Case Study
Hexhamshire Organics delivers high quality, organic produce directly from their farm to door. Based in Northumberland, couple Bob and Ann grow fresh, organically certified vegetables, herbs and fruit on their farm, with pedigree pork and other delicious produce on offer as well.
Customers can choose from set fruit and vegetable boxes or create their own from the selection available. The box is then delivered to their front door for free if they live in their North East delivery area.
We began working with Hexhamshire Organics at the beginning of 2021, as it became clear their WordPress and WooCommerce website was inherently slow due to its modular/plug-in based nature. It was also slow from an administration point of view, making it difficult to update the website and keep up with customer demand. The higher the demand for their products, the more issues were highlighted with the website, which were causing delays. Over time, this would have no doubt impacted revenue should the problem not have been addressed.
A well-built Shopify store was the natural solution, offering speed, a user-friendly interface and a modern design.
We built the Hexhamshire Organics website using the Shopify Standard plan. This provided a lot of the functionality the business required, and any functionality not provided out of the box could be rectified with the use of apps.
Email marketing has always formed a big part of the Hexhamshire Organics marketing strategy (most orders come through this channel) – their weekly newsletter has (and continues to) help them to build a community, form a connection with customers and prompt them to order their next vegetable box, so the ability to integrate with MailChimp was a must.
The other major requirement was of course the online shop, which worked a little differently to a standard ecommerce website in that it required a “build your own box” option, allowing customers to choose from the produce available which changes with the seasons.
They also required a blog page to provide customers with weekly updates, a page explaining how the ordering process works and another detailing the company’s origin story.
Since Hexhamshire Organics only deliver to certain postcodes, it was important to set up shipping profiles in Shopify in order to ensure the delivery area was explicit to customers during the checkout process to stop anyone checking out who was not eligible for delivery.
We also wrote SEO-focused copy for all pages on the website, including each type of box and individual product, giving Hexhamshire Organics the best chance of ranking in search results for relevant keywords.
*2022 vs 2021
The new website is modern looking, impactful, efficient and responsive. It is easy to use from both a customer and admin viewpoint. Which in turn has driven business sales and made it easier for us to deal with this increased demand.
Bob Paton, Hexhamshire Organics