Project Summary:

Virginia Foods approached us looking to find a partner to help them grow their business online. The company were selling their range of health foods branded Virginia Harvest through Health Stores and some major multiples in the UK and Ireland. They were also transacting small volumes through their online store, which also doubled as their company website. They recognised that the site was not properly fulfilling either brief and were looking to develop a website with three main aims;

• To create a professional website for Virginia Foods and the Virginia Harvest brand
• To create a platform for Helen O’Dowd (company founder) to establish herself online as a nutrition expert, health food authority and flax and seed advocate
• To create a professional and findable online store for both consumers and businesses to purchase products online

Project Process:

Stage 1

At the kick-off meeting the tender document was further clarified and the requirement was agreed. We set out a project plan assigning dates and responsibilities to Monsoon, and the Virginia team including their PR firm who was working closely with them to create the write content and copy directions. A sign-off procedure was agreed and shared access was established on Basecamp, the online project management tool we use to manage the project, track documents and assign responsibilities and milestones to the project team. Once we clarified the design brief we developed a simple set of wireframes and progressed to 3 design iterations which were fleshed until the final designs for both the website homepage and shop layouts were agreed.

Stage 2

Simultaneously we researched the e-commerce options as Virginia had specific requirements to fulfil the needs of their business customers. We decided on Drupal as the content management system for the website and Magento as the most suitable e-commerce platform for the project.

Stage 3

We had implemented these platforms separately for other clients but had never integrated them into the same website and we couldn’t find examples or any available module in either developer communities. We wanted the user experience to be seamless so we created some custom code so the shopper would have access and be logged into the shop (with their cart in view) while browsing the main Drupal site. We also needed the Magento platform to talk to the Virginia stock control and ordering system. We also developed the concept of Helens Healing Kitchen which gives Helen the opportunity to start blogging, twittering (integrated twitter feed) creating newsletters and recipes to explain the health benefits of her products as well as providing consumers with ways to use the Virginia Harvest products as ingredients in other dishes.

Result

The final result delivered a neat and clean design in keeping with the product and brand packaging, an integrated e-commerce platform, a SEO-friendly professional and extensible content managed website, a blog and integrated twitter account.

Technology

Drupal, Magento