LemonStand Blog

Customer Showcase: Bilderwerk Hamburg

2 | published by Danny Halarewich on Thursday, October 21, 2010

Bilderwerk Hamburg sells pictures of all different kinds. Some photo products are imported from Fotolia using their API, and some are paintings or graphics created by artists outside of Fotolia.

The special thing about their site is that the pictures can also be rented. To handle this, two different carts have been implemented: one for buying and one for renting.

This website has been designed and developed by Hauke Ziehm of ZiehmDesign.

What is your overall impression of LemonStand?

“LemonStand is very well thought-out regarding user interface and extendability. The interface is clean and easy to use for my client and this is definitely one of the most important things about a shop system!

Our shop offers some special functions like different carts and a renting system that had to be custom developed. LemonStand made it possible to integrate my custom code into the shop-software very quickly and easily. Especially the ability to subscribe to events, e.g. add an item to the cart, via the event system and then execute some custom functions were a big help!”

Have you ever used other shopping carts? How do you think LemonStand compares?

“I had a look at Magento and CS-Cart. Magento seemed rich in features but is so complicated to extend and to work with that I decided it wasn't worth it. CS-Cart on the other hand has a nice and clean interface but the building of templates was intricate and time-consuming. I had it installed on my server but deleted it after a few weeks of evaluation.

LemonStand was able to give me both: A good interface and extendability for an adequate price!”

What are some of your favorite features of LemonStand? Why?

"The event system is one of the best features, because the hooks enable you to dynamically modify, for example, the product prices without having to rewrite parts of LemonStand's source code.

Furthermore, the documentation is pretty awesome. It enabled me to create my own modules, such as one to import photos from Fotolia using the Fotolia-API, within hours and served as a robust reference book during development.

Another great feature is the whole template system. There are the partials. Just set up a partial and you can use the content everywhere on your site, plus the content can be loaded dynamically by AJAX-requests. The templates themselves are mainly pure XHTML-code with php-placeholders for the content. Hence It was no big deal to convert my design to LemonStand.”

Did you find LemonStand to be flexible enough to meet all your needs?

“Absolutely! Almost every module / class can be modified or extended using the hooks. Developing your own modules is simple because of the robust documentation and the fast and reliable support via the forum. The only thing missing is the ability to translate the system's messages into another language, but I know the developers are working on that”

What are your thoughts on the LemonStand development process?

“I enjoyed working with it. It was simple to integrate my own modules due to the object orientated programming of LemonStand and therefore sped the development process up a lot. There were no barriers regarding the extension of the shop software. It runs very reliably and fast.”

How does your client feel about using LemonStand? Do they have a favorite feature?

“We are happy that we chose LemonStand as our shop system, because it enabled us to realize our custom ideas by maintaining a maximum of clarity. Additionally, working with the shop system is easy to manage, even for non-technical people.”

- Jörg Schröder, Owner - Bilderwerk Hamburg

Would you recommend LemonStand to others? Why?

“Your customers will love to work with LemonStand as its user interface is very well-thought-out and intuitive. If you are a developer and would like to extend the system with your own modules and custom functions, the object-orientated programming and the various hooks will make it easy for you to implement your own ideas.

Plus there is a growing community and great support provided by the developers! And don't forget about the price: $300 is not a lot of money for such a reliable and robust piece of software.”