The stories behind the sites we build...

We are proud to present the designs and stories behind some of the website we've designed for our clients ...

Oct '09 Case Study: Website Design for More is Expected

The Story Behind the Site


These days, you don't have to be rich or famous to write, publish, and sell your own book, if you know how to use the power of the Internet. Bill Reamer is living proof. Bill's company CED Gateway, was a long-time client of UNETY's and Bill was our main contact there, so we knew each other well. What a delight it was to hear he had written a book! Who KNEW he was an aspiring writer! So when Bill approached us to market and sell his book online, it was a special treat.

What was needed ...

At the onset of the project, Bill had already written his book—he already had softcover books ready to be shipped.
So, the goals were fairly simple (somehow, it always seems that way at the start), just:
  1. provide a way to take orders and
  2. find an inexpensive way to market the book
Digging in a little, a few more things were needed to make our client a success. The new site had to allow Bill to:
  1. update the content daily, if he needed to
  2. send out email flyers and newsletters to hundreds or thousands of recipients
  3. manage his own order fulfillment
  4. handle credit card payments as inexpensively as possible
  5. add new products from time to time—an epic poem was apperenly in the works
And for Bill's customers, the new site had to:
  1. provide a full-blown shopping cart where they could securely login, learn about Bill's book, and purchase as many copies as they wanted
  2. accept all major credit cards and PayPal,
  3. be Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant,
  4. show the status of each customer's orders,
  5. allow different shipping and billing addresses,
  6. charge sales tax in Bill's home state of KY, but no where else,
  7. handle international shipping,
  8. show shipping charges accurately and in advance of order placement,
  9. let visitors read and write their own reviews,
  10. let visitors recommend Bill's book to their friends.