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Purchasing workflow and subscription management.

Processes
  • Agile/Scrum
Team Leadership
  • Senior Development
    Tom Fleming

Success meant they needed new automation for their process.

Unable to keep up with manually processing a high volume of new and existing B2B customer requests, DEEP Information Sciences (DeepIS) asked Last Call Media to build an online self-service subscription management service on top of their Drupal 7 site.

The service needed to enable customers to create an account, provide necessary marketing metadata for DeepIS’ marketing team, and guide customers through the sales process from subscription estimation to subscription purchase, renewal, and upgrade. Customers also needed to access content related to their service, DeepSQL, online in real time. 

How we did it

Leveraging AngularJS, LCM built a seamless custom subscription purchasing workflow app to guide the user through the dynamic purchasing workflow by feeding and pulling data as necessary to and from HubSpot, their marketing automation tool; SalesForce, their CRM; and Zuora, their subscription management service.

The custom subscription calculator in the AngularJS app pulled in data in real time from Zuora, using Zuora’s APIs, so users were presented with the most up-to-date pricing. Once the purchasing workflow was complete, the user’s card was charged and they received an email with their receipt and license key moments later, all without needing to speak to a DeepIS representative.

This implementation solved the problem where a prospective customer had to email or call DeepIS to purchase a subscription and manage their account. The new online workflow slashed the conversion time by eliminating the need to call DeepIS to purchase a subscription, increased customer satisfaction, and significantly increased revenue for DeepIS. With the biggest barrier to conversion eliminated, users were now clicks away from purchasing a subscription.

Further, with event-triggered email campaigns using HubSpot, DeepIS was able to strategically nurture customers on the trial or free plan to upgrade to a paid plan. Data from SalesForce, Drupal, and Zuora was fed to HubSpot email campaigns, increasing the likelihood of a user purchasing a paid subscription. The emails had a unique URL generated by SalesForce, and the user could provide their credit card information and upgrade their subscription with a few clicks.

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Delivering a high stakes MVP.

Processes
  • Agile/Kanban
  • Agile/Scrum
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Architect
    Tom Fleming

Following a branding initiative, Designow worked with Last Call Media to build and launch the initial release of a complex crowdfunding platform on Drupal.

When we began, initial prototyping and feature development had already been started. As is often the case, much of the prototyping had made its way into substantial portions of what was now the project’s foundational work. It had become difficult to determine exactly what was completely done, what was partially done, and what requirements had been left out along the way.

How we did it

We used our expertise in Agile methodologies to bring order to complexity and the product to launch. We began by building and prioritizing a backlog of tasks, and getting high-priority tasks into a ready state by defining appropriate definitions of done. We focused on implementing strategies for limiting the work in progress present in the project when we started. We forecasted a few sprint goals, informed by our backlog development and resulting strategies, and quickly went into heavy development.

Immediate visibility for stakeholders into development progress became of major importance for their own ability to make quick business decisions concerning their investment. In order to maximize the value of the work, we adapted our initial Scrum iteration approach into shorter, one-week sprints of continuous delivery to get small groups of completed tasks out faster. This soon evolved into more of an ideal Kanban flow, allowing a continuous awareness and continuous delivery of the right value.

Since the initial release, LCM and Designow have continuously measured and inspected valuable feedback. Our work is ongoing, as the product is currently receiving regular releases of new features and refinements.

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Massive nightly sync.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership

Yale University Press has a massive collection of over 15,000 unique publications they’ve published over the past 100 years. The Press desired the ability to allow their users to browse, check inventory and purchase items directly from their Yale University Press Drupal site, which required relaunching their site on Drupal 7, integrating their collection management system and an e-commerce and fulfillment solution. After working with another vendor for over three years to get the critical nightly sync from their Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio database to Drupal sync running, Yale University Press was seeking a second opinion. 

How we did it

Working with Yale ITS and the Press, we successfully implemented a nightly sync that queries their SQL Server for changes made in the last 24-hrs and updates the records in Drupal in under 15 minutes every night at midnight.

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Upgrading the CAIA Association.

Processes
  • Agile/Scrum
Team Leadership

Time-sensitive reporting was challenged by a lack of exporting and reporting capabilities of the previous web platform, so CAIA was looking at upgrading their existing infrastructure from an outdated, highly customized and modified eCommerce website, to a more robust solution upgraded to the newest version of Drupal.

How we did it

We joined the project to get it across the finish line. We refined the existing agile approach for a better-organized project backlog and a more deliberate iteration strategy.

Our solution included working with in-house developers to migrate and upgrade numerous features and systems to work with the most current major Drupal version. Tailored reporting capabilities were developed, giving real-time statistical and sales figures for their support team and company executives.

 

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Disrupting the storage industry.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht
  • Senior Architect
    Kelly Albrecht

All College Storage had an idea for a brand new online business. They wanted students from a university to be able to schedule the pickup, storage, and delivery of their dorm items over the summer. Items would be picked up at the students old dorm, then delivered to the new dorm at a requested date and time.

In addition to a full branding treatment, we developed a solution for students to reserve and configure when and where their items would be picked up and delivered.

An iPad point of sale interface was also developed for employees to process payment for each customer during pickup time as well as to manage all business workflow. All College Storage soon became the premier moving and storage solution for students in Western Mass.

The business was a success from day one, soon expanding from five colleges to eleven colleges and four prep schools, and it continues to succeed and expand.

Following this model, LCM assisted All College Inc. in replicating the successes with All College Storage to another startup for laundry service, called All College Laundry.

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Product discovery through faceted search.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Colin Panetta
  • Senior Development
    Tom Fleming

Alan Goldberg provides a lot of resources to a lot of athletes across nearly every sport. There are many different personas who frequent the site, including Coaches and Parents, in addition to the athletes themselves.

After getting the right personas to the right area of the site, faceted searching was one of the solutions Last Call Media implemented to help. Visitors can drill down into the specifics, matching the right user to the right product or resource.

We developed a faceted search tool for their catalog to solve the challenge of filtering through the options to get to a specific product. By structuring and categorizing the products and content of this store appropriately in the database, we were able to implement faceted searching functionality, not only for the store, but for other content as well.

Site visitors are able to use this implementation to find the specific content or products that are most relevant to them. This work has, in turn, substantially increased eCommerce conversions.

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Redesign and upgrade for Dr.G.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht
  • Senior Development
    Tom Fleming

An upgrade to increased conversions, better sales, and more flexibility.

Competitive Advantage was experiencing a decline in their online sales. Their existing website was outdated and originally built as hundreds of static HTML pages, some inconsistent with the others. Additionally, the main site was originally laid over top of an aging proprietary eCommerce solution that wasn’t serving their needs or their customers well.

We worked with Competitive Advantage to update the design of their website, port it to the most current version of Drupal, and migrate away from their former eCommerce system to Commerce. Improvements to the checkout workflow were implemented, product images were updated, and full content control was given to Competitive Advantage to maintain product copy.

Three iphones show the Competitive Advantage homepage on mobile.

Since the transition, Competitive Advantage has seen their eCommerce sales far exceed their expectations and more than double in volume from their previous site.

We truly appreciate everything you have done for us.

Dr. Alan Goldberg, Sports Performance Consultant
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An updated subscription system for multimedia learning resources.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership

Yale University Press (YUP) sought to leverage Organic Groups in Drupal 7 to create a new site that would be easy to use and easy to maintain.

YUP, with the help of the University ITS Department, was able to manage the migration of the content and most of the functionality. They were looking for expert help with aspects of registration for two different types of users (students and instructors), authentication, and a permissions structure that would allow limited-time subscriptions to constrained sets of content. In addition, custom reports and administrative tools were needed to allow the site administrator to understand and have basic controls over user activities on the site.

How we did it

We worked with a very detailed set of specifications on this project. The team at YUP were very clear about the data structures and attributes that were needed. Drupal’s Organic Groups were the perfect solution for the needs of this project. Some parts of the site needed to be accessible to accounts with codes from a specific book. Other parts of the site needed to be available to students with access to any book.

We built two separate registration forms with different fields on each form. On the site, users self-select the form that they need to fill out. Successful registration requires a valid access code for student accounts, which are then automatically activated. Instructors are able to register without entering an access code, but those accounts need to be reviewed and activated by the site administrator. Automated emails are sent during and after registration, and notifications are sent to users when their account is about to expire.

After registration, all of the information entered during registration is visible and editable by both the user and the administrator on the user’s account page. Some custom work was needed to make this page display the correct fields in a user-friendly format. We used the Yale authentication system as the basis of the site authentication functionality; it was important, though, that the login screen not look like a Yale login screen, since most of the site users would have no direct connection with the Yale community. 

Access codes needed to be generated within the system by the site administrator for the two existing volumes of the text. All codes needed to be associated with a specific volume of the text (Book 1 or Book 2), and not be able to be transferred to a different account or otherwise be re-used. Since Books 3 and 4 were in production at the time of this project, the system needed to allow the administrators to generate the codes for content that did not yet exist so that those codes could be printed in the books. A user account needed to be able to have multiple access codes to different content with different expiration dates.

Current users would need to be migrated to the new site and matched with codes that would provide access to the correct volume and for the correct amount of time. Yale was able to perform the user migration on their own, using documentation and training provided by LCM.

The team at YUP was able to generate the needed access codes for the new books in time to meet the publisher’s deadline for including them in the printing, thus avoiding a much larger account migration if codes from the old system had been used. The new system frees up the site administrator from significant involvement in user account management, and will be fully supported by the University ITS Department for years to come.

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The new Coupon Craze on Drupal.

Processes
  • Continuous Delivery
Team Leadership
  • Senior Producer
    Kelly Albrecht

CouponCraze.com’s website was outdated and falling behind when it came to SEO and rankings. In order to gain market share, the owner needed a way to automate the posting and filtering of certain coupons.

You did an amazing job on Coupon Craze.

Matthew Schwartz, Founder, Chief Creative Officer, MSDS

A new sitemap was devised, consisting of both categorization pages as well as merchant pages. Each page of the site has the ability to “feature” certain coupons, which are chosen automatically or overridden by an administrator. We leveraged Drupal to aggregate new coupons, categorizing and qualifying them automatically, as well as weeding out any duplicates as they come in. Due to the high volume of content on every page, we implemented a performance plan that met stringent testing requirements.

“There are always bumps along the way in a project this complex, but we took them in stride and did what we had to to get it done. You should all give yourselves a serious pat on the back. For a small team we kicked some serious ass on this. Thanks.”

Matthew Schwartz, Founder, Chief Creative Officer, MSDS

Coupon Craze is now positioned well for the future. SEO value, site speed, and depth of content have all improved. The automated workflows now allow the operators more time for social media ventures and blogging.

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Automating essential fundraising and donation tools

Team Leadership

Last Call Media has enjoyed a long ongoing history working with The Society of St. Vincent de Paul that started back in 2014 and continues to this day. Originally brought in to tackle improving the online donation experience at stvincentdepaul.net, our work has expanded greatly from there over the years as we’ve served as a business, creative, and technical partner to the St Vincent de Paul team.

How we did it

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SVdP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the poor and providing others with the opportunity to serve. The digital experience SVdP offers to their community of supporters is an important part of achieving their mission. Last Call Media has been handling the ongoing feature development, the necessary support, and regular maintenance of the SVdP sites for the past several years.

Online donations made easy

Any time the SVdP team initiates a new campaign, whether fundraising for Thanksgiving, COVID-19 relief or homelessness prevention, a new web form needs to be created on stvincentdepaul.net

Last Call Media worked with SVdP to create an elaborate system for the site that relies heavily on a combination of web forms, Salesforce and Braintree. The web forms are integrated into the Drupal 7 site, Salesforce serves as the source of truth for creating and managing new contacts, while Braintree is used for processing online payments. Once we completed building the system, we began the process of rolling out functionality to enable SVdP to launch targeted giving campaign pages on their own. 

The new functionality enables the SVdP to independently handle any new campaign and helps the team keep track of all the different data points  while making the online experience of the supporters quick and simple.

svdp-donation

A streamlined process for scheduling pickups 

In addition to web forms for financial donations, SVdP faces an additional layer of complexity when scheduling pickups of donated goods like furniture and clothing. 

Previously, SVdP used a system of phone calls, taken at their call center, which were then recorded in Salesforce. These were then manually screened and assigned to driver routes each day. Because there is a limit to the number of pickups SVdP could perform in one day, there would often be situations where a person’s pickup had to be rescheduled because it was accidentally added to an already-full route.

Last Call Media worked with SVdP to streamline that process. We used Checkfront to automate the booking process, presenting a customized version of the booking interface within an iframe on SVdP’s Drupal site, connecting it to their existing Salesforce account, and cutting out the need for people to call into SVdP to schedule a donation pickup. We were even able to add a unique custom receipt URL, so after completing the booking process users are directed to a Drupal webform where they have the option of donating to SVdP to support their free pickup service.

The new process greatly decreased the amount of time the SVdP team needs to spend on each of these donations. Now they are able to schedule more pickups per zip code area per day and have confidence in the system they need to rely on every day.

Automated transaction reports  

When we started working with SVdP, their finance team needed to run several reports manually and cross-reference the data in order to begin the process of analyzing transaction reports. 

One of our projects together, as part of our ongoing support and maintenance relationship, was to improve the sites reporting capabilities by aggregating transaction data from their formerly separated eCommerce sites into one exportable master transaction report. 

Last Call Media turned a lengthy manual process into an automated one that makes a .csv available within a few clicks.

Last Call has been involved in improving the site’s essential fundraising and donation tools to make giving easier for users and also provide SVdP staff with powerful reporting and analytics data they can use for future campaigns. We’re proud to keep helping SVdP improve how they use technology to deliver services to their community, recruit and manage volunteers, and encourage donations. We remain excited by our involvement with such a charitable organization and we value the high level of trust and open communication that drives our relationship.

If you’re in Central or Northern Arizona, go to stvincentdepaul.net and be part making a difference with The Society of St. Vincent de Paul.