Harrison Cameras

Little Fire Digital, expert Sheffield Shopify and e-commerce developers, are delighted to announce the launch of the new Harrison Cameras website.

Harrison Cameras, one of the largest photography retailers in the North was founded in 1970. In those fifty-plus years, Harrison’s gave been a trusted resource for professional photographers and hobbyists, providing a wide array of cameras, lenses, accessories and expert advice. Working from their premises on London Road in central Sheffield and a warehouse in Chesterfield, Harrison Cameras have built a successful e-commerce business.

Harrison’s has been using a tightly integrated warehousing and e-commerce solution for many years. Although they were largely happy with the system, the list of workarounds grew ever longer, and the number of core web vitals failures increased. In 2023 3CX, the system provider, announced they would no longer support their online shopping platform.

Change was inevitable. This was not easy for the clients. Despite its shortcomings, the website and larger e-commerce solution served them well:

• They had built fast and efficient workflows around the software
• The system could produce extremely detailed reports on just about anything
• Harrisons had built extremely detailed product data
• They really, really liked the appearance of the site – the brief was, in part: “it needs to look the same”

That said, a modern platform would offer:

• Intuitive Product Search & Filtering: Enhanced filtering options make it easy for customers to refine searches by brand, price, or technical specifications, simplifying the shopping experience.
• Mobile-Optimised Design: The site is designed to deliver a fully responsive experience, allowing customers to shop from any device, whether on desktop, tablet, or mobile.
• Streamlined Checkout Process: Simplified, secure checkout procedures enhance the purchasing journey, reducing cart abandonment and making transactions faster and easier.
• Integrations With a Wider Software Environment: Rather than ‘supporting a technology or not’, a modern e-commerce solution will have a range of plug-ins or applications which can add the required functionality to the base solution.

As with all new projects, we reviewed what the client needed and what the client wanted. When we start a new major project, we look for the solution which that will need the smallest amount of development to bridge the gap between what comes out of the box and what the client needs. At all times, we prioritise the robustness of the solution. The client’s decision is final but its what guides our advice.

Once again, Shopify emerged as, we believe, the best solution.

With an existing, successful business, custom from the busy online store mustn’t be interrupted. Customers need to know where they are and where they can find their products. Working closely with Harrison’s team, we ensured that all existing URLs would reach a relevant page.

We Built a Smarter ‘Page Not Found’

The empty ’404 Page Not Found’ warning is always a disappointment.

Even on modern e-commerce sites, most websites will leave you there, twiddling your thumbs. And that, dear friends, is often the end of the customer’s visit – off to Amazon they go.

Even after Harrisons had renamed all the old pages in a catalogue of thousands of products, the odd missing link is inevitable. Products go out of production, sell out or are superceded by newer, better products.

Also, Harrison’s sell a lot of second-user gear. Once those have sold, they are gone.

Rather than directing the user to an empty error page, Little Fire built a system to leverage Shopify search, check the URL and find products similar to (and sometimes identical to) the product the customer was actually looking for.

We recreated the design of the original site, as far as possible. Wherever we could, we replaced text embedded in graphics with more Google-friendly text-based icons and stickers. Where modern practice required it, we adapted the designs but, by and large, we tried to keep the experience of the site familiar to existing customers and staff alike.

We rebuilt the site’s functionality. This was not simple. If it weren’t for Shopify’s vastly improved metadata system, this would have been impossible. Using the new toolset we were able to reproduce the existing product data structure and, hence, built product pages as detailed as they had ever been.

Warehousing and fulfilment integration: amongst the things Harrison’s wanted to achieve was a second Click and Collect location for customers in Chesterfield. We integrated the FulfullmentCrowd application (the 3CX warehousing solution for Shopify) with the live site and got almost all way to delivering exactly the solution the client required. The limitations are with the app, not the team.

A Better Text Editor

Even with enhanced meta fields, the rich-text editors in Shopify are pretty rubbish:

Far too simple to review and edit the text that Harrison Cameras have spent years adding to their listings.

So we built a secondary website where the team can search for products and edit them in the the mighty Tiny MCEditor complete with full formatting, image embedding and SCAYT (Spell Check As You Type). Once you’ve done your edits, you can save them directly back into the Shopify database using the powerful Shopify API system.

No cutting and pasting required.

Yes, we selected, installed and configured:

• Mailchimp email marketing
• JudgeMe reviews
• MarketPlace Connect to list Harrison’s products on Google Shopping

… and more … check it out

Probably not. It was a team effort. The highly-technical Harrison’s team completed a great deal of the data transfer work. We helped, configured and advised.

The site has gone live, closer to Christmas than anyone would like but it’s purring away, generating orders without interruption. Shopify is faster, has a better checkout and integrated cart abandonment measures. The web pages it generates are faster and better compliant with modern standards. It is hard to imagine that, with a dedicated team like Harrison’s, orders will not grow and grow fast.

Little Fire is a Sheffield Company; we cannot tell you how proud we are to have helped and worked with one of the city’s retail institutions.

… or are you looking to get things out of your e-commerce you aren’t able to now?

Talk to Little Fire Digital, we’re really good at this.