Nature Hills – Application Development Case Study
Client
Nature Hills Nursery Inc. is a US-based provider of quality nursery products. From a fledging nursery offering products to a limited geographic area, the company evolved and expanded its customer base by creating the online nursery store, NatureHills.com.
NatureHills.com is an eCommerce site that facilitates buying of nursery products in a secure, risk-free manner. The site is user-friendly and maintains an exceptional level of customer service by providing noteworthy information on every product it sells.
Challenge
The client approached Dot Com Infoway for the design and development of the eCommerce site, NatureHills.com.
Key challenges put forth by the client:
Key challenges put forth by the client:
- NatureHills.com is an online extension of the company’s Nursery Inc., and hence should feature all products sold by the company.
- The site should be optimized for even the less-wary user, allowing seamless transactions through secure payment gateway
- The site should facilitate easy and advanced search options making it simple for users to search for their desired species of plants/trees/shrubs
- The site should allow users to map their planting zone that would ensure choosing of plants appropriate to their geographic zone
- The site required integration of QuickBook accounting software to store online order along with the offline orders.
Solution
Dot Com Infoway’s development team analyzed the challenges/requirements put forth by the client and chartered an action plan for building the site. Following the step-by-step action plan, developers designed NatureHills.com using the below measures/technology:
- Technology used for building site: ASP, PHP, SQL, Flash
- NatureHills.com runs on Windows 2003 server
- Made the site SSL secure and operate through VeriSign Payment Gateway
- Integrated QuickBook accounting software for easy buying/transactions
- Facilitated simple search and category-wise advanced search of products
- Implemented planting zone mapping feature which identifies user’s zone with zip code input
- Enabled display of recently viewed products, top selling products etc. on the site
- Built bookmarking options, newsletter subscription options into the site
Result
The client was greatly pleased with Dot Com Infoway’s development methodology and quick turnaround time. Impressed with the work-product, the client hired Dot Com Infoway’s services again for 24/7 maintenance support and development of a lot of additional modules. In brief, NatureHills.com turned out to be a successful, long term project.
