Lunt Solar Systems

The Challenge

Lunt Solar Systems, a Tucson-based business that makes and sells premium solar and multi-use telescopes and accessories, had a website cobbled together from a prefabricated WordPress theme and slow-loading, cumbersome page building tools. Its navigation menu was difficult to use and poorly organized, and the site did little to educate prospective customers or market the products.

Several flagship products were sold as hand-built bundles, with no automation and a lot of duplication of effort throughout the process managing the online store. The whole thing was difficult for Lunt staff and customers to use.

A modern, eye-catching design with a completely reorganized information flow was needed, as well as several pages of new content to show visitors what the products can do. The online store needed to be completely reorganized, and a system for customers to share imagery taken with Lunt telescopes needed to be rebuilt and improved.

The Solution

I worked closely with the business owner to get a clear sense of his vision for the site, then rebuilt everything from scratch using a custom installation of WordPress with WooCommerce. I migrated thousands of products, orders, customer records and other store data along with dozens of pages of content, blog posts and more. I built a new navigation menu system from scratch and reorganized all the content on the site as well as the products.

I then worked with the owner and Lunt staff to write several pages of new content to market the products, and created custom graphic design to make these pages beautiful and engaging. I set up an automated bundled product system to make it easy for both store managers and customers to buy products bundled together, with complex options and variations made simple.

The Result

The Lunt Solar System website features custom design and layouts throughout. A custom-built mega-menu navigation works equally well on desktop and mobile devices, transforming itself automatically to work optimally on different size screens.

A wealth of knowledge is now available on the site to help both novice and expert customers make decisions about what technologies best fit their budgets and their needs. There are pages full of detailed information about the different models of telescopes for sale, how they work and what they can do. Other pages describe in depth the various types of solar and nighttime viewing that can be done. Interactive charts show exactly what equipment is needed for each type of viewing.

Lunt Solar System’s flagship products are telescopes that come bundled with a variety of components — some are required and others are optional, all with several possible variations. The site now features a bundled product system that automates the whole process of selling these, simplifying the experience for both store managers and customers.

Lunt customers are encouraged to submit images they’ve taken through the telescopes to appear on the site’s user image gallery, and the site includes a new system that automates the image contribution process and makes it simple for site managers to approve their entries and publish them on the website.

The site also includes a wealth of other information, from blog posts that contain technical information to a section to download user manuals. Charts display precise comparisons of Lunt products with competing products by other brands.

The overall quality and structure of the site now better reflects the quality of the products and service that Lunt Solar Systems offer.