Jenna Rae Cakes is a bakery founded by twin sisters Jenna and Ashley. They specialize in cakes and other sweet treats with a whimsical twist. The company has grown to include three bakery locations and a namesake collection of party goods, baking essentials, apparel and jewelry. Jenna Rae Cakes is all about celebrating life's special moments with family.
The Problem
Jenna Rae Cakes Wordpress website was challenging for them to maintain and update content and products, especially products with complex options. Their current website had Pickup and Shipping broken into two different Web experiences and wanted both to be combined into one intuitive cart so consumers could shop for online or pickup. Their current website design was having trouble with organizing and conveying to customers which products were Pickup only versus Shipping, causing complaints and customers leaving at Checkout. Their website would go down at the most critical time, during sale launches. The website's Ecommerce capabilities were starting to become limited, with Jenna Rae Cakes looking to offer subscriptions, digital products and wholesale a year or two down the line. They wanted to add more pay options like apple pay, google pay and shop pay to their checkout. Lastly, they wanted to update the look and feel of their website with a refresh redesign.
This was causing major problems for their business. They needed a solution that would solve all of these issues and help them scale their business for the future.
The Execution
Requirements and Business Analysis
The first step was to create a Functional Requirements Document (FRD). It is a tool used by business analysts to help break down tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces. It was created during the early stages of the project in order to better understand the needs of the stakeholders involved. This allowed us to begin mapping out tasks for developers and determining any critical paths that would need to be address soon.
Two stores were created for this project. One was a Development Sandbox we could use for testing and ensuring our proof of concepts were sound, as well as a staging environent for big future releases. The second was their live production store, which would be handed to the client once the project was ready for launch.
Website Migration
One of the goals of this project was to migrate the website from WordPress to Shopify. We also realized that it would be the best time to restructure and organize the metadata that products had in order to help improve the UI UX for collection filtering when those metafields are imported into Shopify. Information was exported into CSV's and we worked with Aelea, the stakeholder who was responsible with content from JRC in order to update and enhance the data that we would later leverage with code on their theme.
Website Design
Our team decided to use a Shopify theme as their starting point for the new website design. JRC worked with our team to choose a theme that matched the design they were going for, and we made suggestions to ensure we found one that met all of the functional requirements that the JRC team was looking to achieve with their new website.
Once our starting point was set. Website Design was done with Ashley, Co founder and a Graphic Designer from JRC. She worked alongside our Designer to create the Designs. Our Designer put them in a Figma file to be ready for Handoff to our Developers. We made suggestions along the way that we felt would be beneficial for Ecommerce conversion rates, as well as would discuss if there were any Design directions that we felt would be challenging to build that could affect the scope of the project.
Ashley was amazing to work with and it was a great experience. As normally from experience the hardest part is understanding the vision that a stakeholder has. Since Ashley has the graphic Design background, she was able to clearly communicate her vision and expectations as we worked on the project together!
Website Development
We started building the backend logic for the website while the designs were being finalized. This involved integrating apps to handle complex product options and creating a shopping cart that could support pick-up, local delivery, and shipping.
Our developers began working on completing the different pieces required for building out the Design. We met on a weekly basis to communicate any difficulties and pivot as needed in order to ensure the project was completed on Time. By working together and breaking down the tasks, we were able to complete the frontend development of the website successfully.
Client Training
JRC now on the ECommerce Shopify platform, we needed to train and educate them on how to use the platform. The JRC team loved how much simpler the admin of Shopify is compared to WordPress. Training consisted of multiple hour-long video calls to go over specific topics, as well as answer general questions. The topics included, Setting up complex products, creating blog posts, image size and type best practices, how to update content within the Shopify editor, and managing orders for Pickup Local Delivery and Shipping. After the initial training was completed we had weekly check-ins to answer any questions that arose and to help with anything they needed.
Documentation and Handoff
As the project neared completion, we created a Gitbook for JRC to use as documentation. This book included an overview of how their website worked, as well as in-depth technical information and video tutorials.
We also created links to our Apps, as well as third party Apps documentation, so that JRC could easily find solutions to any problems they might have with their Ecommerce store.
Overall, the Gitbook served as a valuable resource for JRC, and helped them to understand how their website worked, as well as how to maintain it going forward.
The results
In just two months, the JRC team saw major improvements in their website design, backend processes, and overall online presence. The new Shopify platform has allowed them to take their business to the next level, and the team is excited to see what the future holds. Thanks to the hard work of our design and development team, JRC is now able to take on even more orders and continue growing their business.
Since working with FireNet Designs, JRC has had successful product launches and pre-order sales. Their website has experienced no downtime, and FireNet Designs continues to work with them on an ongoing basis to meet all their IT needs. This has resulted in increased efficiency and productivity for JRC, as well as peace of mind knowing that their IT infrastructure is in good hands.
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