Sowing Future Scalability Through A Full Website Overhaul

Many of Farmer Boy’s most established customers use mobile technology in different ways from what would be considered standard usage. Their multi-decade relationships with Amish, Mennonite and Brethren groups are important and many of these family owned and operated businesses have been buying products and services using only a mobile device over the last few years. Mobile navigation needed a clear path to purchase with a practical approach to design while still allowing the Farmer Boy branding to shine through. Guidance’s navigation design is deliberately straightforward with a focus on usability and clear user experience.

The most important aspect of this project was to improve the findability of products. Guidance worked with subject matter experts (SME) at Farmer Boy to relabel and reorganize the entire product catalog in an effort to simplify and clean up the main menu. Guidance created a navigation scheme to support the newly created taxonomy and strongly advocated for an AI-powered search and recommendation solution. Once the user has found a product and lands on the product description page (PDP), the newly created PDP serves as a true shopping experience with improved product descriptions and enhanced layout to truly inform the customer’s buying process.

Replatform with BigCommerce

In order to provide a solid foundation for their newly redesigned website, Farmer Boy needed a cloud-based ecommerce platform capable of providing hybrid B2B and B2C functionality with full long-term scalability. BigCommerce was the best choice for their regularly updated platform that provides full B2B and B2C capabilities and unlimited integration potential. Guidance worked with Farmer Boy to establish a customized theme specific to their ecommerce requirements.

Farmer Boy’s customers will have full visibility into their order history as well as complete returns online; prior to the replatform, those functionalities had to be performed manually. Quotes can now be fully automated online and customers can access their account level pricing once logged into their account. Inventory management was once a pain point for Farmer Boy and real-time inventory feeds can now prevent customer frustration and potential churn. Overall, the move to BigCommerce has given Farmer Boy the flexibility to transact entirely online and has removed a barrier to entry into the online agricultural market.

Multiple Complex Integrations

Guidance integrated over 12 new ecommerce solutions, including Product Information Management (PIM), an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), a visual CMS (Content Management System) and a full checkout (with invoicing and trade credit options) and shipping (for freight and LTL) functionality.

The move to a mature digital presence coincides with a generational shift in shopping habits. Many of the current farm owners are handing the reins to their children who were raised expecting digital tools.

APS Payments for Improved Payment Processing

Part of the replatform to BigCommerce meant transitioning to a new payments provider. Farmer Boy selected APS Payments as the solution fully integrates with Sage 100 (ERP) and BigCommerce. APS Payments provides superior flexibility and improved features over their previous payment provider such as tokenized credit card data, which simplifies PCI compliance, and daily automatic batch reporting. Multiple payment methods are accepted and the solution supports Level 3 processing and EMV chip functionality.

Salsify: One Source of Product Truth

The largest and most complex integration for this project was the Product Information Management (PIM) solution. Salsify was chosen for their native integration with BigCommerce and the advanced functionality for a hybrid B2B and B2C ecommerce model. Farmer Boy managed all product information manually prior to the Salsify integration and this solution represents a centralized source of product truth and an efficient form of data collection and governance.

This shift to a PIM solution has helped Farmer Boy manage all customer-facing product data needed to support a newly centralized digital catalog. Formerly, this product information was scattered throughout departments and systems frequently with varying degrees of accuracy. This new system allows Farmer Boy to store and standardize all product content, marketing content and images in one location. They have been able to streamline workflows and automate their printed catalogs, including creating custom catalogs for top customers.

Automated Shipping Quotes with ShipperHQ

A major frustration for any customer is an incomplete total at checkout, especially when it relates to shipping costs. Farmer Boy’s huge product assortment ranges from small parcel items to large freight and LTL shipments and shipping rate calculations was a huge pain point for the company as all costs were assigned manually. The ShipperHQ integration has completely eliminated the complexity and burden of freight and LTL calculations. ShipperHQ optimizes the built-in BigCommerce checkout experience with flexible shipping rates and delivery options and completely tailors the experience to Farmer Boy’s customer profile. This has meant reduced cart abandonment and dramatically diminishes the shipping exception costs for Farmer Boy as each weight/dimension error results in fees to the merchant.

Deploying ShipperHQ has meant an increase in shipment rate accuracy for even the most complex orders and the creation of shipping rules and restrictions for products, carriers and shipping methods. Farmer Boy can now establish shipping rates by geographic zones, cart quantities and specific customers at the account level. It enables table rates, flat rate shipping, in-store pickup and dimensional weight-based costs.

Credit Key For Fully Automated Trade Credit

Before their new website, Farmer Boy handled all forms of trade credit manually. Guidance integrated Credit Key to extend Farmer Boy’s ability to extend business credit to their customers without exposing them to any additional financial risk. Credit Key approves Farmer Boy’s customers for better monthly terms immediately at checkout by assuming all the risk and factoring all invoices. Farmer Boy can now instantly extend Net D payment terms to their customers both online and offline. Guidance helped Farmer Boy ensure that all existing credits carried over into the new Credit Key solution.

Visual Page Builder with Shogun

Shogun is a powerful visual editor used to design product landing pages, product description pages and more. Before this solution was in place, Farmer Boy relied on manual coding and bulky updates to their website. With Shogun, they can easily create new pages within the redesigned framework provided by Guidance’s design team. Not only is Shogun an easy drag and drop page builder and visual content management system (CMS), it also includes features like A/B testing, analytics, scheduled publication and many other marketing features. Farmer Boy can now easily identify their top performing pages and monitor key metrics like sales, add to carts, bounce rate, sessions and conversions.

Searchspring for the best AI-Powered Search

Guidance’s newly redesigned menu houses the main product categories but with a catalog as huge as Farmer Boy’s, a powerful search solution is required. Nextopia, a Searchspring company was selected for its AI-powered search and merchandising capable of transforming the ecommerce shopping experience. The customizable onsite search, navigation, recommendation and merchandising applications use machine learning to improve the customer experience and the product discovery journey eliminates manual intervention. This leads to converting more browsers into buyers and reduces the need for customer service calls to find products online. The solution includes site search with autocomplete, visual merchandising, landing page builders for search terms, smart product recommendations and AI-powered personalization for search and navigation.