Freelance Web Design & Development Manchester » eCommerce

Dungarees Online

Michael — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:02:26 +0000

This is a business run by Paul and Claire over at TheBigMuscle, they’ve been running for a good few years now and after competing a few projects together they decided to let me loose on their eCommerce site which until now was running from static HTML they were having to update by hand every time a sale was made!So, in I step, the concept design was done via a graphic artist they know and work closely with, I tweaked it to suit my new best friend Magento. Using Magento allowed us to do all sorts of detailed work with the site without managing lots of different areas, one such area is the advanced multi-store features Magento offers. Essentially we are running each of their sites (at time of writing UK, Ireland, France and Germany to follow in a few days time) through the one installation, using the same product catalogue, the same payment gateways and the same delivery options (where we want to of course) to ensure minimum content reproduction. Using Magento we can give a single product several different names depending on the store you are visiting – the obvious use here is for language changes.

Frankly I could talk all day about the many different areas covered on this project, the short run down is a feature rich Magento installation, some heavy on-site search engine optimisation including country specific domains and full re-working of their Google Adwords campaign. We’re not leaving any stone unturned on this one so expect a Wordpress blog accompanying Magento in the new year.

As ever with the eCommerce sites, be careful you’re on a live store here…

http://uk.dungarees-online.com

http://ie.dungarees-online.com

http://fr.salopettes-online.com

Breastlight

Michael — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:52:53 +0000

I was contacted recently by Martin at South, he had a possible Magento project and wanted to run some ideas past me to see if it was the best solution. After a few chats we decided that Magento probably was the best choice to pursue. In short he was looking to launch the Breastlight site into several countries and as a result over several domains, Magento provides for this type of use right out of the box.

The project overall went really well and Martin was a joy to work with, it was a difficult task mind, the main issue was with having to use the same markup as the existing eCommerce / CMS site and hence using 99% the original stylesheet. It meant re-writing a lot of Magento’s perfectly good markup to fit. No problems there however, after a couple of hiccups with conflicting Javascript classes we got the whole thing working and at a reasonable speed as well! One of the major gripes with Magento is that it can be quite slow – I have to say the more and more I use it the more I’m learning about optimising it for speed and we’re at the point now where it’s very, very usable.

I’m hoping to have more South collaborations to talk about again in the future, Martin and the other guys at south were great to work alongside and I think (fingers crossed!) I made a good impression. *toot toot*.

The usual eCommerce warning now – the following site is very much live!

http://uk.breastlight.com

Alpha Batteries

Michael — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:13:34 +0000

Alpha Batteries needed a complete web design package when they called me. Whilst they’d built a growing eBay store they felt they were missing out on a potentially lucrative eCommerce store and I had to agree. We also decided that the brand as a whole needed building into a name that people would recognise, we started slowly with both Website Baker and Cubecart in order to test the demand – and what demand it was! At present we’re around 3 months into the project and the eShop is performing so well that we’re ahead schedule and already looking into further investment into the website and I cant wait to start.

When I first spoke to John I told him that when I join a business in a web project my aim is for the long term and to be still working with them in 10, 20, 30 years time. I can truly say im looking forward to those years to come as Alpha Batteries are an excellent client and a genuine good bunch of people and we’re working together to make their web presence a great success.

www.alpha-batteries.co.uk

Care Necessities

Michael — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:28:48 +0000

This project has been up to now purely a Search Engine Optimisation task working alongside another SEO consultant. There was a complete refresh of the key SEO factors of the site, from title and keyword tags to updating Google site-maps and adding breadcrumb style links.

The website is built on a custom CMS and eCommerce system written in PHP, hence it was necessary to delve in and work around unfamiliar code to fully implement the required changes.

http://www.carenecessities.co.uk/

Topdog Fashion

Michael — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:15:56 +0000

(I looooove that Chihuahua – something tells me the Husky might eat it though)

This is a small business idea cooked up with my fiancé. At the moment it is based on CubeCart as it was extremely quick to skin. Unfortunately like most of my own projects it’s currently half completed, but the good news it will be getting rewritten early in 2009 to Magento, giving us a much fuller featured shopping cart experience.

Intially I performed some keyword research to select the key terms to use throughout the site, with the redevelopment will come a second round of Search Engine Optimisation focusing fully on getting top ranks across these terms.

I’m quite pleased with the overall design of this site, whilst not all of the intended features were eventually implemented the colour scheme and branding really hit the nail on the head – we wanted a boutique feel for our designer dog accessories and I think we achieved that. Now to take over the petwear world!

A word of caution if you visit – the store is live and functional.

http://www.topdogfashion.co.uk