Debra Raymond Military Figures & Gifts
Client Brief
Debra Raymond specialises in painting and selling military figures to an audience in the UK and abroad.
The business has evolved to sell other items of a military nature and other complimentary products. The
company has had two previous websites, the latter having been developed and run in house using the actinic
catalogue system. Debra Raymond Military Figures and Gifts needed a new website with a modern look and
feel which would be easy to manage and provide significant reporting tools to support an expanding internet
marketing strategy.
The Solution
TNC (IT Solutions) Ltd created a new design incorporating their existing corporate image.
The new website was structured using a category system based around military regiments and other
units so that visitors could find likely products by browsing through to the regiment of interest.
Individual products could be listed in one or more categories to allow greater flexibility. Products
were also linked to a product type which allowed the easy update of some product features such as price.
The website was created on the ASP.Net platform using Xhtml and CSS with a Microsoft SQL server database
to maintain the dynamic features.
A shopping cart was integrated with an automated address system (which found customer addresses from
their postcode) and a choice of two merchant providers for making an online payment (PayPal and Protx). The
shopping cart was also linked to a simple stock control system and an order management system to assist in
managing the orders. A system for creating Sales was created and integrated with the website.
Features
The military figures website included an extensive range of featured which could be accessed via a
management console. Some of these include:
Product Management – Products and Product Categories can be managed using a simple online interface.
To simplify the addition of a large number of products a facility was created to allow the import of products
from an Excel spreadsheet.
Sales Management – Three types of Sale could be created to allow for a flexible approach to marketing their
products. Firstly there was sale by invitation where a discount was provided to shoppers who entered a discount
code. A standard sale provided discounts to products and the discount was displayed on the website alongside the
product descriptions. Finally offers could be created to allow for example 3 items to be purchased for the cost
of 2.
Order Tracking – A system was implemented to track the source of any online orders. At the point of payment
the shopping cart would record the website or search engine which referred the customer to Debra Raymond Military
Figures and Gifts along with any advertising information, if the lead came from a paid advert such as Pay Per Click.
This system allows the company to focus their advertising on areas which generate the greatest return.
Order Management – The order management system allows the company to track the stage of any particular order
whether paid, out of stock, ready to be despatched, or despatched. It includes a number of automated emails to
notify the customer at what stage the order is at. Orders can be sorted by date so that a quick view of sales
can be made for any particular time period.
Company Blog - A blog was integrated within the website so that Debra Raymond Military Figures and Gifts
could publish information about their company and products direct to their customers. A blog can be a highly effective marketing tool and should be
considered by any company intending to do business online.
Dynamic Xml Sitemap – Most search engines now accept search engine submissions using an Xml sitemap. This
is a specially formatted text file which lists each of the website pages along with relevant page information.
It is important to ensure that this is kept up to date and that any new pages such as new products or categories
are added to this file so that search engines are automatically informed that new content is available.
Additional Services
Debra Raymond Military Figures and Gifts have adopted our management package to ensure that we deal with
any technical problems relating to the website. The package also includes a wide range of reports giving a
constant view of the traffic visiting the website, where the website is listed and who links to it.