Case Study - Online Shopping Cart
Application : Online Shopping CartIndustry : Personalized Gifts
Aim: To design an online shopping website where visitors can browse through various products and order them with personalization options.
Background: Our client approached us with a need for a comprehensive e-commerce website design and development. They had a large range of products and each product came with a number of different color and size options.
Any product could be ordered with a personalization option as well. Buyers needed to have the ability to choose from any of the 2 types of personalization modes - laser etching or embroidery. They could also choose from amongst 1000's of fonts and embroidered patterns for personalization.
A secure payment gateway and an order tracking system were other necessities.
Objectives: We zeroed in on the following core objectives for our development team:
- Display products according to the user's interest
- Integrate a secure payment gateway into the system
- Design a website rendering an intuitive and interactive user interface. Despite the several product options and the 1000's of personalization options available, the ordering process should not look intimidating or confusing to the user.
- Design a user-friendly admin panel for effective management of the content of the site by the administrator.
- Browsing and ordering should be fast despite the number of options
Solution: Our development team came up with a website design delivering power packed features to the website owner as well as the website visitors. The look and feel of the website was completely focused on attracting the potential buyers providing them with a highly intuitive user interface. A secure and reliable payment gateway system was also integrated into the design enabling the buyers to select the required item into their cart and make the payment through their credit or debit card.
At the admin end, the admin had the facility of adding various product options and personalization options and then assigning specific options to individual products or product categories. Admin could bulk upload products into categories or sub-categories and then assign the colors, sizes to individual products.
Technical Background:
PHP and MySql on the server-side
HTML and Javascript on the client-side
Features: The website provides various features for both the end-users as well as the administrator:
Admin Section – The site administrator can add/view/delete categories, sub-categories and products. Admin can also add product options and personalization options. Shipping charges, VAT etc. can also be specified from the backend by the admin and changed as and when needed.
When an order is received, admin can download orders. They can update order status online and schedule an email to be sent to customer each time the order status is updated.
User Section – The website enables the user to search for specific products or browse categories. Product suggestions are displayed to the buyers based on previous purchase patterns of other buyers. They can select a product, specify the personalization options they are interested in and make secure payment.
Separate billing and shipping details can be provided. They can log in anytime later to view their past invoices or to track their orders.
The shopping cart contents can also be saved (if they are logged in at the time of adding products to their cart) to be paid for at a later time.
