NEWS » » Three new websites in development

We’re now well underway on three e-commerce websites, each with their own challenges and features.

The first is a Russian bookshop selling educational books, one of the first challenges encountered was how to create a good design for an e-commerce site that doesn’t have loads of products. Although currently they only have one book to sell, they have another 3 being translated as we work.  But we also have to consider the future and in 2 years they could have 15 to 50 titles under their belt. So our proposed design is flexible and scalable, so looks good and works with 4 books, as well as being able to cope in the future.

Obviously the site is in Russian, which meant we designed the site initially with English controls, to ensure everything was in the right place and had good usability, then had to tweak this to accommodate the much longer Russian text.  Maintaining and updating a look-up table of English/Russian words and sentences to ensure all words on the site are translated.

Our Content Management System (CMS), has the ability to load language packs, so the client will be able to access all the administration and reporting elements of the website in their native language, and we can still log in and access with English text shown. The same could have been done for the public front-end of the website, but in this instance, it wasn’t required.

NetCurtainCorner is evolving into becoming one of the leading website for purchasing all things net curtain related on the Internet.  From Voiles to Jardinaires, the site is looking good with a great design, reflecting personality from the client and existing branding.

We’ve just begun the HTML/CSS/JavaScript development and one aspect of the site we’re trying to focus on is good usability and user experience.  We’re relying on JavaScript for some nice features, such as AJAX - for adding products to the shopping basket dynamically without having to reload the page. Other features include hiding form fields and data until they’re actually required to avoid cluttering the screen and overwhelming the user, this also avoids taking the user to another page just to send a link to friend or similar. This site will also include other nice features without being out of place or over the top, including a unique viewing mechanism which allows the user to instantly zoom in on an image as they hover over a thumbnail.

But an important flip side to these enhancements are accessibility – it’s vital that the website is still usable and presentable when JavaScript is disabled or unavailable – such as when viewing on certain devices, such as mobile phones, etc.  Our aim throughout the development of the site is and will be good user experience and accessibility - if it doesn’t aid the user’s route through the site and to purchase, it’s not going to be included in the build.

Last but not least is the Pallant House Gallery Bookshop, with plenty of art books for sale, this site requires all the usual back-end features of easy editing and adding of books, categorising and tracking.  As usual our CMS has a full WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor and automatically re-sizes images imported to the correct size for thumbnails and full view imagery – so using the system is easy and intuitive.

A unique approach on this project is that the client is designing the look and feel for themselves and being based in an art gallery, we’re keen to support this and are looking forward to an impressive, possibly award winning design.  After planning meetings, we produced design guides, inspirational references and developed a wire frame structure for the entire site for them to follow, so they could see how users navigated the website and what controls were needed.  We’re currently working closely with them helping to advise and guide on good website design and usability issues.