Database-driven & eCommerce web site design

We can design your site to be dynamic, produced 'on-the-fly' with a database-driven structure. This has the advantage that information on the site can be fresh and up to date, maintained easily via a simple web-browser interface. Such sites can be arranged for a range of simple or complex searches on the database, and can provide useful reporting facilities. Such sites are ideal for eCommerce and integration with credit card transaction services such as WorldPay or Protx.

A list of our clients' ecommerce or database-driven sites can be found here.

Content management web-sites require an interface between the standard web-server and the user's browser (middleware). Some popular middleware products include Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP), Blueworld's Lasso Professional, Macromedia's Cold-Fusion (CFM) and the open-source PHP. iCatching specialises in database sites powered by Lasso for it's speed in operation, flexibility in development and (when running on an OSX/Unix system) and immunity to common virus attacks, although we also provide coding in PHP.

Consider the Homegoods Kitchen Appliance web site selling fridge-freezers, cookers, washing machines etc, from major suppliers. This is a large and complex site which is remarkably easy for the client to maintain. New data (e.g. text, photos, pdfs) and pricing can be loaded up with little effort and even the navigation menus are easily changed by our client. Images are re-sized, thumbnails produced and watermarks added - all automatically. The site is set to store many hundreds of thousands of line items in the eCommerce section and copes with millions of hits per year.

Tel 01844 260843

design@icatching.co.uk

The Homegoods web-site is linked to an on-line database and, when someone clicks on a link on the site, interrogates the databases and displays the information in predefined format. This means that the information on the screen is only created at the moment a user views it, and is as fresh as possible. Unlike many "off the shelf" packages, the site is a bespoke design for Homegoods and the use of Lasso means the site operation was easily configured to suit their exact requirements.

The information within the database is easily updated using a simple web-browser interface (password protected for security). So, Homegoods have a fully-interactive online content management system, accessible on any computer system equipped with a web browser with no additional software to buy or learn.

In addition, reports are available to Horizon Galleries on any information held in the database, and a full statistical package on 'hits' is available.

iCatching will design you a database-driven site from scratch, or you may wish to upgrade your current web-site. Typically, the database application used is MySQL®, although Filemaker® or PostGres are possible alternatives.