the little green blog

A foothold in online sales

We're delighted to unveil the second of our launches for the day – as it's got some special significance on the fuzzylime side of things.

We worked with Jen Antliff earlier this year to launch Head to Feet, which specialises in reflexology treatments and products.

Jen came back to us last month as she wanted to expand the site with a full online shop – something she had previously been offering through third parties such as Amazon. She was keen to integrate everything into her own site, making it easy as possible for people to purchase Kenkoh shoes and other reflexology products.

The timing was perfect – over the past few months, we've been working on an e-commerce module for fuzzylime (cms+), our in-house site-management system. We've set up shops before, of course, but these were generally easy to use for either our clients or their clients – not both. So we started from scratch, looking at the best bits of the best shopping sites out there and producing a system that we reckon outclasses them.

Now that the system is installed, Jen has full control – she can add more products or update her stock levels as time goes on. The system also supports electronic gift vouchers, lists of designers, showing products split by price and has a built-in search engine too.

The shop launched today, at www.headtofeet.co.uk/store/.

We wish Jen the best of luck as she expands into online sales, and hope to be able to use our new system on many more sites in the coming months. If you'd be interested in finding out about how it works, please get in touch.

Kick-off

fuzzylime worked with Paul O'Donnell last year when he set up his first e-commerce site. And we were delighted when he came back to us with a new project.

Paul has set up RKO Trust, a charity aimed at raising cash for better footballing facilities around his local area. It was created in memory of a number of friends.

The charity's site will provide a focus for the campaigning, including a list of donors and gifts in memory of others.

It integrates quickly and easily with PayPal so that people can donate in the most straightforward manner possible.

The new site is now live at www.rkotrust.org.uk.

Legal advice

fuzzylime was approached by Graham Keys of Ness Gallagher - a firm of solicitors and estate agents based in Wishaw and Motherwell - to provide it with its first web presence.

The design had to reflect the company logo and colour scheme, be easy to use for visitors and show the properties the firm is selling and renting through its estate agency arm.

As busy solicitors, the partners of the firm do not have time to worry about constantly updating the properties online so we coded a clever addition to our content management system so that new properties are uploaded automatically without any input from the firm.

Why not have a look at www.nessgallagher.co.uk and see what you think.

Full details on the site are now available in our portfolio.

Critically acclaimed

Arts critic Michael Cox approached fuzzylime earlier this year with an idea he has been working on for some time - to create a one-stop shop for arts coverage in Scotland.

A well-designed, easy-to-use website was crucial to bring his plan to fruition. Despite working on the project for two years, Michael had not come up with a name or a logo he was happy with. The website would contain reviews from all genres of performance from opera to rock; cinema to theatre and this had to be reflected in the name.

After a lot of deliberation amongst ourselves we came up with the name "Across the Arts" and proposed it to Michael who was delighted. We then began work on creating a striking logo to encompass the name and form the basis of the branding for Across the Arts.

Because the website contains a vast amount of information, it was important that the site had a clean uncluttered look and was easy to navigate for visitors so they didn't miss any relevant information. A clear colour scheme makes it obvious where you are on the site at all times.

The website for Across the Arts also needed a complex search function to help visitors find the reviews and information relevant to their requirements whether they were searching for a particular date, location or type of show.

If you have a night out planned and want to see what is worth watching, then visit www.acrossthearts.co.uk The site is launching with theatre and cinema reviews but this will be expanding to cover other genres such as film, dance, music and TV so keep visiting until your favourite is featured.

Getting active

Independent financial advisers Active Wealth Management approached fuzzylime as they felt their existing website was no longer meeting their needs.

They wanted a clean, simple website which they could put in place and forget about. As busy professionals they didn't have time to worry about updating a website every time something changed so wanted a format which summed up what they did, without any unnecessary clutter.

And that is exactly what fuzzylime gave them. Have a look at www.active-wealth.com and see what you think.