and Books-A-Million

work Books-A-Million

E-commerce redesign

Books-A-Million may not be familiar to all, but to people in the southeastern United States, it’s a household name. Founded in 1917 as a street corner newsstand in Florence, Alabama, Books-A-Million, Inc. has grown to become the second largest book retailer in the nation. The company currently operates more than 260 stores in 32 states and the District of Columbia. They have always considered their website the largest store in its chain, and Happy Cog was charged with ensuring the flagship represented the company as a customer-focused, forward-thinking expert.

Services

Design, Development, Engineering, and UX

Industry

eCommerce

The engagement began with a comprehensive audit of the detailed flow documentation that Books-A-Million had painstakingly assembled. After validating and improving those pathways, Happy Cog implemented exciting visual approaches to surfacing recommendations, related content, and social sharing in lockstep with an omnipresent, pervasive shopping cart. Our “single-page” experience used emerging technologies while keeping the site accessible to all users, regardless of platform, browser, or other limitations. Using unobtrusive JavaScript to progressively enhance the page, we provided modular hide/show mechanisms that allowed users to quickly access a lot of related content without leaving the page.

The most prominent and important element in the online purchasing experience is the shopping cart, and Books-A-Million recognized and advocated the need to prioritize this, which allowed us to deliver a design featuring a persistent and omnipresent cart.