Bandai UK Ltd



Bandai UK Ltd is a subsidiary of Bandai Co. Ltd, the third largest toy company in the world. Established in the UK in 1982, Bandai UK has grown to be the master toy licensee of the some of the most popular properties in children's toys and entertainment, including Power Rangers, Pokémon, Digimon, Gundam, Thunderbirds and original products including Badge It! and the worldwide phenomenon Tamagotchi. Bandai UK made the decision during 2005 to launch an online store for their range of toys.

Design Haus was commissioned to design and develop the site. The project presented a number of challenges including the ability to easily add new brands and additional ranges to existing brands on the site. Stock levels would need to tie into the existing warehouse software system. A particular challenge on this site was developing a wish list for use by children that would not collect any personal information.

The Bandai UK site has been designed to appeal to a younger audience. The colours are bright and dynamic and the design showcases the great brands that form the Bandai range of toys. In order to comply with good practice as far as privacy law goes in the UK we avoided collecting any personal information for children.

The Content Management System has been built to make it easy to add, edit or hide brands and the associated toys. To aid in marketing the lesser known toys the site has a "Featured Toy" graphic which appears prominently on every page. This highlight can be set for each brand in the catalogue and individually for important pages in the site like the home page.

Design Haus have taken considerable care in planning the checkout process. The four steps necessary for completing an order have been designed to be as simple and straightforward as possible.

Some of the Technical challenges and features of the new Bandai UK site includes:

High Traffic - The primary technical challenge for the site was ensuring that the programming and database code was robust enough to deal with the very high volumes of traffic expected on the site.

Security - Design Haus have taken extra care to ensure that personal information collected on the site stays secure. Multiple levels of encryption have been employed during the passing of information to the database and from the database as well as any data passed to and from the bank's systems.

System Integration - The Bandai UK site has been integrated into the warehouse systems to fulfill orders and keep an accurate track of stock levels.

Reporting - The site has been setup to provide useful information to Bandai site on what products have been sold, what toys have been searched for and what visitors are viewing the most.