It is clear from working with Ampersand that they know Magento inside and out. They have approached our project with professionalism and vigor. Ampersand offer a refreshing and honest approach to development and we look forward to a continued working relationship.
Aaron Cornish, Team Leader, Commercial Web Team, Bauer Radio
After Ampersand’s successful implementation of individual, easy to manage, customer-facing websites for Bauer Radio’s multiple brands, Bauer approached us again in need of our expertise for an exciting new venture. With local deals websites trending across the Internet, Bauer Radio was eager to get on board, starting with Key103, one of Manchester’s most popular stations. With an existing and already loyal group of listeners, Key103 was a natural place to start. Using the latest version of the Magento Community Edition, Ampersand developed a robust solution for the initial rollout of Key103 Deals. Our solution would allow for the simple implementation of other deals websites across other Bauer Radio stations in the future, sharing the same code and using the same single instance of Magento.
Simple content management was another key benefit to the solution we built for Bauer Radio. With so many components going on behind the screens, Ampersand made it easy for the Bauer Radio commercial web team to manage all aspect of the deals website themselves through the admin panel. We created entities within the Magento admin panel, allowing for simple creation of vendors and vouchers. We also created rules for how downloadable vouchers were created after a purchase, making sure each deal had valid to and from dates. We enabled Bauer Radio to easily manage stock by automatically showing remaining units available to customers and we made sure that each voucher purchased had intuitive expiry dates based on when they were purchased. Product scheduling is another component of a successful deals site and Ampersand made it easy to promote particular products to the front page for definable time periods, as well as allowing the Bauer Radio commercial web team to plan how products would appear weeks or months ahead of time, automatically showing or hiding as appropriate.
Key103 Deals launched successfully in February of 2011 and has seen steady growth, selling nearly 2,000 vouchers per month since launch. The trustworthy reputation of Key103 combined with listeners hungry for local sales and exclusive knowledge proved to be a recipe for ecommerce success.
