May 20, 2018 / by DT Diepstra / In spotlight, development, design
The making and branding of Kiteshop Bonaire.com.
Kiteshop Boniare started as a side project but quickly turned into a full webshop.
Webshop development 1-2-3..
To make a webshop you can rely on existing software packages like Shopify or Wix, but you soon lose control and customizing them will quickly turn out to be a pain in the b*t. Although the costs of these out-of-the-box packages are not really a dealbreaker, I’ve found that customizing, whether it is SEO, payment provider, or just plain colors is really no-bueno!
Then there are the Wordpress plugins, like WooCommerce, and the stand-alone Saas platform; Magento. Both excellent solutions, and although they deserve further investigation for future projects, we decided to stick with Ruby on Rails and the Solidus projects.
Ruby on Rails app development
Ruby is a programming language favorite by a large community. It is praised for it’s Object Orientated Programming features, the ease of writing and reading, and was once referenced to as ‘The programming language for programmer happiness’. Now, if you have a full-time job spending your time looking at code, than it should at least make you happy and be a joy to work with right?!
The Rails framework is ‘web’ framework, build with and on top of ruby. It is designed to provide a structure with best practices, security, and architecture so that the developer has a structured workplace and can focus on progression. Most ‘web’ application all have the same structure, they have ‘Data’ to be handled, and ‘requests’ coming in from the browser, so having a framework with all the best practices sounds like a good point to start from.
Solidus webshop
Both Ruby and Rails rely heavily on the Open Source Community. This community strives to build better software and share knowledge. They also provide numerous solutions for the most common problems found on any application. Take for instance authentication, or mailing, or in our case; a Webshop. Luckily, our community has the Solidus framework to fit nicely in the Rails application. It’s also written in Ruby, and with a little javascript juice on top it provides a great architecture to build a *rock-solid fully customized webshop * on.
Webshop Challenges
Having combined all our dependency’s into a great stack of software we now can take up the challenges of serving such this huge app to the public.
Okay, that’s a great marketing slogan, but what does it actually mean?
Web applications grow, they gain new features and pages like login, images, accounts, payment and lots more. The app grows in size, literally the number of megabytes, but also in usability.
Have you ever thought about loading the same web app from different locations of the world? Now there is a challenge, consider loading the application in Amsterdam, and in New York, and you want the same page speed and loading times.
And how about 100’s of users using the same application at the same time, clicking on the same button, and perhaps making the same order, which would mean you would run out of stock and you’d have to disappoint the customer.
Custom webshop
The initial idea behind Kiteshop Bonaire was to provide a platform for all the Kiteschools and resellers on the island. A joint venture where there would be one online store-front for multiple sellers, and we would just provide the platform and marketing to make it happen.
Here started the wish for customization. The idea was that the shop would adopt the style and features represented by the brand that the customer was interested in. Also, a per-seller customized discount and shopping-cart system have been made and implemented.
We can not show this in a blog-post, but if you’re interested we will be happy to give you a tour behind the scenes!
Always one step ahead, thinking of security, speed, and making the software work for you! The customized web shop is complete success and 100% fit of our vision.