JWK SBI – Shop By Image Feature

THEY Say A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words…
JWK SBI - Shop By Image

…But we at the John W. Kennedy Company decided to expand on Henrik Ibsen’s 1913 roughly coined phrase by making a picture more than just a picture worth a thousand words.  We decided to make them a shopping tool and informational resource with simple mouse clicks on one image.

May not sound like anything different you’ve seen until you’ve seen JWK’s SBI – Shop By Image feature!

The John W. Kennedy Company has been using image mapping to organize information and build quotes off of since the early 2000s for a few of our larger customers. So it was only natural when we launched our online store in 2016 to use them directly to shop from as well, allowing site visitors to add equipment and parts directly to their shopping carts from an image! We have simply kept this feature on the down-low, mentioning them here and there to get a feel as to whether they would be used and how often.

In late 2018, working with our eCommerce provider, we customized our site to integrate image mapping directly into our eCommerce solution to allow us to map images in-house and drop them on our site to create a powerful tool that is becoming more and more popular. There is no middle people involved; just us, an image and our site! From concept to reality in less time than it can take to get a quote most days.

JWK SBI Blue Hill Express

Blue Hill Express, Canton, MA 2009 image map


Blue Hill Express, Canton MA Encore dispenser image mapped from 2009

Blue Hill Express, Canton MA Encore dispenser image mapped from 2009

We have mapped out everything from exploded view parts breakdowns to an entire gas station. Some of those early image maps are still being used many years later.  One set of complex maps compared the customer’s current spec to their proposed upgrade and the associated costs. Unfortunately, we can not disclose them due to their proprietary nature and agreements made with the customers but the impact they made was powerful.

  In the case of new products, it allows us to hit the ground running by building the new products with a high degree of consistency and accuracy with all pertinent resources in tow such as product images, literature and videos . Kennedy warehouse staff even use them to identify components they are unfamiliar with in various systems like pipeworks.

Fairfield SCM-5DS Image Map

Fairfield SCM-5DS simple image map of exploded view

The early image maps (like the ones above and to the left of Blue Hill Express) were much more involved and required several expensive software apps to create over the span of a few days that didn’t look nearly as sharp or cool as what we can do now.

By the time we made our jump to eCommerce in 2016, we were able to create them with one piece of open source software that provided a much cleaner look to the finished map with even more functionality. With all the information at our fingertips and all products in our system, simple image maps can be created in less than an hour like the Fairfield Industries SCM-5DS you see pictured to the right, while more complex ones may take a half day or more. 


No “hover” effects for non-mouse driven devices

This is really a bit of a downer we hope to figure a way around moving forward but not holding our breath at a quick and easy solution.  While you can still use the image maps on tablets and smartphones, they don’t provide the same impact, functionality, nor are the images as big as they are on a desktop or laptop but again, they still work and can be used on such devices. And depending on the browser being used on tablets and smartphones, some will open with just a touch while others require you to touch and hold to open a new tab.  Yeah, I agree, the inconsistency in web browsers from device to device and IO to IO is pretty bad as well.  We are all still learning this new digital world, even those building it.  This is why you will not find a direct link to any image maps on the mobile version of our site as we do not drive customers away by frustrating them with a feature that does not work the same on every device.


At this time, the most popular image maps are the Franklin Fueling FE Petro submersible pump exploded views.

Franklin Fueling Systems FE Petro Variable & Fixed Length Submersible Pump Replacement PartsFranklin Fueling Systems FE Petro Variable & Fixed Length Submersible Pump Replacement Parts FE Petro STP Discharge Manifold Assembly Replacement PartsFranklin Fueling Systems FE Petro STP Discharge Manifold Assembly Replacement Parts

These very popular maps are used multiple times a day to find parts and provide much needed information in a format not found anywhere else and that’s where the John W. Kennedy Company excels over all others; provide much need information in a timely manner.  We know who’s looking, who’s buying and when.  We know vendors and our competition use our site for information from not just our analytics but from the horse’s mouth. What does it say about the competition when they use our site over their own or the vendors to get information from?

Pretty telling to say the least!

That tells us what we’ve known for nearly a century, information is still king! And that’s the best way we know how to win a customer’s loyalty; it’s not just about price but the support network and the timeliness of that support. This can also be seen with our trade shows we’ve hosted since the 90s and our daily efforts since 1930.  And now, we are just trying to carry that effort forward to the digital world wide web.


So by all means, please click on the image below to explore our Shop By Image page that features mapped images from Fairfield Industries, Franklin Fueling Systems’ brands (Corrosion Control, Cable Tight, EBW, EVO, FE Petro and UPP), Morrison Brothers, NUPI, Omntec and OPW with more to follow!JWK SBI - Shop By ImageIf you have any suggestions for image maps you would like to see, please feel free to email
Shop By Image Suggeston
and if the resources are available, we will do our best to make it happen!



Can’t find what you are looking for on our site or have questions? Feel free to call us at 1.800.451.4021 or
EMAIL US

The John W. Kennedy Company appreciates your business and continued support!

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John W Kennedy Company Shop By Image: An Easier Way To Buy!

John W. Kennedy Company Shop By Image
NOTE: While the Shop By Image (here forward, referred to as “SBI”) feature will work on a smartphone or tablet, you do not get the full dynamic experience as you would on a desktop or laptop with a mouse. The one caveat to anything online is trying to create a unified experience across all browsers and platforms but that is just not realistic. Basic browser functionality and common code found throughout the web does not always translate the same on all devices and browsers as well as the fact that not everyone sets up their devices and browsers the same.

For nearly 2 decades the Kennedy Company has quietly worked to provide some of the most unique dynamic online solutions for our customers that make identifying and ordering/reordering equipment, parts and accessories much easier and quicker. We have created everything from customer specific online gas station configuration tools that provided complete quotes in seconds, real-time online equipment tracking solutions to image-driven point and click reorder solutions.

…And as the saying goes, a picture IS worth a thousand words so now we’d like to bring some of these dynamic solutions in to the light by incorporating our SBI feature, not only in to our web store but throughout our online presence and digital marketing materials that will allow you to scroll across an image to click on the highlighted portions to go directly to a single specific product or a category of products in our web store. As you scroll around an image to discover links, you will also notice as you “hover” your mouse over one of those clickable portions of the graphic, you will get a part number and description of what it is you are hovering over (this “hover” feature may not work in all browsers).

Our first SBI example was recently sent to us from our friends at Omntec. It was just part of their regular email marketing campaign and we just thought it was a great opportunity to see how quickly we could manipulate the graphic into our SBI format. This type of generalized graphic is great for pointing people in the right direction for general products within multiple product categories. Many of the products within the various product categories shown in this graphic are still being loaded to our site (a very manual process) but you will find a representation from each category as you scroll around the graphic and click on the choices (some will bring you to specific products).

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Morrison Brothers provides some of the best layouts to quickly assess how to dress typical variations of aboveground tanks. In this example, we use Morrison Brothers’ horizontal aboveground tank suction system layout graphic. As you scroll around the image, you’ll find you can click on just about anything to see your product choices and options. Definitely keep your eyes open for more Morrison Brothers’ AST layout SBI’s as we have 3 more currently in the works and we have had specific requests to get these online as they get referenced often!

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Fairfield Industries is our example for using exploded view “parts breakdown” diagrams for SBI. Everything you can click on in this diagram goes to a specific part for this specific model of Fairfield Industries’ 5 gallon double wall spill bucket. The only components in the graphic you can’t click on are numbers 11 and 12 as we do not currently have these loaded into our system. Here is where SBI can be most useful for the many variations within a product model where the differences are very slight yet extremely significant so NOT getting it right the first time can be costly in both time and money! Look for more and more of these SBI’s as we acquire more parts breakdown diagrams.

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This brings us to where the idea of Shop By Image came from. It goes back to around the year 2000 when a major player was looking to move into the area and was acquiring a great number of stations. Not being from this area, they would have had to send people into the New England region to check out every location. At the time, when John W. Kennedy, III heard of the dilemma, we sat down to hash out a solution where we could survey each location for the customer and build a database of those locations, what equipment was at each one and the serial numbers of the pertinent equipment the customer wanted uniquely identified for each location.

It was significant number of locations and for a few months, we sent a tech out with a camera and survey sheets (no smartphones or tablets back then and laptops cost a fortune). The photos would get uploaded to our website and a database was created to store all the information from the survey forms and the reference links for each location’s photos. When it was all put together, the customer would go to a web page, see an image of each location along with its current name and address. They could then click on a location, see various images from the islands (like you see below), ATG, POS, etc. As they scrolled over portions of the image, it identified the piece of equipment, it’s configuration and serial number.

The customer was very pleased as there was enough information for them to assess the worthiness of a location remotely without having to spend a ton of time and money to send one of their own people in to survey all the locations. It was done much quicker than the customer anticipated as well. And so the idea of Shop By Image was born (we didn’t know that at the time of course). Until now, it has only been used for special projects. With eCommerce exploding, SBI is a natural progression to where the online shopping experience is headed. Below is the first gas station we applied this approach to. We have substituted links in a few places for equipment that is no longer available such as the older canopy lights and the particular configuration of Gilbarco dispensers at the location. It isn’t the highest quality image as this was taken more than a decade ago when digital photo technology was just beginning to come into its own so the quality was hampered by the technology of the day. This example also shows how SBI’s from a single location can be combined to create a detailed “SBI Catalog” of equipment and associated replacement parts and/or accessories. See what happens when you click on one of the dispensers!

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These two dispenser examples are part of the above gas station example and are actual images of both different model dispensers from this specific location. Again, the previous station example has been restructured for the purpose of this blog post. In the above example, when this was first designed, if you clicked on one of the dispensers, you would be taken to a page of just the dispenser model to shop from. And while vapor vac is not as relevant as it once was, we kept all the original links in place as we still offer all the linked products through our site at this time. Give it a go!

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Back To Station Island View

VIEW CART CHECKOUT


Back To Station Island View

As we have come to find out with computer technology, images and the web, anything in a photo or graphic can be isolated for identification to provide the details and a much easier path to purchase. This solution has not made it to prime time on our web store yet as we are working with our developer to work out the integration at this time. If there is enough interest in SBI, we plan to integrate the approach into more areas of the Kennedy Company’s digital world to make your online ordering experience with the Kennedy Company as simple as possible.

And as always, we invite you to contact us at 1.800.238.1225 with any questions or feedback on the SBI feature, our web store and the available products you find. And if you don’t find, we may still be able to get what you need or point you to someone who can. You can also drop us an email using our contact form.
The John W. Kennedy Company appreciates your business and continued support!

JWK USA Logo