RainSkirts.com - Company Site with E-Commerce

Emergent Designs Needs - Brochure Site and E-Commerce

Libby Earthman is the founder and creative genius behind RainSkirts - A superior alternative to Rain Pants. Earthman and the team at Emergent Designs researched how to best-produce a Made-in-the-USA garment--one with city styling, but rugged enough to withstand the adventures of outdoor enthusiasts. They wanted a website that was as simple as their concept, and just as user friendly, which lead them to Drupal and Growing Venture Solutions. They selected a basic Drupal theme and were able to customize it enough that it fits well with their company image. On top of their basic "brochure" website with information about the company and products, I layered in a blog so they can share company news, and added e-commerce capabilities so that can can get the products out to rain-soaked clientele.

Rain Skirt Site Step 1 - The Basics

The site started with a basic Drupal installation which was customized with several additional modules:

• The core "Blog" module provides a way to publish the News about Rain Skirts
• Quotes to provide a rotating "testimonial" from one of RainSkirts.com's many satisfied customers.
• Image management is handled via the Image module which creates resized photos for use in various parts of the site.
• The core Page content type is used for the basic pages on the site like FAQ and Products pages. The menu module and taxonomy modules are used to provide navigation and categorize content.
• Various modules like Google Analytics, Pathauto, and Drush also help out on the site.

Getting Rain Skirts Into Customer's Hands - E-Commerce with Ubercart

The next big stage was to add E-Commerce capabilities to the site using the powerful Ubercart package. Ubercart's core package handles nearly everything that the RainSkirts.com site needed. With a little extra configuration and a lot of great work by the Rainskirts.com photogrographer and models, the site provides nice closeup photos o each product page with a fancy "click for enarge image" feature that overlays the image on top of the current page.

The Ubercart Out Of Stock AJAX Notification and Ubercart Stock Manager With Attributes are used together to provide "out of stock" handling. The AJAX solution is great since it provides instant feedback for users with JavaScript enabled. And, to provide slightly stronger verification for all users the Stock Manager With Attributes will prevent adding items to a cart if they are sold out.

This image shows the difference between an in stock item and an out of stock item on the site.

Feedback About Working with Growing Venture Solutions

Mrs. Earthman is a great client to work with and when I asked her for feedback, she gushed. Here's a piece of what she had to say:

We were extremely lucky in our first year of business. We keep hitting the nail on the head with our contractors, and Greg is a perfect example of this. I've been delighted with the quality of his work, and his willingness to listen and explain things to me in a way I can understand. I've always felt that he treats me fairly, honestly, and with great integrity. Greg set up our site so that we can edit it--ourselves--from any computer, no software required. Greg enabled us to control our own website, yet he's always there with backup should anything be too complicated for us to do ourselves.

The folks at RainSkirts.com manage all the site content and use a support contract so that they can be sure all of their technical needs are met in a timely manner.