Love the Lakes

November 11th, 2008

October saw the launch of one of the largest websites that I have undertaken so far. The site was for a real bricks and mortar shop in England’s Lake District which specialises in products sourced locally – the products were main gift items such as mugs, books and clothing.

The brief was to create a website that would sell many of the products in the shop and the site was to be able to be updated by the client. We decided to use PayPal as our payment system – the main reason behind this was cost, because PayPal is free from monthly fee’s the client would not be tied down to a monthly outgoing straight away while their new business was still in it’s infancy. PayPal does come with it’s own shopping cart, but we wanted to keep the customer on the site while they shopped, so a custom shopping cart was created.

The admin suite allows the client to manage the contents of the site, which includes all the products and text pages. Many additions were made while the project was being created, which in turn added a great deal of functionality and also added time to the project. I’ve taken away the knowledge of having a clear and strict brief that doesn’t change (or hardly changes) during the project’s life cycle is very important for both parties – this way the client know’s what they are getting and the designer know’s in advance of starting the project what they must achieve.

You can view the website here; www.lovethelakes.net

Tags: Design, love the lakes, project, website