Client: Fred & Ginger
Lingerie brand, Fred & Ginger, had a website that was in desperate need of a re-design. The client was very unhappy with what had been delivered by her previous developers. The site wasn’t showcasing the clothing very well, it didn’t put the brand in its best light, it wasn’t easy to manage the content, the shop was unusable and it was designed to very small dimensions. On top of that, it had a very dreary Flash intro which added absolutely nothing to the site.
Old Fred & Ginger Site
The new site featured a slideshow of full screen photos on the homepage (taken by my brother Marc Rogoff). The large photos gave visitors an instant impression of what Fred & Ginger is all about. These could be changed whenever a new range is launched which helped to keep the site looking fresh. There were also three promo boxes which could be used for different promotions and messages. The site has now been taken over by other developers and I no longer have anything to do with the current design.
Content management was important so the site was built using WordPress. It was a heavily customised version of the Sandbox theme – my favourite starting point for custom WordPress sites.
Users could sign up to the Fred & Ginger newsletter and this feeds straight into the Campaign Monitor subscriber system. Campaign Monitor is one of the best email marketing systems I have ever come across.
Fred & Ginger Email Newsletter
The shop was powered by a customised version of CS-Cart which is a very mature piece of software that has been evolving since around 2004. It’s extremely feature-rich and I especially like the functionality when you add an item to the cart – the visual feedback is good and allows you to go straight to the checkout or carry on shopping. The off-the-shelf version needed a huge amount of changes to get the look and feel just right.
Fred & Ginger shop with “added to bag” message
