macdonaldGD's Blog

Gaucho Belts’s website has just had a major revamp. Despite being very dated the old website saw a lot of traffic but it was crying out for a major update. In the end we went for a ground up rebuild but maintained the overall site structure where possible so as not to damage its position in the search engines (as a result of dead links).

The new website is built using conventional HTML code but with snippets of Flash here and there to provide some exciting graphics. The old e-commerce system was no longer fit for purpose so we setup a new “hosted” system with RomanCart. A hosted e-commerce (shopping basket) system means that the basket’s data and transactions are run from a separate server, in this case managed by RomanCart. It allows simpler and cheaper integration of an online shop into a website as well as removing security worries onto the website’s server. While RomanCart doesn’t win any awards for a sexy interface it is a very powerful and adaptable service that I’m rating increasingly highly. Like most decent online shop systems out there, there is a fee and in this case we have just gone for one of RomanCart’s lower packages (£60 per annum) which provides everything we need including, most importantly, the ability to connect it to a payment gateway and take online card payments. Gaucho Belts had previously just been using PayPal’s Web Payments Standard that, while free, pushes customers to sign up for a PayPal account while paying for their items. This often results in customers terminating the transaction as many object to being forced to sign up for yet another account (even if it is one as useful as PayPal). We’ve now integrated PayPal’s Web Payments Pro which allows direct credit/debit card payments from within the shopping cart’s checkout pages. This is excellent as you get the convenience of PayPal’s security and background resources while allowing the customers to pay by card unaware that the transaction is still being handled by PayPal. Payments Pro does cost £20 a month but, as with many comparisons regarding PayPal, that cost is competitive and removes the need for things such as an Internet Merchant Account with your bank (que. more fees there!).

New logo:

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Check out the new website for Cloud Drinks. Cloud are a new independent brand whose range of soft drinks including pink lemonade and fiery ginger beer is aimed at the likes of pubs, bars and restaurants. Find out more at the link below:

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A new micro-site has gone online for Sims Reed Gallery’s upcoming exhibition of Naftali Rakuzin’s work. The three week exhibition will take place at the Gallery at the foot of the Economist Building, London between 5th and 26th of June. Rakuzin, born in 1948 in Moscow, paints distinctive works, primarily of books, is the latest exhibition at the Gallery, following in the footsteps of Hockney, Russell Young and Sarah Graham.

The micro-site once again uses our bespoke Adobe Flex based platform we’ve built for Sims Reed.

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