Peter Cooper American Car Spares has been selling American Car Parts successfully through magazine ads for 27 years.
This client is bright, quick and nothing seems to faze him, he just gets on with things. Until about six months ago he hadn't used a computer before. His wife said she wanted a laptop, so they got one. He looked around online, saw that his competitors were promising websites 'coming soon', and decided that if he was going to make the best of his business, he needed a website, and quick.
We met and the client's initial idea was to have someone type in, for example, "Chevrolet" and have the software come back with a list of car models, they pick the relevant one and it comes back with year ranges, anon. I had issues with the data for such a project .. there's a lot of it and we could spend a fortune getting it all together.
I suggested using osCommerce as the main open source e-commerce software. Being free to use, it saves money to start with, and we could just list makes, models and years down the left hand side. We discussed a few "will it do's" and we were sorted.
This client came via a graphic designer colleague trading as Cloud Nine Design, so he did the look and feel of the site, including processing the category images, plus a new logo, stationery and so on, while I implemented his design and set up osCommerce. The client has done all the data entry. It's worked really well, and you can surely see the difference working with a professional graphic designer makes. So if you're reading this and want that then do this (contact us).
The site took about three and a half months to complete, and 83 hours of actual work from my side, requiring an investment of just under £3,735 plus almost £70 of costs comprising the domain, hosting, and a few bus fares to Pickering.
The graphic design for the website comprised £750 for a corporate id, £500 for realising that id as a design for a web page, letterhead, compliment slip and business card, and then £250 for printing 1,000 letterheads, 1,000 comp slips, 5,000 business cards, and 3,000 comp slips advertising the website, all full colour with a spot orange on the reverse.
The client said "it's far better than I thought, but it's far easier than I thought too. I don't have a problem with it. It looks good, it's gone right. What you've done's made it easy, and what Cloud Nine's done's made it look nice, and we're beating everyone else to it", and "we are now way ahead in terms of looks, way ahead in facilities and way ahead in the number of products we've got online" and then a little later "I had my first sale this morning and the parts are on their way so should be with him tomorrow many thanks for all the help".