8 O’clock Ranch Website
CLIENT
8 O'clock Ranch
TYPE
Custom Web Features, Website
Kassandra Barton from 8 O'clock Ranch contacted me. She wanted a new website that they could use to sell their meats. Based on her goals for the website, I designed and built a website that showcases 8 O'clock Ranch's variety of quality meats and allows customers to easily everything from individual cuts of meat to bulk orders.
Custom Product Searching
One of the primary challenges of the site was designing and building the product listing and searching area. 8 O'clock Ranch sells a great variety of cuts and boxes (multiple meats in a combined bundle) of meats, and we wanted users to be able to easily find specific cuts or simply browse new meats to try.
To solve this problem, I designed a storefront that takes every cut and box of meat and lists it on a single page. I then built custom filtering and searching controls so that customers can quickly locate a desired product or simply browse by category. Within the list users can customize their selection (e.g. select cut weight) and add the product to their cart. The result of this custom interface is that from start to finish, customers can browse and create their order without having to load any new pages.
Filters, a forgiving search, and sorting controls make it easy customers to quickly locate their desired product.
CSA Share Orders, Bulk Orders, Recipes, and more
The website also included a host of other features. One was a section that offered CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) participation. CSA ordering works like this: once customers sign up for CSA shares, they receive fresh cuts of meat every month. I set up the CSA order form so that customers could completely customize their CSA orders.
Similarly, customers needed to be able to create bulk orders (e.g. order an entire animal) and be able to specify cut preferences for each bulk order. Using the same method as for the CSA share section, I created bulk order forms for beef, pork, and lamb meat.
Mrs. Barton also had a variety of recipes that she wanted to share on the site. I set up a recipe book style page with a "Print Recipe" feature that allowed users to easily print just the recipe they were interested in.
Advanced Shipping Rates
Shipping raw meat is complicated. There are a lot of factors to consider: shipping distance, outdoor temperature, and quantity of meat all play a role in whether the meat will arrive frozen and in good condition. To compensate, you have to use the proper shipping speed for each destination in order to make sure the survives the travel. To make sure the website was charging the proper shipping rates, we worked with UPS to identify shipping distances and speeds on a per-zip-code basis, then loaded nearly 18,000 zip codes into the website to aid with rate calculation based on the customer's shipping address.
