Uw Stadsboer (Your City Farmer), organic groceries from the region
A new and clear focus on online sales through the website. Offering a unique experience, where (farming) expertise, organic food, regional products, and convenience are central.
In 2015, the idea for "Uw Stadsboer" (Your City Farmer) originated. The initiators aimed to make conscious living easier and bring a sustainable lifestyle closer to home by delivering organic and sustainable basic products to people's homes.
Uw Stadsboer's cows graze in the Tippe and the Scheller and Oldeneler uiterwaarden in Zwolle. After living as organic dairy cows, they are slaughtered by a small-scale, organic butcher, resulting in top-quality organic beef.
The cows of Uw Stadsboer graze on the Tippe and in the Scheller- and Oldeneler floodplains in Zwolle. After a life as an organic dairy cow, they are slaughtered by a small-scale, organic butcher. This results in top-quality organic beef.
"Our mission is to make conscious living easier and reconnect nature and the city." Uw Stadsboer (Your City Farmer)
The organic products of Uw Stadsboer (Your City Farmer) can be ordered via their website and are delivered to your doorstep. In addition to the website, there is also a physical store located in the heart of Zwolle.
Question
At Uw Stadsboer, they are full of ideas, and precisely because of this, it was high time to take a critical look at their online resources. Bringing together all the (good) initiatives on the website had caused a lot of "noise". In addition, the technical backbone of the website was not reliable enough, causing users to drop off earlier than desired. Novaware was brought in to make a change in this regard. Together with Uw Stadsboer, we developed a new and clear focus on online sales through the website, with a unique experience where (farming) expertise, organic food, local produce and, above all, convenience are central.
Concept session
In these types of projects, it is always good to take a step back and look at the 'why'. Thereby, clarifying the purpose of the project. Hence, we started with a joint session to map out the core values of Uw Stadsboer. Thereafter, we looked at how each core value should be reflected in a new website. This resulted in several interesting insights and ideas that we could further develop into a solid foundation.
After working out the concept, a plan of action was developed. As the need to update the technology was the highest priority, we chose to first renew the technology. All other adjustments and expansions of the concept will be implemented in later phases. This allows us to achieve results faster and take into account the available budgets. We also look at the learnings during and after each phase and incorporate them into the next phase.
Design sprint
As a follow-up to the concept phase, we often go through the steps of a design sprint in our projects. This allows us to quickly work towards a tangible prototype. Given the available budget and the concrete goal we have in mind, we have reduced the design sprint to a single day in this case.
To go through all the steps of the design sprint in one day, you have to really push hard. It's extremely intensive, but it yields a lot of results. By going through the sprint together with the client, it creates a lot of support for the final product and it helps to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
We have documented the results and processed them into a clickable prototype that could then be tested by a test panel (customers) of Uw Stadsboer.
Design phase
After the prototype had been tested by the target audience and the findings were incorporated into a final prototype, the blueprint for the new website of Uw Stadsboer was ready. Upon completion, Uw Stadsboer requested that we also take on the design piece and develop it further.
Using the wireframes as a starting point, we first renewed the design of the homepage. Within the existing recognizable style of Uw Stadsboer, we created a new, fresh look, visualizing the core values of the concept phase. The advantage of following the design sprint principles is that a lot is already clear, and decisions have been made. This saves a lot of discussions and time.
We never provide just one design but show several possibilities/combinations of elements on the page that we discuss. Once the basis for the design was final, we further elaborated on the other elements and the functioning of the webshop.
Follow-up steps
As previously mentioned, the concept and design are implemented in different phases. The first priority was the technology. To quickly establish a good technical foundation that allows for future needs and fits within the budget of Uw Stadsboer, we chose Wordpress in combination with WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a lightweight e-commerce solution that has made tremendous growth since 2011. It is by far the market leader (42.75%) and increasingly, more prominent webshops use this open-source software. WooCommerce is powerful and incredibly flexible. Its adaptability makes it the perfect foundation to develop various needs and functionalities in the upcoming phases.
