Bigger than the biggest high street superstore, jungle.com go live with new website
Wed,1 May 2002
In 2001, Jungle announced its intention to totally replace its current web site. The company stated that it had simply outgrown its original technology as it moved towards becoming one of the country's largest online superstores selling over 200,000 technology products including, computers, music, DVD, mobiles, audio and home electronics.
The new website is based on open, industry standards and built using IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite 'WCS', which is 100' Java. Salmon, one of the UK's main centres of excellence for this product set was chosen by Jungle to re-develop the site.
IBM Visual Age for Java was used by Salmon's programmers to write all the code. The WebSphere platform was chosen to provide Jungle with the scalability and robustness needed for their growing business. It also contains a lot of functionality that is needed to run modern websites. Additional features were developed and delivered by Salmon's experienced WCS development team.
Brian Scott, CTO of jungle.com said 'We took the decision to work with Salmon due to their experience with IBM's WebSphere Commerce Suite, Java skills, price and promise to deliver within 90 days. We felt confident with this promise due to their previous record of delivering over 200 projects on time and within budget.'
He went on to say 'I have been extremely impressed at the functionality the technology brings and how quickly Salmon has managed to build the site from scratch.'
Go-live was extremely smooth with normal trading from the moment the site went live. The site functionality and the interfaces to the back-end order processing systems all worked correctly.
Jungle's Commercial Director, Rob Barnes, welcomes the new website adding 'the original site simply was never designed to have so many stores, stocking hundreds of thousands of different products. As we grew it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage and navigate the site. The new site will enable us to reposition jungle.com as the premier online digital specialist, whilst allowing the extra capacity needed for our expansion plans.'
The jungle.com site is based on a catalogue. Ease of use was a priority for jungle.com making simple navigation a key focus. The new sites navigation is designed around tabs at the top of the site with a search facility available. Wherever you are within jungle.com navigation is effortless.
The site's integrated infrastructure is key to its success. There are real time interfaces with 3 external systems, together with regular catalogue updates providing product and pricing information.
Brian said 'Salmon has designed and implemented the whole project. They have been fundamental in delivering our new website and their dedication, skills and quality of work cannot be questioned. We presented them an enormous task with a near impossible delivery date and they have without doubt delivered an excellent all round service.'
Jungle are now set to challenge the number 1 position in the UK for most recognised Internet brand. With their new technology in place and an infrastructure that allows for expansion, Jungle.com anticipate moving rapidly into new markets and new channels over the coming months.
Bookmark this content with: