Affinity is an award-winning provider of technology and digital communication solutions, specialising in software development for today’s needs and tomorrow’s dreams.
Magento Multi-site 1 of 120 web-shops to be rolled out
Complex integrations with 3rd party suppliers and fulfillment houses
Aggregated content
Editorial and product control at web-shop level
Customer based customizable product feature with real-time visualization
Complex workflows
Continual SEO optimization strategy in place
Fully responsive
Bespoke checkout system to cope with complex store selections and service levels
Click and collect
Powerful SEO optimized 'Storefinder'
Staff extranet
Sophisticated user based permissions
Powerful cloud based hosting architecture with auto scaling
The Timpson Group who own the Snappy Snaps Franchises Ltd. a network of 120 stores across the UK were looking to us, as their Digital partners to help them roll out their ambitious digital strategy for the Snappy Snaps brand. The project was multi-phased and the first phase was to transition the www.snappysnaps.co.uk site onto the new Magento platform with the new design based on a Discovery phase that delivered the desired UX and UI at both front and back-end levels. Albeit this was not a transactional website. We left all the existing transactional websites in place. The main aim being to introduce the new branding and 'look and feel' to the public and Franchise owners.
We then had to build the default transactional website which had very complex integration with the Gateway 3D product personalisation software. We worked closely with Gateway 3D on this and collaborated on bespoke development across both Magento and the Gateway 3D software. We are delivery partners for Gateway 3D. We also had to integrate the solution with The Taopix software platform - allowing Snappy Snaps to sell and produce unlimited personalised photo books and photo gifts, designed by their customers, across a wide range of devices!
There was significant bespoke development needed across the Magento checkout to facilitate the very complex pricing model based on pack and bundle offers with the added complication that each store owner can set their own prices. This coupled with multiple service times from 2hrs collect in store to 7 days delivery by post, made this one of the most challenging e-commerce projects we have undertaken.
We also added the enterprise level Storefinder we had already built for the Timpson group with the Snappy Snaps Stores added as the 3rd Brand to come on board. The Storefinder data was architected to populate the contact us information within each of the 120 web-shops. we optimised the 'Storefinder' to reflect the actual time so it could deliver added value content to the viewer eg. Hurry store closes in 30 minutes!
Once the default transactional website was in place we then had to introduce the complex user permissions and grouping to facilitate the needs of the franchise owners whilst still giving the Timpson Group overall control and moderation of the content. A key feature was the ability for the franchise owner to edit the product list at both description and cost level. With the ability to hide product and introduce their own marketing messages and 'calls to action' on their sites.
Finally, we had to build a set of scripts to automate the roll-out of the 119 'web-shops' with as much automated pre-population as possible minimising the work the Timpson Group had to do to make each 'web-shop' ready for go-live.