Summary

Build bespoke ecommerce application and online content and order management system enabling secure ordering of photographs.

The need

A successful photographer with many years' experience, JGPhotographer wanted to provide a method for their customers to be able to view and purchase images from school photograph shoots.

There was an already existing back-office workflow which was handling high volumes of orders.  This workflow had grown around the particular business processes of the company and was working well.

The online service had to dovetail with the existing offline order management and fulfillment systems as well as to provide an online ordering process that runs in parallel with the offline purchasing process.

The solution:

A custom e-commerce application was developed, based on how parents need to preview their own children's photographic proofs, and then to be able to place orders for related formats of the photographs, and to make online payment.

A content management system was developed that synchronises site content with the offline database of school photos images and parents details.  This enables letters to be posted to parents with unique login details allowing only them to access only their own children's images.  Online order information is synchronised back to the offline processes for production and despatch of final items.  Existing offline rules around closing dates for orders, postage, charges for special orders etc were built into the ecommerce system.