Champagne Gallery
Champagne Gallery has been the most ambitious and most successful web project I have worked on to date. I was the sole developer throughout the site build, and put in many late nights and weekends to ensure it was the best possible online store I could build. The hard work paid off, as it won the best retail site award at the 15th annual AIMIA awards in March 2009, besting other competitors such as ABC Shop Online, Berlei, Crumpler, and Mimco.com.au.
A strong visual and contextual theme has been used everywhere possible at Champagne Gallery, which not only includes an extensive and easy to browse product catalogue, but also a blog, membership system, event management and registration, forum and Champagne facts and information. I played a lead role in creating a streamlined and easy to use checkout process and general user experience. As it was the first full online store I had attempted, I was not held back by previous design patterns, allowing for innovative solutions to common online store problems.
While the site was based on the CMS Made Simple content management system, 90% of the site was written from scratch to avoid various limitations of CMSMS. Much of the work on Champagne Gallery has been re-used in it’s fellow site, Fine Wine.
The Fid
The Fid is the most recent site I have developed using Symphony. Drinx group required an online ecommerce facility to sell tickets for upcoming shows and events at their various venues. Throughout the wireframing and prototyping phase I was consulted to ensure the user experience would be as streamlined as possible, with a very clear focus on buying tickets. This resulted in a true one-step checkout, using clear language and interface elements to aid the user. Many conversion optimisation techniques have also been put into practice.
Beyond ecommerce, social media integration had been DESTINED to be used throughout the site. Twitter, Digg, Myspace and Facebook have all been tightly integrated, along with a prominent YouTube playlist and future USTREAM integration. A lightweight flash audio player has been integrated seamlessly with the site.
Scalability was also a big concern during development, and the whole system has been optimised on many levels, from database queries, data caching and intelligent image resizing and caching to javascript optimisation and constantly benchmarked web server configuration to ensure an optimal experience for the end user.
The site also contains a custom build door management and ticketing system, along with barcode scanning software and point-of-sale hardware.
Nitmiluk Tours
Nitmiluk Tours was the first site I built using the Symphony content management framework. I was able to very quickly familiarise myself with the system, and event went as far as building custom events (miniature extensions) to facilitate the payment gateway integration and tour availability checks. The current site checks for tour availability by interfacing with the Proteus tour management system on-site at the Nitmiluk National Park in the Northern Territory.
The checkout process has been optimised as much as possible to avoid cart abandonment, and I have attempted to avoid most common frustrations found on ecommerce sites of this nature. The site also employs a number of conversion optimisation tactics, and is also multi-lingual to cater for the many overseas users.
Fine Wine
Based on the same framework and ideals as Champagne Gallery, Fine Wine attempts to fill the gaps by offering premium beer, wine and spirits for delivery all over Australia and the world. Again I took a lead role in ensuring conversion optimisation was of utmost importance, and also implemented a complex structural navigation system to allow easy browsing of the over 500 products on sale.
Vast changes were required internally to support the new product types and new theme of the site. We also trialled a ‘Quick Checkout’ system, and soon after applied it, along with many other improvements, to Champagne Gallery.
By Tim Baker
By Tim Baker was the first site I wrote that didn’t use a custom CMS of my own design. I wanted to try building a site with an off-the-shelf CMS to see if it would save time, but still produce decent output without compromising the usability and features of the site.
To a large degree, I believe it was a success, and is still being actively followed and updated today. CMS Made Simple was used for this project, and despite it’s many flaws it still managed to get the job done. I wouldn’t normally put a site like this on my portfolio, but I have always liked the visual design and theme.
Ecosure
Ecosure was one of the last sites I built using CMS Made Simple. The initial information architecture and planning suited the rigid page structure of CMS Made Simple very well, and it was a very quick site to put together despite the large amount of content. Through careful planing of how staff at Ecosure would use the system, I was able to form it in such a way to ensure ease of use by any staff member, no matter the level of familiarity with the system. Much of the visual control was removed from the backend, with styles and colours being automatically applied depending on the hierarchy of the site. The style sheets are concise and allow for strong visual consistency throughout the site, with little chance of user error on part of the content editors.
