If you're jumping in here, I'd recommend starting at Part 1 - Context, Discovery and Planning and Part 2 - Fixes, the Build and a Chaotic Go-Live first.
Phase 3 - Operationalising the New World
In our corporate world, we'd talk about this as "change management" 😂 - this phase was about trying to gently influence Steve's routine, behaviours and operation in order to keep the progress going.
- From 'order by WhatsApp' to 'order by website' - old habits die hard. Steve was used to manually accepting orders and keeping customers up to date, by hand, via WhatsApp. I've made this easier for him using custom flows in Shopify, but it will take time to get him fully there.
- Working with the farmer to create engaging content - the whole plan was going to succeed or fail on this specific point. In order to stand out, the plan was to harness the power of viral social media. Problem was Steve was not used to it, and took some coaxing. We did a few practice runs creating some clips of him doing interesting things - making sausages, doing the sheep. We showed him how to clip these up and add captions, how to add value-adding commentary. In some ways, this is the element I'm most proud of - the teaching, coaching and educating a farmer into a new way of thinking, and him grasping it. Very rewarding.
- Creating a Content Factory - Now he's got used to producing 'farm life' content, we're building a content library - clips and posts which can go up 3-4 times a week.
- Google OAuth, 6-digit login fallback - After getting the new site live, we upgraded the OAuth and integrated with Google Console for Google authentication. Went quite smoothly. We were expecting this to cause confusion with long standing customers, but it didn't really.
- Product review challenge - Creating bundles, updating pricing, adding quantities etc. This is an ongoing process. Part of the problem being that there are thousands of legacy products, bundles, one-time products, etc. As well as maintaining the live products, we're also working through 10 years of housekeeping, removing all the 'noise'. We're working through it iteratively.
- The roadmap - ha, we actually now have a small roadmap of work still to do in April: a) digitalising the invoicing and accounts side, b) saved lists and subscriptions, c) recipe page, d) Facebook auth.
Yes, we have an actual roadmap. Some habits die hard.
The Results
Week 1
Day 1 - 100 likes on socials by lunchtime on the first piece of content. I've never been so proud of 100 likes in my life - not because of the Facebook to website conversion rate, not because of the sales, but because this virality showed the farmer something - it showed him how powerful content is on social media, and how that can raise his profile.
He also got lots of informal feedback from customers in the shop, and we saw first orders on the new site. We saw positive comments in the order notes section - his local customers loved the new site, and the new account functionality.
Week 2
Social media content started to gain traction, lots of consistent engagement on the posts, and analytics on both old and new sites showed an uptick in visitors. Small but visible increase in sales compared to previous weeks.
Steve reported a visible difference in new physical visitors to the shop, saying "we came here after seeing the social media content."
Week 3 - Measuring Our Initial Success
In terms of the hard numbers we set at the start:
"Increase revenue from online sales by 2-3x what it is today"
After a few weeks, we're seeing around a 40-50% increase in week on week sales. Not at target yet, but on the right track.
"Thanks Trist, all the advices you've given us have really helped us, we wouldn't have done some of this without you. Palpable improvement in business and physical footfall, thank you for your help with this." - Steve
"Increase customers opting for online pickup over delivery (baseline 0:100, target 50:50)"
From a weekly average of 0 in-store pickups, we're now seeing a consistent stream of 5-10 customers a week ordering online and collecting in store. Good progress.
"We've seen so many new customers who have come in directly from the social media campaign, its been great for us. Nearly everyone we speak to at the till mentions it, you've inspired us." - Steve
"Reduce refunded orders due to being outside delivery area (baseline 20%, target <5%)"
Since implementing the delivery area controls in Shopify, we have seen 0 out-of-area orders. Much to the delight of Sarah, who used to have to reject and refund these manually.
"One simple change has tangibly saved us both admin and lost revenue." - Sarah
"Reduce number of abandoned carts by 40%"
Still seeing a number of abandoned carts - in fact there's been a small uplift of 'abandoned at checkout' since we implemented better delivery controls. This one needs more investigation over the coming weeks.
"Improve customer feedback around online shop functionality"
Hardest one to measure quantitatively, but the informal feedback from shop customers over the last few weeks has been positive. I plan to spend more time in the shop over the next few weeks to measure it properly.
"Look at these multiple 'love the new website' comments on the orders and on our Facebook pages." - Sarah
"Customers are very happy about being able to click and collect." - Steve
"We're now building a community through the online engagement." - Steve
Closing Comments
When I agreed to help a month ago, I thought it would be a 5-minute job to rebuild someone's website using Claude. What actually ensued was a multi-phase, multi-week project with various moving parts - the whole thing has been a whole lot more rewarding than I expected (and a genuinely productive use of time whilst I've been on a career break). I've learned a lot about small-scale e-commerce and got to practice my AI skills extensively on real world problems.
You don't need big hype to start with Claude - start with solving problems. Some people don't care about AI. They just want their problems solved. You start there.
Worried about AI? My advice is to go help someone. Start small. Go try something, go build something, calm down, go through it step by step and grow.
Otherwise, all that remains to say is - if you are in or around Cropwell Butler, please go visit Steve's shop. You won't regret it.
Helping a Local Farm Shop - Mini Series