Stones Aquatics is a new Aquatic Retail Store that will be launched August/September 2019 inside of Stones Garden Centre in Minster-on-Sea, Sheerness. The store will offer dry and livestock for Ponds including Koi, Tropical and Marine Fish. This project was a full E-Commerce project including branding design.

Although bearing the same name “Stones” as the garden centre, it is independently owned, and therefore did not need to completely match the current branding. Therefore we opted for a more minimal and modern design for the branding.

The shop sells a variety of fish and products and therefore limiting the logo to one of the 3 areas wouldn’t have been suitable. The area holds a lot of Koi Pond hobbyists, therefore this needed to be represented along with something to relate to the tropical side. The final logo is a Red Circle, this represents the pattern on a Tancho Koi with a Betta splendun (fighting fish) being a negative inside of the circle. The font chosen is more modern than the current branding, with the letter ‘A’ having a wave running through it.

Stones Aquatics Logo

The main navigation works the same as a Single Page Website, when you click on each link it navigates to a different section on the homepage. We wanted to keep the information minimal on each section and therefore felt a single section would be stronger than too much writing on a whole page. There are additional information pages with fact sheets and videos to compliment these sections.

When working on the design of the website we wanted it to be more visually appealing than the local competitors and therefore used wave shape dividers to make the layout more interesting.

SA-Design

Chat is a really important feature in todays websites, the ease of chat is even more important. Previously having chat on your website meant that someone had to be logged into the back end of the website, and be at a computer to talk with prospective clients; which for a small business is not practical. Facebook has launched Messenger for websites, this is a fantastic integration tool and means that when a message is sent using it through your website it will generate a pop up message on your phone using the Facebook Pages app. This means you can be anywhere and interact with your clients. The advantage for your clients is that it uses a platform they are already familiar with and once they leave your website they will still have a copy of your conversation in their facebook messages, unlike other systems where once you leave the site you lose your message.

With the new Facebook Messenger integration we can now link the shop direct to the Facebook Page shop, this means as we add new products to the website they will automatically be added and updated to the Facebook Page shop.

The website can integrate both with Quickbooks and Epos Now to make accounting and Stock Take much simpler. The website is fully GDPR compliant with notices for Cookies as well as permissions for integration for YouTube and Vimeo videos. It is fully secure and will automatically block users who try to access files that they are not allowed to or do not exist, after 3 attempts at login it will lock the user out for 20 minutes and forever if the attacks persist. The website is fully mobile responsive and will accept major cards for payment and Apple Pay. Although the website can easily be linked to Stripe or PayPal for a payment gateway this site is linked direct to the card service used in store RMS, which means that the website sales can benefit from lower transaction charges.

This is a continual project, at the moment the online sales are for Click & Collect only. Once all data for Size and Weight have been added to each product this will then be opened for national delivery. The website will calculate the packing size and automatically generate the postage costs.

To view the site please visit www.stonesaquatics.co.uk

To discuss your project call Darren on 07849 385 331 or alternatively fill out the Contact Form.