Industry
Photography Services
Company
OrderMyPhotos
What Was Delivered
Laravel e-commerce website development
The Client
OrderMyPhotos is a pioneer in introducing internet-based ordering for school photos. Prior to the digital era, getting school photos into the hands of parents could take a minimum of 28 days. OrderMyPhotos helped revolutionise the process, reducing it to less than 48 hours!
With over 18 years of industry experience, OrderMyPhotos has streamlined its process, making ordering as simple as possible for parents. However, the company wanted to update its website and software to stay ahead of the competition. This is where we came in.
The Problem
OrderMyPhoto’s main goal was to provide parents with a fast and effortless ordering process. They aim to keep the process so simple that parents are not even required to create an account. Their child’s reference code is all they need to view and order their photos.
As leaders in the industry, OrderMyPhotos faced unique challenges. While their website and software were established, they were slowly becoming dated over the years.
The existing website was prone to performance issues during busy seasons. Additionally, whenever the website required maintenance, it would have to be taken offline entirely.
Making the website mobile-friendly was also a must, with more and more customers opting to order through their phones rather than their computers.
The Solution
The main focus was a fresh, modern website that was user-friendly and mobile-friendly. Our team’s choice for web development is Laravel, as it offers high scalability and security, especially for e-commerce websites.
At the start of the project, our team could see that the backend of the website posed a challenge. Transferring over 100,000 database records and more than 100GB of imagery proved to be difficult, due to compatibility issues between the old and new software. Our team began incorporating migration planning into the project's early stages, ensuring a smooth transition to the new system.
OrderMyPhotos also wanted to streamline the experience for photographers and customers. Our team recognised the limitations of the existing software and explored options to give photographers more freedom to personalise their photos according to their brand.
With more customers ordering off of their phones, it was also important to implement more payment options than just debit/credit cards. Our team recommended Stripe as a new payment platform that would offer additional payment options, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
"The Swipe & Tap team understood what the project was about. They realised the complexity and dealt with it extremely well. It was a big task, and I’m very happy with the end product."
Steve Parker
Director
The Outcome
A seamless experience for both photographers and customers alike!
The website's frontend now runs quicker and provides an enhanced mobile experience. A simple order can now be done in 3 minutes or less!
When it comes to the website’s backend, updates and maintenance are now straightforward, as the website no longer needs to be taken down for updates. The new software is also more robust, compared to the older version, which was prone to crashing.
The new website was launched during a busy period, with less than an hour of downtime, and received over 50 orders within the first hour!
To keep the backend running smoothly, imagery is now stored on an external server that offers unlimited storage on Amazon S3. The new software monitors the server 24/7 so when new photos are uploaded by photographers, they are processed immediately into the system and database.
Photographers have also experienced improvements in the website's backend. They can now customise stickers in their brand colours and overlay them on their photos. Additionally, they can now gain better insight into the analytics of their photos.
Both photographers and customers have provided positive feedback, stating that the new website is user-friendly and much easier to navigate and use, compared to the previous.