English
Hello, I am Dan Glyde, I lead the team of software developers working on the www.wiggle.co.uk externally facing website. I would like to tell you about what we are doing at Wiggle HQ and the cool new things we are working on at the moment to make your experience of the Wiggle website as enjoyable as possible.
We strive to improve website performance and stability – in order to achieve this we work using Agile software development methods and use the latest technical solutions.
Communication
Our developers are based in our London and Portsmouth offices; this raises some interesting challenges. We each have headsets and web cams at our desks and a webcam in the conference room so communication is not hindered by a distance of 62 miles.
Every day at 8:30 am we have a Scrum meeting this includes the Marketing Director, Marketing Manager, SEO Manager, B&M Manager, and software developers. In these meeting we discuss everyone’s plan for the day and any potential blockers, each person gets no longer than 2 minutes floor time; the upshot is that all individuals know what is happening on a daily basis.
We capture Marketing, SEO and B&M requirements with User Stories which enable us to record information in concise short sentences allowing us to respond faster with fewer overheads.
Software developers work in pairs, this provides a number of advantages including knowledge sharing, good programming practices, prolonged focus and code checking.
Technology
We develop the website in the C# language with ASP.NET in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. The software is running on Windows Server with SQL Server for database access. We have recently started using a new platform in our software solutions; this enables us to provide fast search and navigation routines and dynamic page building on our website. We have invited 5000 Wiggle customers to test the first iteration of the new Wiggle website which is accessed via beta.wiggle.co.uk. The website has a new intuitive menu structure, enhanced performance, the full security of the current Wiggle site and can be used for ordering. This is the first stage of the website update, with many more updates and new features to follow.
The new site has a new URL structure to be more meaningful to you so you can see at a glance what products you expect to see on our website, this assist in our goal to improve our website in search engine rankings.
The future
We are currently implementing a number of cool new features such as a price slider to filter your results. A product comparison page to help you identify the product you wish to purchase. We will be extending the list of navigation choices to include colour, size, customer review score etc. The speed of the website will improve as we refine the code so your search and navigation will have very little lag. We regularly attend seminars and speak to other retail and consultancy companies to ensure we are at the cutting edge in terms of communication and technology development.
Hopefully this has given you an insight in to what we do at Wiggle and our plans in making the best online shop even better.
