Boohoo.com

Tags: bespoke content management, ecommerce, integration, mysql, pci compliance, php, postcode lookup

Between March 2007 and August 2010 Kudos Web Solutions was the lead supplier of web design and development services to Boohoo.com, providing a full range of services ranging from hosting, design, project management, bespoke software development to consultancy and advisory roles. We worked with Boohoo.com from very early on in the company’s life whent hey were taking only a handful of orders per day, right up to the present day volumes which number in the thousands per day.

Integration with legacy offline systems, real-time stock/inventory control, secure payments including PCI (Payments Card Industry) compliance and high transaction volumes are just a few examples of the challeneges offered by the boohoo.com project.

When we first started working with this client, the public interface was written entirely in Flash and there were a number of small issues that we were asked to address immediately. We did this working within the existing framework, removing the need to ‘start again’ which was the solution proposed by the other agencies competing for the work.

The work was completed on time and to budget, and resulted in the establishment of an ongoing development roadmap.

In the following years, we effectively rewrote the site piece by piece, adding stability and enhancing the user experience through the introduction of new functionality. Work completed to date includes the development of a web-based administrative interface to allow product merchandising, administration of promotions/promotional codes, a message queue to buffer orders going through to the stock control system, one-click ordering, implementation of a dedicated multi-server hosting environment and more.

When the time came for the front-end of the site to be refreshed, we recommended that the site be rewritten in CSS/HTML to aid with compliance on accessibility and SEO grounds, but as the site was originally written in Flash the client insisted on maintaining an animated look and feel with no page reloads to avoid alienating their existing client base. This was achieved through the development of a completely bespoke AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) user interface, tested to work across all browsers and built with a non-JS friendly fallback for every feature.

This interface was subsequently refreshed and ultimately replaced by a more static front-end to allow better visitor tracking and further enhance the user experience.

Boohoo.com represents our ideal project – lots of tricky technical requirements and bespoke development to get our teeth into! We aren’t afraid of supporting legacy solutions whilst we develop piecemeal alongside, and we have the expertise and experience to deal with all mission-critical aspects of web business from PCI compliance to high-volume concurrency and stock-management.

Call now to find out how we can do this for your business.