This case study is an analysis on how our magento readymade solution served for creating a successful deals site, 3lamodak.com.
Challenge
The main challenge faced by Contus was to make the site compatible to Arabic language. Contus' technical team was required to come out with a whole new right to left design theme in order to suit the Arabic readers.
Secondly, the site required various levels of customization including newsletters, shopping carts, banner ads, etc. Moreover, the support team was required to provide a full fledged training session for educating the site's administrators on using the back-end features.
How we made it?
Contus had a perfect solution for meeting the requirements of Ahmed Balkis which is none other than its readymade daily deals software Grouponclone, developed on Magento. Having GPC as the base, Contus planned appropriately to customize the software to fit in various other demands put forth by the client.
Readymade solutions
A few of the features of our readymade Magento script served as instant solution and did not require any levels of customization to be made. Here is a handpicked list of those functionalities:
One step checkout
For the customers to make instant payments without experiencing hassles, the one step checkout option acted as a readymade solution. This integrated checkout feature will allow users to mention all the essential details like billing information, shipping methods, shipping address, payment methods, etc. in one single page without having to undergo lengthy checkout process.
Geo LocationA daily deals site earns rich dividends especially when the deals provided to customers belong to the stores that are easily accessible or located nearby. So effective tracking of the location of each deal-buyer will be way too useful in order to lure them further to buy more deals. To capitalize on this fact, the geo location feature was put to use. This feature will help in tracking the IP, thereby the city from which the customer had reached the site and displays other deal suggestions to that particular person appropriately.
Detailed Metrics
Our readymade Magento script has the Google analytics feature integrated with it which served as a perfect analyzing tool for finding traffic flow, user behavior and the loop holes of traffic loss for 3lamodak.com. Moreover, the advanced reports feature helped the daily deals site to download the reports (along with customer credentials) in XML or CSV formats for further analysis.
Magento syncAs GPC was completely woven on the Magento open source eCommerce platform, it enabled the site owners with a freedom to sync any number of plug-ins and extensions to power the site with multiple functionalities.
Payment System
The default payment gateway of GPC was made use for 3lamodak.com with Master Card or Visa as payment options for customers willing to buy using credit cards.
User interface and user experience design.
In the user interface and experience designing Contus faced an unusual challenge which its designing team hasn't faced yet. After performing the necessary customization to make the site compatible to Arabic language, Contus had to come out with a whole new user interface designing as Arabic is read from right to left.
The necessity for a new interface design was a great challenge and required a lot of ground work to be made. Firstly, the text related support work was completed in order to make the Arabic fonts readable and visually appealing.
Secondly the design flow was appropriately modified to suit the right to left reading style of the language which inflicted change in the arrangements of the side bars, widgets, social media, Call To Action buttons, header and footer. To suit the navigation accordingly the Menu bar in the home page and every category pages was interchanged from right to left.
Performance optimization
In the competitive web arena, the chance of losing a potential customer is more likely when the loading speed is not maintained at the optimum level. Loading speeds exceeding a few seconds is considered slow and websites, despite of their informative contents tends to get neglected by the users.
Performance analysisDeploying a highly capable server alone will not get the performance under control rather it needs smart stress relieving solutions to optimize it and make a site adaptive towards handling heavy loads. Using various performance testing tools, Contus analyzed the page-wise performance speed of 3lamodak.com.
http requestsWhile working on performance optimization, Contus laid its key focus on minimizing the number of http requests as maintaining this figure at the minimum level possible is the key towards achieve better loading speeds.
Additional FeaturesBeing a deals site, 3lamodak required more number of deals to be displayed, each one accompanied by high resolution images and banners, which propelled the loading speed to a higher level. In order to shove off this issue, Contus implemented the infinite scroll technique which prevents the page from loading completely and fetches only the appropriate page contents in chunks which the user wants to read.
Moreover, Contus used sprite concept, focused intensively on browser caching, request redirects and enabled features like keep-alive to maintain the loading speed at the bare minimum
Customization
Mobile versionCreating the mobile version of 3lamodak.com was the next uphill task which Contus delivered with perfection. The site's responsiveness was worked out in order to maintain the same look and feel across various mobile devices. Each and every minute detailing was taken into consideration to ensure the quality of the site's look even in the tiniest of screen spaces.
Cart customization and coupon emailsThe check out cart page which had an input box for entering the quantity was changed to a drop-down list box which allows users to choose between any values within 100. This limits the need for a user to click the 'Update Shopping Cart' button after entering the quantity of the items to be purchased.
Contus also created an automated coupon generation system that will send coupons for customers for every single deal after successfully receiving payment from the user for the deal bought.
How was Ahmed Balkis benefitted?3lamodak.com was launched as a daily deals site offering attractive discounts on various categories like Travel, Shopping, Spa, Electronics, Food-Snacks, Auto and Fashion. 3lamodak.com is now one of the upcoming group buying sites in Saudi Arabia gaining popularity steadily.
Clients speak:The professional approach, planning and execution were great. Contus' expertise in UI and UX design was best felt in the right to left page designs and navigations. The commitment which they had throughout the project has motivated me to extend my partnership with Contus.