The Context
ABC Surveyors are a property inspection company that provides building/pest inspections and reports.
They needed a modern website that had eCommerce features with the ability to accept payments online.
Although eCommerce appears simple on the surface, there are many wheels turning underneath (such as SSL certificates, payment gateways etc.) that need to be implemented and interact with other moving parts to work effectively.
ABC’s old site was outdated and difficult for visitors to navigate, so we set about using new technologies and features to custom-build an effective search functionality into their website, as well as integrate eCommerce so they could automate sales.
For example, their old website required them to manually email out reports – something that was time consuming and resource intensive.
However, we knew with a revamp, we could implement new technologies that automated the entire process, so they could focus their time and efforts on more important tasks.
ABC Surveyor’s New Website Above,
Old Website Below:
ABC Surveyors’ Requirements
- Integrate an eCommerce and online payment system
- Integrate a database search system to generate inspection report search results
- Drive enquiries / phone calls
- Drive inspection report sales
- Website should cater separately to potential house buyers and real estate agents
- Mobile Responsiveness
The Process and Challenges Faced
We designed the new website using a similar colour scheme that was consistent with ABC’s branding.
As mentioned above, eCommerce functions may appear simple on the surface, but requires a significant amount of coding and other work to make it safe and secure for visitors to make transactions online.
The interactions between the user’s browser version/type, web server as well as software used on the website itself are all aspects that must be considered as these all need to mesh together in order to work.
For example, if the client’s website is using an older version of a software, it may not interact correctly with the versions installed on the web server – resulting in errors.
When issues like these occur, we move quickly and fix these immediately as it can affect website functionality and user experience.
In this particular case, there were some issues around the .Net Framework and interaction with the client’s online payment gateway. Luckily our team of experts were able to diagnose and fix the problem within a matter of hours and have the payments working again.
We also had to ensure the website had a valid SSL certificate (in this case, we had to renew it), as this makes sure the website is secure for users to submit their payment details online.
Additionally, since ABC would be taking payments online we ramped up the security by setting up the Anti-Malware and Firewall to ensure that the website would be protected against cyber-attacks.
In Conclusion
The development of ABC Surveyor’s new website presented us with some challenges around the payment system – but none that stumped us.
We were able to complete the design and functionality so that users could order inspection reports and pay accordingly.
While this sounds simple on the surface, it actually requires a significant amount of work on the back end, to ensure security and compatibility across devices, browser versions etc.
But all in all, the website is now complete and the client is happy with the new functionalities as much of it is now automated, saving them bucket loads of time and resources (the old website had the client emailing out reports manually after payment – now, everything is automated).
Would you like to save your time and resources by having a website that takes payments online for your products or services – like we have done for ABC Surveyors?
If so, we’d love to start a conversation with you – just get in touch with us here, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.