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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John Kavanagh's biggest strength is his ability to deal with conflicting priorities in high‑pressure situations. Along with his excellent development skills, John's ability to manage difficult stakeholders and requirements is one of the key reasons that the projects he led were completed on time without too many problems."
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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 a very talented front‑end web developer. He is enthusiastic, up‑beat, very knowledgeable in his field and has a great eye for detail. He brought a lot to our team and to the product, I would be happy to work with him again."
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I worked with John Kavanagh on a high profile, large‑scale project at a digital agency. John was great to work with, solving problems without any input and contributing to the project way beyond what was expected. I'd happily work with him again and would easily recommend his talent to everyone!"
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John Kavanagh is a passionate and highly skilled developer with a wonderful ability to calmly concede downward business pressures whilst pragmatically delivering the project at hand.
John is never fazed by project management/requirement issues as are common in these environments, instead, he always finds a way to deliver value to both the end consumer and the business. It's not always easy to remain level‑headed and calm on high‑pressure projects but John's good nature and professionalism invariably remain infallible. It's an absolute pleasure working with him."
