I recently did 10 weeks e-commerce consultancy for a Felixstowe based Weddings and Flower craft importer.  Their existing website just wasn’t up to scratch.  The director Chris, saw my BBC video and that I had posted my CV on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and got me in to update and help with the company’s on-line presence. I am now a director of the company and looking forward to the new opportunity.

E-commerce is a simple thing, but knowing the business of selling, as well as how websites are made is a real bonus.  If you can tie all of this up with the people that need to administer it and getting sales – you’v cracked it.  Once you have the sales, if you can deliver the goods efficiently you’re half way there. The rest of the success is planning, financing and running the business. While someone else manages the money and I do the ‘techy’ stuff, it’s going to grow and grow and I am looking forward to being part of something amazing.

The old website for the company was on Zencart and the developers struggled to get the databased of products and customers of it. It seems very clunky and sales weren’t forthcoming at all.  We have chosen Evance for the platform. I am aware of Shopify, and Woo Commerce and have used Big Commerce for many years but the fact that they are based in Ipswich means that we have have a face-to-face relationship. Evance has a lead developer who is a great communicator and listens to development ideas and input making you feel part owner of the improvements in some way. Having used the platform, I love it!

The photography has been hard and is still ongoing but I have (of course) managed to get a Raspberry Pi involved with a stepper motor and a co-directors Lazy Susan and that will be a blog for next time!  Evance has a fantastic 360 imaging tool and something was needed to help automate and standardise this – so I got the soldering iron out and made something to help with this (see blog)

Work goes on and you can see the website live here http://www.wfctrade.co.uk/