Case Study - Nexus Australia

1. The Beginning

At the beginning of March 2005, Capital IT and Web were contracted with the task of creating a brand new web site for Nexus Australia. The web site was to incorporate many features and it was estimated that the development time would be around 8 weeks for the site. The site needed to be database driven, storing products, clients and order information in a database. It also needed to be able to keep track of the current stock balance for Nexus' entire product database, allow new corporate buyers to sign up for accounts and incorporate a shopping cart system for corporate buyers to submit orders.

2. Corporate Buyers

A system was developed where visitors can apply to become a corporate buyer. This application is then stored in a database and emailed to the Nexus account manager, who can then accept the application and activate the account, or reject the application. Accepted applicants are allocated a discount percentage, so that whenever they are logged in, products are displayed to them auotmatically with their discount applied. Once activated, corporate buyers can log into their account to submit orders through the shopping cart system, view their order history, submit express orders or edit their own business contact information.

3. The Back End

Staff from Nexus Australia can log in to an admin area at the back end of the site, where they can perform the following tasks:

• Add Products - Simply enter the product details, choose an image and click a button to add products live onto the site.
  
  Products are set into different categories - the system that we have set up here allows a main category, a sub category, and a second sub category to be used when adding products. This makes browsing the hundreds of products a breeze.
  
  All products are able to be set up with up to 10 different price levels, so for example if there is a product with 10 different colours at 10 different prices, our system can handle it.
• Edit Products - With hundreds of products online, a fast, efficient method of editing product details was needed. Nexus staff can simply browse or search for a product, edit any detail they like and click a button to make the changes live! They can even change categories and sub categories of their products when they are online.
• Edit Home Page Text - Nexus are able to easily make changes to their own text content using our simple content management system.
• Edit Corporate Buyer Details - Nexus can view all corporate buyers, change business details, activate and deactivate accounts, and change the discount status of its corporate buyers.
• Stock Balance - Nexus can view and change the current stock balance for every product in their database. They can also print out the stock balance for their records.

4. The Front End

While the Nexus Australia site is not graphically complicated, the front end needed a design that was going to be quick and easy for people to find what they are looking for. Using our own in house menu system with 3 category levels, the left hand menu is dynamically generated from the products that are already added to the web site, meaning that it is never out of date and always easy to use!

5. Summing Up

The total development time for the Nexus Australia web site was, as predicted, 8 weeks. The site is now up and running and we expect that it will be a very strong performer in the search engines in the coming months, with hundreds of pages of content to be indexed!