A Website Redesign for Our Customers

Digital River Education Services (JourneyEd) had redesigned its website (www.JourneyEd.com) unlike most organizations' revamps to their Internet presence. While many companies "redecorate" making cosmetic changes to their sites, JourneyEd has created a whole new site to enable customers an easier time of finding products and to enable JourneyEd to seamlessly handle an ever-increasing number of orders. JourneyEd did all this without losing the key components of the site that make it a familiar place for customers to place their orders.

"This is a huge step for us and it's not just a cosmetic change," said Michael Fischler, President and CEO of JourneyEd. "As we prepare to add thousands of more products to our line, we needed the ability to make it easier for our customers to find products and handle an anticipated ever-increasing amount of orders."

In addition, according to Fischler, JourneyEd wanted to try to answer more questions before customers made their final purchase, such as key questions about whether they are qualified to make a purchase through JourneyEd.

A new, more intuitive order form was also created along with three new Channel Divisions, including a School Shop to help with school purchases, an Educator Shop to better assist teachers and faculty members and a Non-Profit Shop to help with purchases by non-profit organizations.

"Departments are now more tightly categorized within five major categories," said Fischler, "and the Channel Divisions allow customers to choose a site more specifically tailored to them."

The move was a huge undertaking for JourneyEd, whose web team moved more than 10,000 eStores to the new site as well with barely a few minutes of downtime.