Tony's
Chocolonely
Front‑end development for Tony's Chocolonely's custom website and Chocoshop rebuild, using a standalone Node.js application to produce highly animated and dynamic templates for integration into Laravel.
In Detail
New vs. Old
The previous Tony's website had served the company well, but by 2017 it was showing its age. It was slow to load, non‑responsive, and based on a simple WordPress theme that no longer matched the scale, personality, or customer expectations of the brand.
The replacement site introduced a more flexible, animated front‑end built around Tony's distinctive visual identity, mission‑led content, and growing e‑commerce requirements.
A Colourful, Animated Experience
The website was designed around a three‑panel structure: mission content to the left in red, the Chocoshop to the right in white, and the main homepage in blue. Page transitions helped create the feeling of moving laterally between those areas, supported by large arrow‑based navigation patterns.
Beyond the page transitions, GSAP animation brought movement into the wider interface, with scroll and mouse interactions used to make the site feel closer to Tony's physical brand world.
The Chocoshop
The Chocoshop balanced product discovery with Tony's wider brand messaging. Product listing and product detail pages used a cleaner white background so the colour and irregular shape of the chocolate bars could carry the visual identity.
Product listing pages included a distinctive product spinner, followed by a more conventional product grid, filters, and the ability to add items to basket directly from the listing page.
Products in Detail
Product detail pages were responsively optimised around product imagery, bar size, purchase options, and brand messaging, keeping the e‑commerce journey clear without losing Tony's campaign‑led tone.
Fun Alongside a Serious Message
The 'Our Mission' page gave visitors a deeper view of Tony's work against exploitation in the cocoa industry. The challenge was to support a serious, heavy‑hitting message without losing the brand's playful character, using JavaScript‑driven stop‑frame animation to add movement and emphasis.
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I initially worked with John Kavanagh at Style.com where we built an e‑commerce site for Condé Nast. We built numerous versions of the site for prototypal purposes and finally went live with a version that contained the majority of work from John and his team. Always punctual, proactive and willing, he's definitely one to have in any development team. Since then we went on to work together again at HSBC where we built a number of key React components. He's a great team player who takes a lot of pride in his work, I'd highly recommend him."
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John Kavanagh is one of the best front‑end developers I've had the pleasure of working with. Incredibly knowledgeable, great attention to detail – he understands design and why it's important to get it right, and he's also very experienced coding for accessibility. Always professional but with a great sense of fun, John would be an asset to any team and project."
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John Kavanagh is an incredibly talented and efficient developer with great expertise in Gatsby and Contentful. He is incredibly personable and also always willing to share his knowledge. I also appreciated his ability to communicate openly and in a way that allowed me to find a way forward with him.
It was a pleasure to work with John and I would welcome another opportunity to work with him again!"
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John Kavanagh was undoubtedly the best UI developer on the programme (often carrying the burden of his team) and played a crucial role in rebuilding the look and feel of the bank's global online platforms. John was always articulate, willing to speak his mind, helpful and always did an amazing job ‑ he clearly takes immense pride in his work (and rightly so!). His attention to detail and perfectionist attitude helped produce a product that we could be proud of, despite the extremely difficult environment we had to work in.
John would suit any senior or lead UI developer roles and I would have no hesitation in recommending him."
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I worked with John Kavanagh at AND Digital for a client focusing on the development of web pages through Gatsby and Contentful. His experience and skill definitely showed but alongside that he was enjoyable to work with. He was always available to the team in any capacity; whether that be to help get a ticket over the line or to teach new ways of doing things. My time with John has personally been a great learning experience and I hope to work with him again in the future."
