Freelance Web Design & Development Manchester » Magento http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:10:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Dungarees Online http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk/ecommerce/dungarees-online/ http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk/ecommerce/dungarees-online/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:02:26 +0000 Michael http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk/?p=303 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

]]> http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk/ecommerce/dungarees-online/feed/ 0 Breastlight http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk/ecommerce/breastlight/ http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk/ecommerce/breastlight/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 19:52:53 +0000 Michael http://www.michael-lomas.co.uk/?p=292 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

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