This page presents an example of an e-commerce web site designed by myself, Richard Braine, in the hope that it will help you decide whether to hire me to carry out your web project.
Style
I have been programming web sites since 1995. Examples include the party photography site cyberphotographer.com, which holds more than a quarter of a million photos, perfectlyathome.com, a massage and beauty service, and gmpasset-management.com, a secure access-controlled content publishing system for a Mayfair hedge fund. I avoid re-inventing the computer's interface or dazing visitors with novel graphic elements and design because I think the average web site visitor doesn't have time to learn how to navigate all over again. My designs help the visitor navigate easily, retrieve useful information, and carry out any functions using only the most familiar visual cues, like underlined links and . My sites do not look like television advertisements. If your site visitors want to see sliding text and lifestyle eye-candy then I wouldn't recommend myself, although I am quite happy to work with other developers. If your visitors want relevant, current and well presented content as rapidly and painlessly as possible, then I am here to help.
Web hostage
Some web designers start with an alluring quote, but hope to capitalise in the long term by quietly increasing the client's dependency. It's called 'lock-in'. They charge unfair sums for each subsequent change to the site, and often charge an ongoing maintenance fee. I charge an agreed fee or rate for completion of the brief, with no ongoing fees, and I provide a website that allows my client easily to change content and structure so that she need not contact me for years. The site should be as easy to edit, as it is to browse. I normally use Apache web server, PHP scripts, and MySQL database, i.e. the commonest open source software so that my client can get alternative quotes from other developers should she ever wish to extend the site's capabilities without my input.
Example site
Below I describe various pages from the site www.emmettlondon.com using screen images. For privacy and security reasons I can not allow you to access the site administration pages of this site. This is unfortunate, because administration is the lion's share of the technology. However, I will be happy to meet in person to demonstrate web content management databases and discuss your needs.
The first page of the site:
content below the links is changed often by non-trained Emmett operators.
Variable width
The page width of each visitor's browser will vary enormously. The site automatically generates ten different sizes of image and loads the appropriate one to ensure that available space is used.
Don't jump around
While browsing and shopping, the page layout changes as little as possible so as not to disorientate the visitor. The basket is not a separate page, so there is no need for a 'view basket' link. A succinct interface puts everything at hand and reduces the burden on the visitor to read and interpret.
Colour search
Apparently non-geeks shop by colour. The colour search is lenient and finds not just exact colour matches, but any item of nearby hue, regardless of whether it is rich or dull, dark or pale. Shoppers are looking for 'complements'. Colour calculations, like many other functions in the site, are executed by the visitor's computer. This reduces load on the server, allowing for cheaper hosting and a quicker more responsive site.
FAQ
The questions page uses a semi-intelligent algorithm to find question-answer pairs that match the visitor's query. If the visitor needs to ask a question, it is logged in the database, and an email is sent to the operator responsible. The operator can only answer through the database so she should never have to answer the same question twice.
The site can be edited and managed from any computer with a web browser and internet connection. A username and password must be entered to access the administration and till pages. Note the protocol 'https' in the address bar which shows that when editing the site, communication with the server is encrypted and therefore private.
Reducing the duplication of labour
Below is the page which allows operators to respond to site visitors' questions. Clicking 'active' makes the question and answer available at once on the web site questions page.
Administration interfaces matter
The casual site visitor uses the site every so often, or even once. The site administrators have to use it every day, repeating common tasks. Recurrent tasks, like adding colour data, need to be very quick and intuitive, or operators won't do them. Here you can see how the colour palette appears over the item's image so it is easy to match colours by clicking them.
Expansion
Want to add a new shop or warehouse? There's a button labelled 'New location'. Give it a name and a currency and you're done. Instantly stock can be entered at that location, and the new location will have it's own till. It's just as easy to add new currencies, sections, sizes and items. The database is very relational, and the layout of the shopping site wraps sizes, sections and currencies, so it can cope with any number of each.
Saving time
You might want to change an email address: boring if it's on twelve different pages. We get round this by having 'global' data. Changing a global datum here means that changes will show in every instance on the site.
Customise
Another advantage of programming a databased site rather than a static 'designer' site is that you can have powerful features written according to your peculiar requirements. In this case the client needed a flexible and complex discount mechanism. A non-trained operator can quickly generate a 23% discount on the price of a tie when bought with 11 pairs of boxer shorts except to those paying in dollars. Here, the interface is especially important: an operator error could prove expensive or embarrassing. This page responds to every click and data entry by checking it's own coherence, and defaulting to the coherent state which most closely matches the input data and last action. After a minute's perusal, anyone should be able to see how such a complex discount could be keyed in, but experimenting will work just as well.
Results
Sites that give the customer what she wants lead to actual sales, and pay for themselves quickly.
Why have a warehouse when you can have shops? Any item sold on the shopping web site, or at another shop, is brought to the attention of the till user in the shop that stocks it. By using a secure web page as a till, tills are integrated with the web site on top of a single live database with up-to-date stock tracking. That means nobody can buy sold stock on the website, obviating expensive credit card refunds and grovelling apologies to disappointed web customers.
Not your bag?
Obviously a site such as this is tailored to a particular customer's needs. Your requirements may be very different. If you are interested in taking control of your web site's content, or if you would like me to put forward a proposal, please don't hesitate to contact me to discuss it.
