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Category Archives: E-Commerce

The APN site is now live!

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Clothing brand APN (A Public Nuisance) required an e-commerce site that showcased their debut retail line, in addition to a stunning photography campaign and an SWL feature (or “Stuff We Like”) where visitors submit a range of interests to be included on the site.

We built the APN online store using FoxyCart, which offers a range of benefits, including:

- The ability to use your existing templates

- A format that is easy to implement

- Automatic shipping rates calculated

- XML Datafeeds

The overall site design is simple, yet striking, featuring red, white and black as the dominant colours. The Flash banner on the homepage features the campaign photography in an image carousel doused in a rich cherry red overlay.

See the site for yourself here.

Featwork_apn

Posted in Design stuff, E-Commerce, Geeky Stuff, Social Media, web design, Web Development |

The Atticus Black online store is now live!

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Atticus Black, the music division of the world-renowned clothing brand, required an online store to showcase its range of CDs, T-shirts and accessories.

We built a slick store using Magento technology – a market-leading, open-source shopping cart system that delivers Amazon-like functionality at an unbeatable price. We delivered an easy-to-manage store with a dark and gritty  look that was a design constant throughout the site.

One of the defining features is the T-shirt download mechanism, where customers who order a T-shirt from the store can input their unique code into the site and download a free mp3 track.

The store also boasts a seven-frame Flash banner, best-in-class SEO, easy-to-use functionality with best-practice e-commerce user experiences. An important aspect of the store’s functionality centred on easy-to-use (and easy to maintain!) upload and management capabilities – which Magento tackles with ease.

Featwork_attblack

Visit the store here.

Posted in E-Commerce, web design, Web Development |

The Atticus Clothing online store is now live!

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This Australian company wanted to extend its customer base by creating an online store that shipped to countries worldwide, including the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Europe.

Big Eye Deers used Magento technology, the market-leading open source ecommerce platform that delivers Amazon-like levels of functionality at an unbeatable price. We developed a custom store skin and homepage design, which features a gritty black and white product showcase, spotlighting the latest clothing and accessories, as well as a multi-country payment gateway and high-res photography.

The store features best in class SEO, easy-to-use functionality with best-practice e-commerce user experiences. An important aspect of the store’s functionality centred on easy-to-use (and easy to maintain!) upload and management capabilities – which Magento tackles with ease.

Featwork_atticus

We’re delighted with the results – see them for yourself here.

Posted in Design stuff, E-Commerce, web design, Web Development |

New Magento upgrade is now available!

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Magento has released its latest upgrade, version 1.4.0.0, bringing with it major improvements and all-new features. We at Big Eye Deers still believe it’s the best open source e-commerce technology on the market, and to say we’re excited about the possibilities it offers is an understatement!

Check out the functionality:

* Implemented 3D Secure credit card validation (Visa and Mastercard)

* Full reimplementation of PayPal modules, includes lot of new functionality and numerous bugfixes

* Full review of frontend themes, introduced design cross-package fallback and the base/default theme. Includes SEO and accessibility enhancements. Changes are oriented to dramatically reduce themes maintenance.

* Added ability to define arbitrary cache backends

* Optimized performance of sales reports, added new sales report typesAdded image/media uploader/browser, that can browse entire media folder

* Optimized performance of search indexer

* Made order processing workflow more informative and severe

* Reimplemented 404 and report pages, introduced 503 page, specifically for maintenance purposes

* Improved javascript files merging, added CSS files merging

* Added Widgets functionality, added several widgets out of the box

* Added Custom Variables functionality

* Added lot of new System Configuration optionsImproved order placement reliability

* Added WYSIWYG for CMS and Catalog

* Optimized cache initialization during startup

* Optimized export from grids in admin area

* Improved tax and discount totals calculation

* Replaced admin notification flash popup into a simple HTML overlay

* Implemented product and category URLs per store view

* Added ability to configure entry point using virtualhost environment configuration, rather than creating another physical entry point

* Optimized simple product view without custom options

Posted in E-Commerce, Web Development |

Twitter and Facebook aid small firms

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It is the 21st century equivalent of word of mouth.

From mom and pop diners to cupcake shops to technology start-ups, small business owners across America have been thrown an unexpected lifeline in the midst of the recession by social networking sites.

Companies that have jumped on the Twitter and Facebook bandwagon are reporting a surge in customers while others struggle.

With minimal marketing budgets available to many small businesses, social networking sites offer a quick and, more importantly, free means of promoting their wares to a global audience.

In the face of stiff competition and a global economic downturn, it is a route more and more companies are going down.

Click here for more…

Posted in E-Commerce, Social Media |

BBC to relaunch websites with focus on social media

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BBC-news-website-001
It’s a sign of the times – the BBC have announced a radical relaunch of its website to include more social media.

BBC sources have told MediaGuardian that the new-look site will launch by March.

As soon as this weekend the BBC could add social media applications to its Strictly Come Dancing online coverage.

Anthony Rose, the BBC’s controller of Vision and Online, declined to reveal specific details last night at the launch of this year’s MediaGuardian Innovation Awards.

But he did say that social media will play a big part in the relaunch of the BBC’s family of websites. He explained that the BBC is not only working on a new homepage and the underlying hosting platform, but his team is currently researching “what the next generation in social media will be”.

He confirmed that the BBC is planning several innovations to the site: “Among them for example, is the plan to enable users to comment on particular moments while watching and see what other users said about the same moment or simply rate moments with ‘Boo!’, ‘Good!’ or ‘Gosh!’.”

The BBC is planning radical changes in the the navigation design of its news sites. As was pointed out at a recent BBC open day, the news site – which attracts 10 million users a week – needs to underline the fact that it is breaking news. Many users don’t recognise that the BBC is producing 500 stories a day as well as a lot of local content; the relaunch aims help them find this information more easily.

Read the article in its entirety here.

Posted in E-Commerce, Geeky Stuff, Interesting Stuff, Social Media |

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