Since Encore Data Products does most business online our web store had to work well, be user-friendly, have a decent look and most importantly leave customers wanting to return.   we shopped around prior to partnering with a firm to build our online store in 2006.  After checking out various store software versions and companies who created stores we ended up going with Ryan Design Studio.

 The result exceeded our expectations and the store looks great.  I spoke with Padraic Ryan, founder of Ryan Design Studio, to get a little information on their company and find out what makes them successful:

 Tell us a little about Ryan Design Studio 

 I formed Ryan Design Studio back in 2003 as an Architecture and Web Development firm. Architecture and Web Design may sound like two totally unrelated fields, but from a design perspective they are essentially the same thing: solving a problem using design. While the housing market slowed here in the Northeast, the e-commerce market was growing at an exponential rate, so we decided to drop Architecture all together and focus solely on e-commerce and other web development projects.

 Originally Ryan Design Studio was only myself, but I now have two graphic designers and two programmers who I partner with on most projects. This not only keeps our designs fresh and different, but also allows me to give our clients the one on one support that they have grown accustomed to.

Why did you end up focusing on X-Cart store software over some other choices?

 When we were developing our first e-commerce store back in the early 90s, we had to essentially build our own shopping cart system using a programming language called CGI. Over the years, there have been more and more companies who offer pre-made systems, and we have tried most of them. We finally settled on X-Cart mainly due to their extremely flexible system and the extensive development community that has grown up around it. There are literally hundreds of add-on modules available, and most importantly, the code allows us to integrate any look we want into the template system. We have found it to be a great platform.

Does your company offer services other than X-Cart design?

We originally offered Architectural services as well as web development, but have since dropped our Architectural practice. We specialize mainly in e-commerce sites built with X-Cart, but also build 'brochure' type sites for businesses who are just looking for a web presence or on-line portfolio of projects. We also run our own hosting service that is geared primarily for our X-Cart clients.

If you are looking for a company to get your business online we recommend Ryan Design Studio; for more information you can contact them here.