Home renovation, DIY, and organizing television shows hinge on the ‘Before and After’ that continues to bring us back all season long. From the glamourous to the more streamlined changes, each reveal is different but the bigger the change, the better the reveal.
With an expanding line of Precision RF products, we recently completed a substantial update to this segment of the Samtec website to streamline things for you to find exactly what you’re looking for, quickly and easily.
Here’s the exclusive “tour” of the reveal…
Search by Interface Type
The first thing you will notice is that RF solutions are now categorized in four big buckets: Cable Assemblies, Cable Connectors, Board Connectors and Original Solutions. From there, everything is organized by interface type and cutoff frequency.
This replaces the old structure that was organized by impedance, which could sometimes be confusing to navigate.
Browse Interface Family of Products
All products available for each interface type are listed together to help you find fully mated solutions as well – cable assemblies, cable connectors and board connectors. For instance, you can see in one location all the cable options available with the interface type you need.
Review Additional Documentation
Product Spec Sheets are a great way to find additional information such as VSWR, IL plots and much more. Just look for the orange button at the top of the product webpage. Also on this page, you can build your exact part number and order, or request a sample, plus browse catalog pages, prints and test reports.
So, if you are looking for a cable assembly with a 1.85 mm interface type and a 65 GHz cutoff frequency, then you will find the RF047-A full cable assembly to be your best solution.
For an overview of Samtec’s Precision RF product offerings, visit the Precision RF webpage, browse the brochure or explore Picture Search, our online visual search tool.
Now, for a Behind the Scenes look…
Something that gets overlooked when big software releases happen is the behind-the-scenes process to make it all happen. We thought it might be cool to take a look at how this update came to fruition.
Wrangle All of the New Content and Data
What may seem like a pretty small change to the navigation was actually a fairly monumental task. To pull off this update, we had to create dozens of new product images and family pages, hundreds of new product features, an entirely new navigation structure for each category, and link it all together with no errors.
On top of that, we had to replace the existing structure without breaking any internal or external links. This took a lot of planning and care.
Build the New Hierarchy… And Test… A Lot
Once we had all of that figured out, we then built the new hierarchy in our development environment. This included creating the URL structure as well as all of the SEO elements such as the Page Title, Heading, Meta Descriptions, and more. Many spreadsheets were used. Many days ended with tired eyes.
Once this was finished, many rounds of testing followed to figure out if we had data gaps, inaccuracies, etc. For a project like this, it’s almost never perfect the first time.
Document and Create the Redirects
After we had everything correct, it was time to document the redirects needed. We sat down together and documented close to 100 redirects that we needed so we wouldn’t break internal and external links to the pages we were going to be deleting soon. 404 errors don’t just frustrate users. They’re also very bad for digital marketing and search engines.
The Move to Production
After we had all of the redirects built, it was time to move the new structure to Production. We first started by moving all of our new database updates to our TEST environment. Once it was there, we checked to make sure it was correct, and filled anything that we missed. Then, as a practice run, we deleted all of the old structure and pages. This simulated exactly what we would do in production.
Then once again, we tested and made sure everything was correct. After the practice run, we got some experience and were ready to move to Production.
We basically followed the same process to move everything to Production, and made sure all of the redirects were working correctly, updated the navigation links, and then waited. At that point, the job was done, and all we needed to do was fix anything that wasn’t 100% correct. This is usually a few day process as users play with the new updates and as our tools gather analytics.
In this case, we rolled out a couple of small updates and we were finished! All in all, this project took nearly a year from start to finish, and is being very well received.
Hats off to everyone involved for making this happen for our web users.
Coming Soon to Samtec.com
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading and being a Samtec customer. Here is what we’re currently working on, and a few other updates that are coming soon!
- Continued upgrades to our e-commerce experience throughout the website
- Upgraded online order management features
- Updated capabilities to manage profiles online
- Additional ways to search flex stacking products
- An updated RF Cable Builder experience
- An upgraded Part Detail page design
Keep an eye out for these updates and more coming soon!
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If you have any feedback or suggestions for our web team, feel free to send an email at eHelpDesk@samtec.com.
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