Client profile
The Soil Association is the UK's leading organic organisation, with over 200 staff based in Bristol and Edinburgh and working as certification inspectors across the country.
The Soil Association was founded in 1946 by a group of farmers, scientists and nutritionists who observed a direct connection between farming practice and plant, animal, human and environmental health. The organisation is a charity, reliant on donations and on the support of its members and the public to carry out its work.
Site: http://www.soilassociation.org
Brief
Having undertaken a corporate re-branding exercise, the Soil Association was naturally keen to reflect its refreshed image via its online presence.
The decision to use DotNetNuke (DNN) has already been taken internally. Chord9 was subsequently contracted to provide DotNetNuke development services including training, custom skin development, online store and ecommerce implementation as well as ongoing technical support.
The re-branding exercise was undertaken by London and Cardiff based marketing agency Precedent. Subsequently Chord9 was briefed to create custom skins conforming to the screen designs and specification provided by Precedent.
Solution
The solution was delivered in two main phases; Phase 1 - Main website development and Phase 2 - Ecommerce implementations.
Phase1
A comprehensive DotNetNuke skins package was developed comprising five distinct page layouts to cover the homepage, landing page, general content, search and admin views. To achieve the required look and menu operation, custom menu components were developed and integrated into the skins.
Where necessary, sample HTML code was supplied to enable the Soil Association site administrators to create more complex content layouts.
Phone training covering the content entry process was supplied to site editors prior to the main website build.
Phase2
The second phase saw the addition of an online shop to promote sales of Soil Association publications, packaging, homewares, events and DVDs.
The shop was implemented using the third party .netStore module provided by Catalook - one of the moist comprehensively specified e-commerce modules for DotNetNuke. This was customised to the required look and feel for the site and linked to the payment provider SagePay.