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On May 1st, Garett Group launched a new online store for the jewelry and gift store, Fire & Ice. The new site features a custom design, an interactive store locator
, and a powerful administrative back-end. A growing store with multiple
locations in the Baltimore-Washington area and Philadelphia, it was
critically important that the new site have a professional aesthetic,
powerful features, and a user-friendly interface. Read how Garett
configured an e-commerce system and completed extensive customization
of design and features to meet Fire & Ice's unique needs.
Introduction
On May 1st, Garett Group launched a new online store for the jewelry and gift store, Fire & Ice. The new site features a custom design, an interactive store locator
, and a powerful administrative back-end. A growing store with multiple
locations in the Baltimore-Washington area and Philadelphia, it was
critically important that the new site have a professional aesthetic,
powerful features, and a user-friendly interface. Read how Garett
configured an e-commerce system and completed extensive customization
of design and features to meet Fire & Ice's unique needs.
Problem
The initial list of requirements was long and detailed: wish lists, saved shopping
carts, advanced order management, search engine optimization, and flexible checkout
options were just the beginning. Since Fire & Ice sells mostly jewelry,
the visual impression the site gave would also be very important, and Fire &
Ice had very specific ideas about how they wanted the site to look and behave.
It quickly became clear that no exisiting e-commerce system could provide a
full solution out of the box. Yet, building a custom e-commerce system from
scratch would be very expensive and fail to take advantage of the many features
and advantages of off-the-shelf systems, including regular updates, increased
security, documentation and support due to their widespread use.
Solution
Garett knew that Fire & Ice would be well-served by the core
features of a commercial or open-source shopping cart system, but that
these features would need to be customized and extended well beyond
their built-in capabilities. In addition, it would be helpful if at
least some of these additional needs could be met through the use of
extensions/add-ons already available for the product. Given the large
number of available shopping cart systems, Garett had the significant
task of choosing a system that would meet these requirements without
having to add custom code that would be incompatible when updates were
released.
Garett considered a wide variety of systems, including both open-source
(freely available) and commercial systems, and then narrowed the list
to 3 systems that would be considered in great detail. Garett installed
demo systems, reviewed documentation, and systematically tested and
compared each system to find the best fit.
In the end, Garett decided on a commercial system that had many
extensions already available, was highly configurable, and was
supported by a well-established company. In addition, the manufacturer
could perform custom programming that would be compatible with future
updates. Various levels of support contracts were also available.
After selecting the system, Garett still had a significant amount of
work ahead. No amount of outsourcing could substitute for the working
relationship between Garett and Fire & Ice, characterized by
face-to-face meetings, two-way feedback, and an iterative process for
understanding their requirements. In addition, Garett would need to
work with Fire & Ice to develop the best method for loading and
maintaining their products, and would need to provide training for this
process. Also, many of the design changes and custom static pages (or
even dynamic ones, such as the store locator), would be best developed
in-house by Garett due to their highly specific requirements and/or
lack of interdependency with the core shopping cart system.
Garett developed a process that made it easy for Fire & Ice to load
and maintain their products on the site, and configured the system to
report on valuable statistics and purchase history information. In
conjunction with the system's in-built features, Garett developed the
catalog and home page in such a way as to optimize the site for search
engines. The completed system also facilitiated the sending of emails
to customers to inform them of upcoming specials and market the site.
Care and attention was paid to every aspect of the site, from back-end
processing to the appearance of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
The store locator even includes mall maps (with the Fire & Ice
store clearly indicated) for stores located in malls.
The site is powered by a dedicated server in Garett's state-of-the-art
data center, running one of the most secure and reliable operating
systems available: SCO Unix. With automated backups and redundant
hardware, this server is prepared for the future as traffic to the site
increases.
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