Home Recent Projects Garett launches a new online store for Fire & Ice
Garett launches a new online store for Fire & Ice
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.