Owner Tama Shor has an industry-leading database of shopping malls across the US and Canada. It was originally distributed to subscribers in book form, and later on CD-ROM.
When Tama decided to upgrade to a web-based offering, she came to GORGES. We built a comprehensive custom solution, including e-commerce for subscription purchases, user-friendly data search tools, and a back-end tool for collecting and managing mall data.
E-commerce
We built a custom e-commerce solution, using authorize.net as the payment processor. This lets Tama manage her complex array of subscription offerings, and present them to customers in an understandable format.
Our e-commerce framework supports trial subscriptions, reminder emails, and automatic subscription renewals.
Search Tools
Subscribers can search for malls and stores using dozens of detailed criteria, and can save their search settings.
The advanced search shows a count of returned results in real time. The search results can be viewed in tabular form, or displayed on a map.
Data Management
We rebuilt Tama’s back-end data management tool (Mallsys) in the Yii PHP framework, integrating it more closely with the main subscriber application. Data updates were formerly a “fingers crossed” semi-annual operation involving separate servers and database environments. Now, subscriber data updates can be processed on demand within a single database, with full change tracking.
We also redesigned the complex workflow for generating custom questionnaires to be sent to mall owners and managers. Gathering mall data is a full-time job for Tama’s research staff, and they now have a streamlined automated process to perform this task.
