Balloon in a Box - ballooninabox.co.uk
Time to completion: 3 months
Balloon is a Box is a helium balloon gift delivery service based in the UK. They send balloons by post to any UK address. They have a huge range of balloons for all occasions, including birthday balloons, valentine's balloons, get well soon balloons, congratulations balloons, and many more. They also have a big numbers bouquet builder that can be used any age gift.
The Balloon in a Box site was a really fun site to build due to it's very visual nature and customisable options. The site was built with a heavy emphasis on being usable on mobile device, as a large amount of the traffic to the site comes from mobile devices. The site was built using the frontend Vue JS framework with Laravel on the backend. The site was hosted on a Digital Ocean VPN built with laravel Forge.
Technologies used:
Technical Summary
The Website
In this project, we opted for a combination of Laravel, Inertia, and Vue. The site's previous iteration was also based on Laravel, allowing us to effectively repurpose and upgrade a substantial amount of existing code through Inertia JS. This not only facilitated a single-page application that's client-side rendered but also bypassed the need for a standalone API or client-side routing, thanks to Inertia's cohesive frontend and backend integration. This strategic choice significantly expedited our development timeline compared to the option of using an alternative modern SPA framework. Fabric.js, in conjunction with the HTML5 Canvas Element, played a crucial role on the website, providing a dynamic and interactive display of the diverse bouquet options available to customers. The design aspect was handled using Tailwind CSS and its companion library, Tailwind UI components. Hosting was carried out on a Digital Ocean VPN, with Laravel Forge utilized for server setup.
Media Storage
To enhance the website and CMS's performance, we utilized Amazon's S3 storage solution for image hosting. This approach significantly speeds up page loading times, thanks in part to the efficient delivery capabilities of the CDN network, ensuring a swift and responsive user experience.
Integrations
We used Mailgun for the email administration, bugsnag for error tracking, and Google Analytics / Adwords to track the success of the sites campaigns and to track conversions.
Other Recent Work
