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Part of that simpler experience involved Reid eliminating most of the marketing messages on the site. Their customers wanted better search results with less "marketing clutter" to get in the way of buying the products they wanted. On top of this, they added vital on-line account management for the customer.

"We conducted a deep survey of Reid Customers and frankly, discovered a few problems," said Palmer. "We found out, through direct and indirect contact, that users wanted a better, smarter, search tool; they wanted an easier way to manage their on-line accounts; and they wanted a site that was clear of marketing clutter so that they could find the products that they needed faster."

The Reid team realized from the survey that they had some pretty serious remodeling to do. Utilizing best web practices; smart data use; and some very creative programming and designing, they got to work.

They determined the new site would need a lot of web images because they wanted it to be image-driven, as well as data searchable. The Reid team utilized all of their print catalog images, took photos of missing images, and utilized computer aided design (CAD) drawings, which are free to the customer, to give the site added functionality.

According to the company, their new web site is much more than better data; an improved search experience was number one on the customers' request list.

"The first thing we considered was how we could create a simpler and smarter search app that delivered what customers were looking for," said John Carrier, President of Reid Supply Company. "Our new Smarter Search function is very
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