Country Best eCommerce Site

Posted February 13th, 2004 in Case Studies (Updated February 24th, 2004)

The Country Best website offers a unique range of designer baby clothing handmade in New Zealand.

The web site was designed by Nicola Wright of Deluxe Design. She created a static HTML version of the site and I then turned it into a dynamic database driven site using PHP and MySQL.

Screenshot of the Country Best homepage

The site utilises a shopping cart system created specifically for Country Best where the customer can select the pattern, size and quantity of each garment they would like to order. These all appear on a single page (it's not a huge range of products), making it easy for the customer to select everything they would like to order all at one go. They can continue to return to the product page and add more items to their basket as often as they wish; cookies are used to remember which session belongs to which visitor and the current shopping basket is linked to the session. A screenshot of this product page appears below:

The list of Country Best products

Once the customer has decided they are ready to place their order, they proceed to the checkout on a secure server where they select which country they will be freighting the order to. After selecting this from a drop down box, the freight value on the order is automatically calculated using a database driven freight matrix based on the NZ Post freight rates.

After completing their details the order status is changed in the database and emails sent to both the customer thanking them for their order, and Country Best to notify them they have a new order. Basic information is sent in the email to Country Best but they must log into the secure server to get the complete order details including credit card payment information. At the present time credit card payments are made manually; if the site gets busy enough they will look to move to an online credit card processing system.

Checking out at Country Best

An administration system was also created to make it easy for Country Best to collect their orders and make changes to the product information.

Editing a product in the Country Best administration area

This product administration is very simple but it allows all information about the product to be changed, including the name, description, price, designs, sizes and whether or not it is currently visible in the website.

If you are interested in buying some good quality handmade designer clothing for your child then visit the Country Best website