Here we have a special Christmas themed website, Baughs of Holly that increases the feasibility of shopping for other friends and family. The site basically allows a user to create a list of items that he/she would like to have purchased for them. They can then add other uses as friends by using their email who can then shop for the user. Those friends can view your list and purchase one or more of the items and mark it as purchased. They can see all items that have already been purchased by others as well to avoid the repurchasing of items. The interesting part of the site is that, although users can see their own list, they cannot see which items have been purchased already by the added friends. This is to include the element of surprise for the user so they don't know what he or she will receive. Continue reading to learn in detail how the Baughs of Holly Site works.
After first loading the site, you will be greeted with the login screen On this screen, you can log in with an existing account. If you are a new user, you can click the register button to create an account and then begin building your list.
The item list screen will be the very first screen shown to every user after logging in. If you are a new user, this list will be empty. We can also see the store that those items can be found, its price, and the priority level aka how important it is for this person to get those items. You can sort the items by those categories as well.
Now to actually add an item to your list, start by clicking the green and white “ADD AN ITEM” button on the bottom left corner. This is where you enter all of the item’s information that your friends will use to find the items. For the link, users typically will include a link to the item’s listing on the store’s online shopping site. For example, the user is adding a mechanical keyboard in the example above. Adding this link: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Razer-BlackWidow-Elite-Razer-Green-Mechanical-Switches-Tactile-and-Clicky/271566037 will be an effective reference for shoppers to use. After all of the information is in, simply click the add item button. Now if you enter item information but decide you would like to cancel, click the blue “home” button” in the item adding page to be brought back to the item list page. The item you were entering will not be added.
As mentioned before, after logging in, you will be greeted with the item list screen. There is a button on the top left, “VIEW FRIENDS”. Clicking it will open up your list of added friends. For new users, this list will be empty, but you can add new friends by clicking the “ADD FRIENDS” button.
Next, you will then be able to add a new friend via their email address.
NOTE: Adding a friend on this site is AN UNIDIRECTIONAL relationship. This means adding tony will allow you to view and shop items on his list but Tony does NOT have access to and cannot shop items on your list. In order to have personal shoppers, they must add you as a friend themselves, using your email address.
At this point, we can now being shopping (done physically. Not within website) for our friends. We’ll use Tony Seidl as an example. After clicking “VIEW LIST” next to his name. We can see the items he is requesting, along with their information.
We can see that he has requested some Apple AirPods and an Xbox Series X. At a glance, we can also see the store that the item can for sure be found (could be found at other stores too), the price, priority, and if someone else has purchased the item. Clicking the name of the item will open the online store listing of the item. Now if I am shopping for Tony and successfully purchase his AirPods, I can mark the item as “already purchased” by clicking the “mark as purchased” button This will help make sure no one else will attempt to purchase that same item. If I am logged in as another user with Tony as a friend, the site will alert us that the item has been found.
As a reminder, a user can view their own list but they cannot see which items have been purchased for them already.