchasing.

Through analysis of metrics around these customer journeys, certain patterns emerge, which give us a Path to Purchase Map of best practices to implement in our own online catalogs. This gives us the greatest odds of success for ecommerce conversion, while mitigating the risks of abandoned shopping carts.

Tips and Benefits of Hand-drawn Wireframes

The rapid advancements in technology bring so many benefits to the world of website design and creation. It’s fairly easy to find a digital tool for just about any part of the design process, including the creation of wireframes. So, if these wireframe tools are supposed to make the design process easier, why do I still prefer to draw them out by hand?