Background
El Pollo Loco is a restaurant that has seen its business grow from a street vendor in Mexico to multiple locations spread around the southwest United States. They pride themselves on their unique recipe for their chicken cooked over an open grill.

El Pollo Loco needed an E-commerce section of their website developed for online gift card purchases as well as administrative management ability over those orders. 

Objectives
El Pollo Loco wanted to be able to add another aspect to their business with the on-site ability to place and monitor gift card orders. Because SYDCON has experience developing quality E-commerce systems for any type of website with any type of product, the client felt comfortable contacting us and trusting us with the development of this specific area of their website.

• Develop a shopping cart customized specifically for El Pollo Loco and their product
• Program an administrative system to allow for order viewing

Methodology
Whenever developing a shopping cart from scratch for a customer, SYDCON uses PHP scripting language to drive the user interaction with the company's product contained in the database backend of the website. SYDCON has developed shopping carts for numerous clients of varying size and product and can be trusted to program quality systems every time. 

The client received a quote individualized to their project's needs and what would need to be done by our development team to add the working functionality of an online ordering system to their website.

After agreeing to the terms of the quote and the work to be done, one expert programmer was assigned to this specific E-commerce development project and the necessary steps in its completion:
 

• Maintain website goals throughout development
• Develop a Content Management System that allows for a site administrator to view gift card orders placed on the website and their status
• Interface the shopping cart with an outside API
• Display the completed database's information on the developed frontend of the website
• Test all functionality features of the website with a pre-launch performance test
• Upon completion of the test to a level satisfactory to the client, turn the website from the developmental stage into a live website

Technical Approach
The authorize.net API was used to approve or deny customer transactions from within the customized shopping cart. Purchases were made from the product displayed from the MySQL database we constructed; these interactions between site users and the website itself are made possible through PHP, CSS, and HTML scripting languages. A customized CMS allows for the viewing and maintenance of online orders by a website administrator.

Results
The ability for customers to place gift card orders online has improved the dynamic ability of the El Pollo Loco website and increased their customer base.
 

• Navigating the process of ordering a gift card is streamlined and easy for customers
• The client is extremely happy with the ability their website affords their clients as it has helped improve their business' potential for profit

Our project enjoyed success because of the following factors:

• The client explained exactly what they wanted their website to be able to do
• The constant stream of communication developed between the client and SYDCON while the site was in its development stages
• The versatility and reliability of the SYDCON development methodology
• The talents shown on a consistent basis by the development staff of SYDCON