Literally! COMMbits launches a website all about cheese – the good stuff – for a duo of successful cheese connoisseurs in Ontario.

“No need to schlep to the markets in search of the perfect local cheese-Shay will deliver straight to your door.” – Toronto Life, Fall 2006

Do not be surprised if one day you find a carefully-packed shipment of rare and delicious cheeses waiting at your door! It is now all possible with one of the COMMbits latest creations – an e-commerce web site for Andy Shay and Jean-Marc Ridel, two established professionals of the gourmet scene, which allows customers to order on-line the latest cheese collections for themselves or delivered elsewhere as gifts.

Andy Shay – with many contributions to the Gremolata Web site, owner of the late Shay Gourmet store in Toronto – and Jean-Marc Ridel – owner of the wholesale importer, La Ferme – put together and deliver temperature-controlled parcels of carefully-chosen, high-end European and Canadian cheeses.

The duo makes new cheese choices almost bi-weekly, with selections such as Petit Sorcier (Quebec), Florence (Quebec), Ste Maure Cendre (Quebec), Le Rouet, Idiazable (Spanish), Fourme d’Ambert (French), Coeur d’Alvignac (Pyrenean foothills) and many more.

In search of a web design Company with e-commerce experience, Andy Shay contacted COMMbits Senior e-Business Analyst Al Poullis, who recommended a blend of e-commerce modules and creative designs to reflect the nature of the business and satisfy the main business objective of better serving existing clients as well as growing the business with new clientele.

COMMbits worked with Andy on the numerous challenges of a robust, efficient and effective on-line storefront that all new on-line merchants face, which extend beyond the production of the actual website, and include the development of new order fulfillment processes, as well as learning the differences between off-line and on-line selling.

COMMbits – with its “all-inclusive, 1-stop” approach, provided services and assistance in the following areas:

• Assisted the clients during the registration of their own merchant account through a major Financial Institution,
• Provided the client with a Payment Processing Gateway,
• Provided creative design services through an associate Creative Graphics Designer and developed a new, consistent “look ‘n feel” for the whole web site.
• Installed, customized and configured a leading open-source Shopping Cart software System-solution,
• Installed WYSIWYG components inside the Shopping Cart Administrator’s Control Panel to simplify data entry by the merchant.
• Provided training and assisted the development of a new fulfillment process,
• Integrated a real-time shipping calculator with UPS and created a custom middleware system for migrating order data into a desktop UPS implementation,
• Integrated the merchant and payment processing accounts with the shopping cart, delivering a seamless, homogenous system.

The end result provides shoppers with a rich experience and promotes up-selling.

Security
To provide maximum security and mitigate risk for both the shopper and the merchant, COMMbits does not store any credit card numbers on its servers. Instead, during the checkout process it seamlessly forwards the shopper to the secure web site of its Payment Processing Partner. Shoppers then submit their credit card information on a page protected by high-bit SSL security. The information is then securely forwarded to the financial institutions and an “accepted” or “declined” token is seamlessly returned back to the COMMbits server, which updates all database information relevant to the order transaction and automatically informs the merchant and the shopper about the transaction. For more on the COMMbits eCommerce web site solution, the COMMbits Payment Processing Gateway and other e-Commerce applications please follow this link.

Andy’s and Jean-Marc’s web site is at shaycheese.ca