We have previously used Mal’s cart with several other clients, which is a great solution for small e-commerce websites. In this case, though, we needed some more advanced features. Therefore we have built an entirely bespoke system with the following features that are missing from third party carts like Mal’s.

Customer management Customers can create an account, subscribe to one or more mailing lists and get their purchases associated with their accounts. They may view their order history and print confirmations after logging in, simply by typing in their email address and password.

The customer management system was crucial for York Food Festival as they wished to provide discounted tickets to the supporters, ‘friends’ of the Festival, and at the same time they wanted to enable their customers to become a ‘friend’ by buying a special ticket.

Stock management As with all booking systems we had to make sure that if a customer puts a ticket in their virtual shopping basket they will actually be able to buy it on check out without having to fear that someone might have been quicker. This feature is essential for tickets, however, you might want to take control of your stock even if you are not selling tickets.

As a customer adds an item to their basket the system puts it in ‘hold’ for 30 minutes. For that time no one else can buy it. So effectively the customer has half an hour to complete the payment.

We have also made the system able to handle event limits to make sure we don’t oversell tickets. This can certainly be useful with other kinds of products as well, where you may have a limited amount in stock – as you do in most cases. We have also added the facility to set up a cut-off limit. Over that limit tickets are not available online; they can only be purchased through the Ticket Line.

User experience A rock solid back-end is inevitable for building a reliable shopping cart, however, we have also put a great amount of work in user experience. A fully customized shopping cart can easily win customers’ confidence. Your customers are not transferred to third party carts, they will stay on your website while they are shopping.

Our system allows customers to put the desired item straight into the cart after clicking on ‘Add to basket’ without even having to load a new page. This technology is called AJAX. Your customer can continue shopping without having to click to an “add to cart page”, but can still view their cart at any time with a single click.

Someone who is using an older browser needn’t worry either: it will work in older browsers as well. Technically speaking: it degrades gracefully.

Administration area We have developed an administration system which allows manually entry of orders by the client. This means orders by customers who don’t have an internet connection or prefer to order via telephone, can still be inserted into the system and managed in the same way. The administrator takes orders and payments through telephone and enters the details in the administration system. Their purchases will appear alongside all other orders in one single system.

Further features of the system include the ability to add new, or search existing clients and view their order histories. Administrators are also able to resend email confirmations in case the customer has accidently deleted theirs.

Finally, the best way to measure the success of this website is by its sales, and we are proud that after just a few days from the launch, the website is producing a high volume of sales.

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This new e-commerce site sells a variety of golfing products – instructional golf books, golf accessories and golf gifts. It also features additional online golf resources such as advice, videos and a readers’ forum.

The site was designed in partnership with Mode, and coded by Semlyen IT. The shopping cart is powered by Mal’s e-commerce. The site will be launched very soon.

Mobile Shredding Company

The Mobile Shredding Company specialises in shredding confidential waste using environmentally friendly methods. The shredded paper is taken to a nearby recycling centre once the documents have been destroyed, and this is always included as part of their paper shredding service.

They also shred various other materials as well as paper: their shredding portfolio includes interview audio tapes, floppy disks, computer back up tapes, CDs and DVDs, magnetic media, USB Memory sticks, uniforms, security passes, credit and loyalty cards.

This brochure site was designed by Bivouac Design Solutions and coded at Semlyen IT. Its SEO treatment included keyword and keyphrase research into the many different variants of ‘paper shredding services’ that people might search for – it could be ‘paper shredders’ or ‘paper shredding’, to start with – and then there’s ‘confidential waste shredders‘ or ‘shredding’ or even ‘confidential waste disposal‘ or ‘confidential waste destruction‘.

With a small site it’s hard to cover every possible variation. The site has therefore been optimised for phrases that receive reasonably high search volumes, but not necessarily those that receive the highest, as these are usually more both competitive and more generic.

For example, a search for ‘paper shredders’ on Google will produce pages selling paper shredding devices in addition to people offering paper shredding services. Even though ‘paper shredders’ is a more common search term than ‘paper shredding services’, it’s better to be more specific and optimise for the latter. This increases the likelihood of a page one Google position as there is less competition. It also means that people who find the site are likely to be searching for paper shredding services rather than a shredding device, and therefore should generate a higher percentage of actual customers from the search traffic that reaches the site.

Brassed On!

A new site sponsored, designed and coded by Semlyen IT, featuring a logo created by Caroline from Royal Fireworks Press (whose site we also manage). The site is powered by WordPress.

Brassed On! is York’s Brass Band Festival, inspired by the film Brassed Off. It will feature all five of York’s brass bands, plus a young people’s masterclass led by members of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. The festival takes place on 2nd – 3rd May.

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This site was developed using e-commerce software from Trading Eye.

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