Pergola World

Pergola World

Five years building, rebuilding, and running the operational backbone of a growing company.

Role: Director of Management Information Systems (started as contractor) · Company: Pergola World / Green Okie LLC · Duration: Jan 2020 – Jan 2025 · Location: Oklahoma City, OK

Skills demonstrated: E-commerce platform architecture · WordPress/WooCommerce & BigCommerce · Systems migration · B2B ordering systems · Company-wide IT administration & 24/7/365 tech support · Intranet development · Product photography & content creation · SEO · Legal/policy documentation · Brand development · Marketing team management · Graphic design · Social media administration · Team hiring & training · QuickBooks/finance administration · Trade show design

The Setup

I joined Pergola World in January 2020 as a contractor to help with their e-commerce site. Over the next five years, that grew into owning nearly every operational system the company depended on — I left as Director of Management Information Systems, and the systems, content, and infrastructure I built are still in active use today.

The Challenge

Pergola World sold across four product lines — Big Timber, their in-house Pergola World brand, OzCo, and Simpson Strong-Tie — totaling 650+ products. The catalog wasn’t just large, it was deeply complex: a single lumber product could carry 300+ variants — lengths from 6ft to 42ft in 2ft increments, 7 stain options, 5 end-profile choices, and multiple cut configurations.

The original site launched on BigCommerce, before anyone (including the company) fully understood how complex the offering would become. As the catalog scaled, it became clear the platform had hit its ceiling — capable for simple stores, not built for this level of variation.

E-Commerce & Platform Architecture

  • Built the complete original site on BigCommerce: product photography, product naming and descriptions, homepage design, and all 650+ SKUs
  • Diagnosed the platform’s limitations as the business scaled and led a full migration to WordPress/WooCommerce, rebuilding the entire catalog — including every high-variant lumber line — from scratch a second time
  • Cut website platform costs by over 90%, from ~$1,500/month to under $2,000/year
  • Was among the first small online retailers to bring Simpson Strong-Tie products to e-commerce
  • Designed and implemented a new homepage in partnership with an outside marketing agency after they delivered creative direction

Systems & IT Administration

  • Built a custom shipping platform for oversized/variable freight — capable of shipping to customers across the lower 48 states, from New York to California — and trained the team to use it
  • Developed a custom B2B ordering and discount system for wholesale and trade customers
  • Migrated company email from Office 365 to Google Workspace and served as super admin
  • Selected and implemented the company’s core tools: Apple Business Manager, LastPass, Calendly, ActiveCampaign
  • Managed the company’s sister site, GreenOkie.com, on WordPress
  • Administered QuickBooks for both Pergola World and Green Okie
  • Launched a new Design Services program, integrating workflows, automations, and scheduling into one system

Legal, Policy & Documentation

  • Wrote the site’s privacy policy, terms and conditions, and shipping policy from scratch
  • Recreated the company’s employee handbook as one coherent document, after inheriting it as a disconnected set of individual files

Marketing & Brand

  • Identified an underperforming marketing agency, helped part ways with them, and sourced and onboarded a replacement team that delivered real results
  • Brought in a designer to build the company’s first formal brand guide
  • Administered company social media
  • Co-wrote instructions for the company’s first DIY pergola kit and specified the exact photography needed to support the instruction booklet
  • Designed trade show booths for Pergola World’s live events

Team & Operations

  • Served as company-wide tech support, administering Apple Business Manager for the entire team and personally training every employee on the systems and tools she implemented
  • Built the company’s intranet from scratch and developed the training materials and internal resources that lived on it
  • Was on-call 24/7/365 for critical tech and systems issues
  • Helped bring on and train additional hires, including roles for social media and the company’s Amazon storefront

By the Numbers

Site analytics from the WooCommerce build back this up directly:

  • Sessions grew 226% year-over-year (to 103,180 in a single reporting period), with pageviews up 262% (to 317,779)
  • An earlier period showed even steeper early growth: sessions up 1,330% and pageviews up 1,704% as the new site ramped up
  • Site pulled traffic from 10+ countries, led by the US, Canada, and the UK — genuine national and international reach for a small e-commerce operation
  • 56% of traffic was mobile, reflecting a responsive, mobile-first rebuild
  • Top-performing pages were exactly where they should be: high-traffic cedar timber and lumber product pages, the homepage, and the Pergola Kits line
  • SEO audit score of 87/100 (“Excellent”), with 17 of 21 checklist items passing clean
  • 73% of site traffic came from organic search in a representative 28-day window (5.6K of ~7.7K sessions) — proof the SEO work drove sustained, free traffic rather than relying on paid ads

The Result

  • 650+ products, rebuilt twice, on a platform that could finally support the business’s real complexity
  • Built the freight infrastructure to ship heavy, oversized lumber products coast to coast — from New York to California
  • Over 90% reduction in website platform costs
  • $1M+ in sales processed through the new systems in year one alone
  • Systems, content, and infrastructure that are still actively used by the company today, well beyond the length of the engagement

Why It Matters

This role wasn’t one deliverable — it was five years of being the person a growing company could hand anything operational to and trust it would get done right: e-commerce architecture, legal documentation, finance systems, hiring, brand, physical event design. That range, and the instinct to spot what’s actually broken and fix it properly, is the same thing Solution Squirrel is built on.

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