Challenge & Objectives
The previous website was a brochure style desktop only website that was built by us back in 2009. With static content and no CMS, the fonts used on the website were also embedded into images as the vast font libraries simply weren’t as widely available as they are today.
The new direction was required to keep users engaged longer, provide detailed information on their product offering whilst also making it easy for customers to be able to create their own bespoke buffets whilst also providing a way to personalise celebration cakes with a photo upload facility.
Being a very traditional style business, the move online would be a challenge for the Grouts team in itself, so we were fully aware of the training and support needed to help make the project a success.
Solution
WordPress seemed to be the perfect platform for ease of use to utilise so that Grouts could begin to manage content, whilst. WooCommerce the ecommerce plugin was implemented to manage the products and orders.
User Experience Planning
Our main focus is always on making everything easier for the user. With a mobile first approach we wanted to consider the navigation with priority. It’s very easy to place the entire navigation inside a burger style navigation, however it increases the amount of clicks a user must take.
By ensuring that our most important menu items are only a single click away on mobile improved the overall user experience on both mobile and tablet.
Users searching from a mobile might be looking for info on local stores as well as product or nutritional info, so we placed these front and centre on the horizontal navigation.
We mapped out the 20+ page templates for mobile, tablet and desktop and provided wireframes and prototypes for the Grouts team to gain feedback on test before proceeding with the design.
Content Direction
Grouts is a well-known baker across South Essex and yet when walking in a store you never get to see the engine of the company. Their main bakery begins at 4am and distributes to their 12 stores by 7am. Customers were used to seeing the front of house, yet we wanted to let them discover behind the scenes, so we called in Westside Photography to capture both front of house and the main bakery shots of all the team baking at the crack of dawn.
They also captured their product range, which helped with getting the products listed online.
Multi-Device Bespoke Design
A bespoke design was designed based on the Grouts brand styles and mapped out not just on mobile and desktop devices but on tablet too.
Each of the dedicated page templates was presented in a working prototype allowing the Grouts team to once again walk through the website, yet this with brand styled elements and personalised photography too.
Store Locator
One of the improvements that needed to be made from the previous website was the ability for users to find a store that’s near to them. Utilising the Google Maps API we allowed the user to either enter their town or postcode to find the nearest of their 12 stores, or use the browsers location setting which shows the closest based on their device location.
Each of the dedicated page templates was presented in a working prototype allowing the Grouts team to once again walk through the website, yet this with brand styled elements and personalised photography too.
Collected or Delivered
Product options like buffets and celebration cakes can be ordered online and have the option to be collected from the user’s local store or delivered locally. We capped distances from each of the stores to ensure that any orders wouldn’t disrupt the usual routes of the delivery vans.
Photo Upload Personalisation
With the rise of personalisation it doesn’t stop with food. We implemented a photo upload feature on a range of celebration cakes to enable users to order photo cakes online.
Additional personalisation options were also available such as decorative coloured icing or ribbon choices.
Technology & Plugins
Aside from WordPress and WooCommerce the website also utilised Gravity Forms to manage form data and personalisation information. The forms were also integrated with Campaign Monitor to increase their email database. Google Maps API was also utilised to power the stockist locator functionality.
Results
Since launch the website has become a tool in which delivers frequent organic traffic for those looking for celebration cakes or key baked products – the team receive countless requests for instore items to be delivered 200 miles away, something that has opened their eyes to the possibility for widening their delivery locations and focusing on what can also be sent via couriers as to delivered by their own vans.
Users remain on the website longer and utilise the custom buffets and photo upload celebration cakes. We have also began evolving the website adding new features such as a nutritional information and a further marketing integration with campaign monitor to automatically deliver vouchers to use on the website.
The website was launched in 2016, however 2 years after it’s launch it was a finalist in the 2018 Essex Digital Awards in the ecommerce category.
