2022 Accomplishments

February, 2022

• Fixed the tire fitment tool's relevancy of matches to ensure results show per fitment search and accurate products are displayed.

March, 2022

• Assessed the website and e-commerce state to identify the areas that caused our website and ecommerce from going down every month.
• Removed wheels from the retail website and e-commerce, due to low sales because the fitment tool was not working, which also resulted in terrible page loading times (i.e. 50+ seconds)
• AWS resources and configurations, WordPress code refactoring, and Magento code refactoring optimizations to prevent the website and e-commerce from going down.

April, 2022

• Integrated the CoStar appointment scheduler for three stores (Okotoks, Fredericton, and Albert Street) to showcase to other stores in how they can manage their service appointments in an effective manner.
• Upgraded Magento from an older version to the latest version to improve security and functionality.
• Worked on an exit strategy for the agency at the time, to establish an in-house software engineering team and spend a fraction of the development costs (CA$250,000 vs over $2million).
• Dev Team: Conducted third round of interviews with candidates and Magento certified agencies.
• Fixed the e-newsletter sign-up form on Magento pages.

May, 2022

• Assessed if the store locator pop-up can be removed from the retail website, as it interferes with browsing the site freely.
• Result: The store locator popup is the main source the determines how the informational website and e-commerce functions.
• Evaluated the website from a user experience perspective, including conducting a website audit to determine the areas that could be improved to help make the user experience better.
• Example: Menu drop-downs for appointments, tires, and accessories allowing user to go directly to the shop or their desired area.
• Example: Made improvements to the catalog filer data to ensure that products show as identified via CSD.
• Optimizing the dealer warehouse data, to properly map out the filter quantity.
• Dev Team Setup: Organized and conducted onboarding and finalized Agreements.

June, 2022

• Designed and developed a wheel-1 online ordering website.
• Launched the CTP Accessories shop.
• Developed by CTP. Separate owned subdomain implementation because adding new features to then current e-commerce, would cause the shop to go down.
• New Intranet/Extranet: Analyzed the current Toolbox from a UX prespective. Conducted the initial to develop of a new website (RFP, requirements, and business needs).

July, 2022

• Implemented alerts for errors and suspicious activity from our server and code files.
• Improved security for our WordPress and Magento admin pages by implementing brute force protection.
• New Intranet/Extranet: Assessed business requirements and evaluating SAAS systems.

August, 2022

• Created new development pipeline for all environments, allowing us to own our source code and establish our own dev operations.
• Documenting and organizing all technical documentation, to beter understand the then website and ecommerce functions, API integrations, AWS S3 buckets syncs, etc..

• New Website: Assessed MSAs, to plan around notices
• Collected web and fitment requirements from dealers (via distributed questionnaire)
• Selected new fitment vendor and held kick-off meeting

• New Intranet/Extranet:
• Collected requirements from dealers (via distributed questionnaire)
• Evaluated SAAS system options and shortlisted them to Interct and Simplrr
• Created common user cases
• Demo environment testing

September, 2022

• Upgraded server cache space at no additional cost, as from analyzing our server state, this resource was under utilized. By doing this, it helps improve our server performance to make our website faster.
• Improved automatic server resource issue alerts
• Completed the Magento 2 upgrade from 2.3.7-p1 to 2.4.4-p1
• Removed debugging code from web files to clean up our web files
• Refactored SQL queries in relation to tires and Magento templates
• Upgraded WP core, plugins, and theme
• Applied 3D security at checkout to help prevent fraudulent orders
• Filter quantities for tires are now showing the right quantity amount
• Pagination results for tires are now showing results (i.e. page 2, page 3 etc.)
• Completed our new staging and integration environments via DigitalOcean, which helps us save thousands of dollars from having them hosted on AWS
• Applied 2FA to WordPress and Magento admin login pages to prevent malicious logins

• New Website:
• Information architecture - by analyzing current web traffic data and web issue activity
• TireConnect SOW
• Copy writing strategy: Leverage current copy for new web pages and modules, this will help meet the aggressive timeline of January 31, 2023.

• New Intranet/Extranet:
• Created the applications strategy
• Planned and documented new features
• Created preliminary designs: website grid layout, login page, and general menus

October, 2022

• Fixed WP contact forms configurations to prevent maxing our CPU utilization
• Reset the CSD to Magento cron job to prevent shop error messages to display when users are trying to browse the catalog
• Issues with e-commerce transactional emails resulting from missed CRM data, required to make integrations work. Therefore, we made all respective fields mandatory and informed Territory Directors about CRM requirements.
• Stock availability sort by in-stock, followed by limited-stock, and lastly out of stock.
• Modified autoscale configurations and Magento instances during night hours to cut costs from AWS

• New Website:
• Created website strategy

• New Intranet/Extranet:
• Created phased deliverables

November, 2022

• Implemented Magento holiday season security patch to be proactive in managing fraudulent orders
• Removed acuity scheduling calendar from checkout
• Credit Memo documentations for CSRs
• OKT Garage accounts syncs with orders and appointments
• Applied a solution for child and parent stores (historical)
• Added Falken tires to eComm
• Hide YEXT reviews issue on store detail pages

• New Website:
• Setup Tireconnect fitment data extraction and testing leveraging their API
• Organized store data for one-time upload
• Responsive Designs: Home page and mega menus

December, 2022

• [Retail site] Additional emails for stores can be used to receive appointment requests
• [CTP accessories] Modified the contact form mail configurations
• [Retail site] Modified the shipping order summary for ship-to-home orders
• [Commercial site] Removed the store locator popup
• [Retail site] Improved the wheels catalog performance and core web vitals
• [Retail site] Store selected data collection for ship-to-home orders
• [Retail site] Improved the logic of the out of stock catalog disclaimer to show only when products are out-of-stock
• [Retail site] Upgrading WP core version to 6.1.1
• [Retail site] Optimized store data changes integration from CRM to WP to receive data every hour
• [Retail site] Dynamic integration from CRM to WP for appointment scheduler
• [Retail site] Code of discontinued items has been re-engineered and new inventory sort order has been applied
• [Retail & Commercial sites] Accomplished significant AWS hosting costs

• New Website:
• Backend data integrations with TireConnect to pull tire fitment data
• Tire catalog information provided to TireConnect
• Adjusted SFTP tire and wheel inventory files to meet TireConnect’s requirements
• CSD data flows documentation of current production state
• Responsive Designs: Finalizing WordPress and Magento pages and modules