Tenterden and Canterbury Garden Centres web project
Traditionally Garden Centres have had lower web presences than other types of business as they unless diversified, don't lend themselves so well to internet business. Not many people buy plants online. It is only when starting selling related items like garden furniture and gardening tools that it makes more sense to be "online".
With other companies trying to buy up "ad words" for their name and no web presence, Edward Boult of the Tenterden Garden Centre decided it was time to take his family run enterprise into the new information age. He gave a very specific brief of wanting to show ranges of products that were avaliable as his stores, but not to list individual items and no online shop. He didn't want to dilute his walk in customers as people who visit, tend to spend a little more and this is a good thing!
He also wanted to keep customers informed of new special offers and news about the Garden Centres. As well as all this he very specifially wanted something that was easy to mantain and also for himself to be able to add new items and news without having to go back to the developer to make a request.
So what did we deliver?
Well in order to deliver something quickly and within the time frame that the budget would allow, we chose a popular CMS that we have already had experience with called "Joomla". The CMS has many popular open source components that can extend the functionality of the system with little or no extra coding at all. This really delivers exceptional value in many ways. Key points to note are:
- Extensively tested. Teams of people have extensively tested the CMS over a long period of time.
- Open source templates and extended features. This saves a great deal of time writing something specially.
- Used pre written email campaign manager. Now all the customers can keep up to date with the latest news.
- Built in editing - any user with the correct permissions can add new content and make it look amazing.
The site also provides a wealth of information for the general public such as maps for each store, opening times, special offer news. You can visit the site at http://www.tenterdengc.co.uk .