Taylors of Harrogate appoint Space 48

Development, management & support

We were delighted when our personal favourite tea & coffee specialists, Taylors of Harrogate approached us to be a part of their new venture. An everyday household name, Taylors of Harrogate are owners of Yorkshire Tea and Bettys. They felt that this was the right time to expand their offerings into the world of coffee capsules. Our role in helping to make this happen is the development, management and 24×7 support of the new website.

When taking on the management and support of any site not built in house, we carry out a thorough discovery and auditing phase. We asked Chris, one of our Digital Project Managers to detail the initial steps taken when on-boarding a new Magento client.

The discovery phase

In order to get things brewing, so to speak, an initial meeting with Taylors of Harrogate was arranged with Steven our Head of Client Services and myself. This gave Taylors of Harrogate the opportunity to explain the current situation with the new Coffee Capsule site, identify what they require and ask us any questions about our processes. From our side, we are able to inform the customer what we require in order to carry out a full website audit and complete the discovery phase, as well as delve into the server setup and infrastructure.

Future website support requirements document

Before any auditing of a current website can take place, we require some vital information from the customer. This is achieved through a standardised document ‘Future Website Support Requirements’, prepared by Colin our Head of Development.

The document asks a rift of questions regarding the current website/infrastructure setup and typically cover the following topics:

Current hosting setup

• Documentation
• Login Credentials
• Contractual Agreements
• Backup Solutions

Current website setup

• Domain Information e.g. Domain Name, Contact Details of Current Provider, SSL Details
• Information on any Third Party Integrations / Payment Gateways

Generic web information

• Traffic Forecasts
• Browser / Device(s) support required
• Core Target Countries
• Shipping Logistics
• Required Concurrent Magento Administrators
• Website Specification / Requirements Document that the website was built based on
• Analytics / WebMaster Tools Access
• Intended Marketing / Promotion Campaigns
• Testing History and Detail

Full website audit

Once the ‘Future Website Support Requirements’ document is complete and accepted, we can then proceed with the full website audit.

Colin’s vast experience and knowledge of Magento makes him the perfect fit for managing the audit of any website that Space 48 have not built. The Web Audit investigates each area of the website and all recommendations, findings and concerns are then documented in a comprehensive report.

Colin structures this document using a Red, Amber, Green (RAG) system. Issues highlighted from the audit with a red status means that something needs to be addressed urgently. As a rule, anything with this status relates to security concerns. However, anything classed as Amber will be of a medium priority and Green will be more of an additional benefit or ‘nice to have’.

Once Colin is satisfied that all areas of the website setup and infrastructure have been covered, a meeting between himself and our Technical Director Tony will be arranged to discuss and review the audit findings.

Setting up Taylors of Harrogate up in the Space 48 development environment

At this stage the Space 48 Audit has been completed with a comprehensive list of recommendations. The next step is to begin to set up Taylors of Harrogate within our development environment. This is where our DevOp’s Engineer Louis comes in. Below is a brief overview of what Louis did to set up Taylors of Harrogate:

• Create/baseline version control repository and import current code.
• Review current server software configuration.
• Resolve any critical/blocking issues discovered in this phase.
• Create, configure and test internal Development environment.
• Create and test automated deployment process for all environments.
• Live run of Staging deployment (using current code)

Website audit outcome meeting

A week or so after we provided Taylors of Harrogate with the Web Audit findings and recommendations a face to face meeting was called at our offices to discuss how we go about implementing Colin’s recommendations. Within this meeting myself and Colin (Head of Development) are present.

During this meeting we were given the opportunity to explain to Taylors of Harrogate the implications and consequences of Colin’s findings and expand on any points within the Web Audit. It also gave Taylors of Harrogate a chance to clarify any information with ourselves.

The outcome of this meeting was a comprehensive priority list of works. It was my job to then ensure this work was given to the appropriate developers, whilst managing timescale and budget appropriately.

Conclusion

The process explained above has proved to be extremely successful for both Space 48 and Taylors of Harrogate . Both parties have full clarity of what work is being done and the reasons why. We are currently in the process of working through the Web Audit recommendations and we very much look forward to a long a successful relationship with Taylors of Harrogate.