MyNiceTie Redesign

7/14/13

One of my first entrepreneurial endeavors was MyNiceTie. When I got home from serving in Russia a friend, and business partner, gave me $7,000 to start what we thought would be a nationwide necktie company. I took the investment, flew to South Korea, and bought 2,000 ties. At that time, having a website wasn’t even in the plan, I just knew I could buy ties for almost nothing and sell them cheaper in the US for a healthy profit (brilliant strategy, right? ;). This was the decision that led me to a love an passion for internet ventures.

The latest news with MyNiceTie is I just finished the redesign the site. I transferred everyting from Magento on my server to Shopify. I needed to do it quickly, so I used a pretty sweet responsive template and created a custom homepage banner. I also created a better product sorter on the category page.

For years MyNiceTie was build on Magento and I never had time to keep up with updates. I also found Magento to be slow and bulky on both the front-end and admin. This week it was time for an upgrade and although I started to design a new Magento site, I quickly ran into the bulky mess of transferring my old site to a new one. At this point I wondered if there was anything new in eCommerce these days.

Interestingly enough, not much has changed in the past couple years in eCommerce. Magento is still the leader and there are a couple other platforms, each with their pros and cons. However, I came across an article that mentioned Shopify. I had heard of them repetitively because of their sponsorship of Mixergy, an entrepreneurial podcast I love, but I had never looked into them.

I was pleasantly surprised with what I found. I loved the idea that I’d never have to worry about another update, I also loved the fact that my site would load noticeably faster than on Magento. In addition, it was very easy to switch, although it could have been even easier if they had fixed a bug that cost me about 5 hours of dev time.

The platform isn’t perfect yet though, there are a couple things I really don’t like about their solution and if you know of any others, let me know below. The ones I’ve found so far are you can’t use a custom SSL certificate and the product importer needs to be improved. For now, however, I can live with these problems.

I launched the new site early Friday morning and its too early to tell, but so far direct traffic and page views have doubled and it feels like orders have also increased. I’m sure I’ll give you an update shortly.

Till then, check out the site and let me know what you think below. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

 

Live Project Link: http://mynicetie.com

About The Author

Ben currently works as a senior developer and technical business consultant outside of Boulder, Colorado.

Read more about Ben

About Buink

Buink Web Development is a development shop founded in 2009 by Ben Buie. For years, Ben built and modified web assets for clients in Utah. In 2011, he moved the company to Colorado and in 2015 he started taking on new clients full-time.

Buink’s Core Values:

  • Cost effective technology (with business strategy in mind)
  • Eloquent, maintainable code
  • Responsive and transparent communication

Read more about Buink

Dave G.
Dave G.
14:05 13 Aug 23
Buink is a great place to work, as well as a great place to have quality software written. I originally contracted Buink for some web development, and it worked out so well we began working together on many different projects. Definitely an honest transparent company that needs to be considered for... your software needs.read more
Dru M.
Dru M.
15:41 25 Mar 21
Ben’s a super responsive, thoughtful, sharp and all around great guy to work with. Excellent with his trade. I’d recommend him to anyone. Thanks Ben!
Seth L.
Seth L.
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Ben and team are incredible to work with. They are reliable and proficient. I'd highly recommend hiring them for web development work. SethVOLTAGE
Craig A.
Craig A.
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It was a pleasure to work with Ben and his team. It is rare to find such attention to high standards of coding and devops.
Lexi S.
Lexi S.
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Grateful to have Ben and his team as such a capable, reliable partner for completing client work!
Tom S.
Tom S.
13:18 14 Jun 19
I reached out to Buink after finding Ben’s name in a local developer/consultant listing in 2017, and I have to say, it has been an absolute pleasure to work with Buink. Ben consistently understands not just the development task laid in front of him but the business application behind the task. I’ve... never felt more comfortable with a development team than I do with Buink. I truly feel Ben and his team are integral partners in the success of my business.read more
Marilyn F.
Marilyn F.
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I could not recommend Buink Web Development more highly. Ben and his team have recently developed a budgeting app for me (both web and IOS). I have had the opportunity of working with them for over a year and I am extremely happy with the results.I would say that the biggest plus for me is that I... trust Ben completely. From the very first, Ben has helped me make decisions that were in the best interest of my company. I have never felt like he is taking advantage of me. Ben does his best to keep the whole process very open and upfront. I have really appreciated that.I tell people all the time that I love my developers. And I do. I'm very happy that I chose to use Buink to develop my apps. It was the best business decision I could have made.If you are looking for someone to develop a website or app, I strongly suggest choosing Buink Web Development. They are fantastic!Marilyn Ference, President, Defend Your Money, LLCread more
James Landon B.
James Landon B.
01:33 28 Aug 18
Great company to help with all your web design needs!
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