The Client

Jocasi is the London based, red-hot fashion label that has made a name for itself with its stylish range of bags, belts, purses, shoes and accessories.

With all their products lovingly made and hand crafted from the finest leather you can hope to lay your hands on, Jocasi have rightfully become quite a success story in their industry.

While their products have been flying out of the shops on the high street, they have also become somewhat of a trend on the celebrity circuit, with luminaries such as Charlotte Church, Mischa Barton, Sienna Miller and Kelly Brook all succumbing to the label's charm.

The Brief

We're happy to say that source23 has been working with Jocasi for several years now. Our relationship began when we were first asked to put together a new site for them, but a long time has passed since then and late last year, 2006, Jocasi asked us to give the site an overhaul.

An overhaul not just in terms of look and feel, but also with regard to the site's functionality and the all important content management and e-commerce systems that make the site work.

The previous site was a fixed width and height Flash site that was no longer able to effectively handle all the functionality that Jocasi's rapidly growing business needs. Working closely with the client, it was decided to shift to a more contemporary format, increasing the overall width of the site and switching from a Flash site to a more modern, HTML / CSS based site.

The brief for the e-commerce solution was to upgrade and further develop the previous version of the shop that we had developed for Jocasi and which previously worked as a micro site accessible through the main brochure style Flash site.

This time around we obviously wanted to integrate it into the site itself, allowing users to browse the product lines and quickly and easily add items to their cart and then proceed swiftly to the checkout.

In terms of content management and site structure, there were several new additions to the existing site, including the creation of a new product line, adding in a password protected trade log-in area, and investigating the possibility of creating a system that allows Jocasi to associate certain products with a discount system, set up either by themselves or by third party distributors.

The Solution

The project kicked off with the design stage where we worked with the client to establish the look and feel that was thought to be right for this new stage in their company history. The new design had to be easy to navigate and with much greater focus on the e-commerce side to the site, in order that visitors to the site are able to quickly browse the various product lines and go through the purchasing process as easily as possible.

We worked out a new navigational structure for the site, with enough flexibility built into it to allow for any future expansion plans, listened to what the client was looking for in terms of design, and set about creating the initial set of designs. After the usual period of feedback and tweaks to the designs, we finally arrived at the final designs for the site and then moved on to the build stage of the project.

The code behind the site is written using HTML/CSS for the layout and ColdFusion for the clever development stuff that makes it all work.

Jocasi site administrators are able to add or remove sections, create new page groups and manage the entire online shop though the back-end content management system that we created for them. This gives them the flexibility to make global site changes and updates to the online shop at any time and from any location.

The new and improved e-commerce solution makes the maintenance of the online shop a lot smoother, and importantly means that visitors to the site have a much more streamlined and efficient means to view products that they are interested in and make that all important purchase.

The overall result is a fine looking site that communicates the quality and attraction of the product, whilst never losing sight of its role in generating business and online purchases of the client's products.

We're pretty pleased with it and look forward to continuing working with Jocasi in the future.

The site has just recently gone live so you can have a look yourself at jocasi.com