The second (and biggest) project of the summer was an online shop for vending equipment company Back 2 Business Vending Ltd. – www.back2businessvending.co.uk. This was a joint effort between myself (XHTML, CSS & blog), Codeability (online shop) and Ballyhoo Design (visual design).
The brief for this project was to create an online shop that allowed the business owners to add product details and prices, and for customers to order and pay for goods online. There’s many online shop products out there, but not so many that pay serious attention to the accessibility of the site. Thanks to Codeability’s experience in accessible web development, we came up with a site that is both functional for customers and accessible to all users.
The visual design and branding for the site came from Gez Scott at Ballyhoo Design – my role was to turn the design into accessible code, and also to integrate a WordPress powered blog so the owner could add their own news items, special offers – and YouTube videos.
The site is being rolled out in two stages. It’s now live, with orders being sent through to the owners for processing. The final stage (early 2009) will allow the payments to be taken online.
Our online shop model is available for any customers who want a slick, accessible online shop at an affordable price. I’ll be developing an example shop as part of the LessFuss Design website soon to showcase all the features.