Website For Country Care Rehab and Mobility Equipment
Country Care Rehab and Mobility Equipment Website
The Company Profile
Country Care Rehabilitation and Mobility Equipment are located in Bendigo and Mildura in Victoria and have been supplying rehabilitation and mobility equipment since 1997.
With a large range of products available and two showrooms, why not give them a call or check out their online catalogue.
They can supply equipment to, Department of Veteran Affairs, Disability Services, The Victorian Aids and Equipment Program, Work Safe Victoria, Transport Accident Commission (TAC) and direct to the public.
This business has changed direction and now managing inhouse.
The Brief
To provide a website that is easy to navigate so that visitors can choose to go directly to a specific : Page, Product or Catalogue Section.
Essentially they would like their website to emulate their printed catalogue, so that the same products which appear on each page of their printed catalogue also appear on the same page on the website.
The graphical layout to be minimalistic (no shadows, no contoured graphics, no animations and no textures) and to be primarily the same green as their company logo. The website is to utilize all available browser space (floating format).
To include a small slideshow photo gallery on the home page and have the phone numbers flashing or blinking.
The Design Details
First thought about duplicating the printed catalogue on the website is that normally the website is product focused, but now it has to be layout focused. This means that each product page on the website should include the same products as displayed on the relevant page in the catalogue. Every product is assigned to Sections and each Section is divided into Categories. Numerous products are also grouped under a common product name, with others being displayed individually. The catalogue also uses different layout in different sections, with some pages only including 2 products, with others having over 9.
This presented a slight challenge for the website in that traditional Content Management Systems can't be tailored to do this. Usually they have a fixed number of products they wish to display ( per screen ) and would therefore be unable to replicate the varying number of products displayed per page that was requested. It could be possible with some additional configuration, but we chose what we considered to be a more manageable solution.
To do this we have utilized a flat file database system instead of using SQL or any other form of Database you would expect. The flat file system provides greater flexibility for each entry as it can be easier tailored to suit how that product is to be displayed on that specific page. Sure this could be done with SQL, but that is much more inflexible as it can't be adjusted "on the fly" as it requires new fields inserted into the database if you need to accommodate new details or to incorporate another design idea. The flat file system is also much faster to update and considerably easier to make changes to functionality than SQL. Of course SQL has a long list of benefits but alas none were beneficial for this task.
Numerous applications were written or adapted from the existing Country Care website. A few of the unique applications are:
Page Number Management
As each Section of their catalogue had a specific number of pages, this application allows the website to mimic the catalogue and ensure that each web page displays the same products as the printed page. So each section on the website has the same number of pages as the printed catalogue. Each section then provides a list of all page numbers it contains to allow for quick navigation to any desired page.
Product Search and Quick Selection
With so many products (586 currently) spanning so many different categories (108 currently) it was important to provide quick and easy access to a specific product, or to a specific category within each section.
Custom Order forms, DVA reissue stock control and hire order forms were developed to suit their specific requirements.
The Key Features & Applications
- Custom Package
- 248 Page Layout
- Custom Product Search
- Custom Category Search
- Custom Order Form
- Password Protected Section
- File Upload Manager
- Website Search
- Site Map