Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply is a local store in New Holland PA that takes pride in being a one-stop-shop for all things BBQ. After nearly 20 years of service and over 40 years of experience, their roots run deep in the local community. While they did have a website that offered their products online, they wanted to upgrade their online presence with improved load speeds, an easy to understand interface, and reliable order fulfillment.
At Craft & Cloud Marketing, we believe the first step in beginning a healthy partnership is taking the time to get to know our client. This is what we call the Discovery Process, where through a series of meetings we got to know Meadow Creek’s story, what their values are, and who their customers are. This provided a foundation we could use to build the optimal marketing strategy.
How We Build a Marketing Strategy
Refining the Brand
Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply already had a loyal community and benefited from strong brand recognition, but we saw a need to better define their brand identity for consistent presence. Our goal became to clarify their brand without completely abandoning their existing identity and community.
Logo
This process began with their logo; the face of the brand. Our talented designers were able to modernize their logo while keeping the same general elements and overall design language. This allowed for a new, clean logo that represents the quality Meadow Creek is known for, while still being instantly recognizable as Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply.
Brand Manual
Beyond the logo, our designers also put together a palette of colors and typography that represent the brand. These elements, along with guidelines for advertisements, social media posts, messaging, and logo use, are defined in a Brand Manual. This intentional documentation helps give direction to Meadow Creek’s internal team, as well as ours as we move on to other projects.
The Result
These initial branding efforts made the rest of the project possible. Without a solid foundation, all of Meadow Creek’s marketing efforts would feel disconnected and inconsistent. A thoughtfully defined brand brings guidance to the rest of the marketing strategy and helps to keep the marketing goals oriented with Meadow Creek’s values, goals, and mission.
Rebuilding the Website
Part of the Discovery Process meant learning what Meadow Creek was looking for and what their goals are. Their aim for the website was to extend the expertise they’re known for locally to the rest of the world with a well-designed online experience.
Layout & Wireframe
Before we touched a line of code, we wanted to make sure the new website would be easy and intuitive to use, while attracting new customers with valuable SEO content. We call this the Wireframing Process. We refined the layout on the main pages to make them easy to follow, while presenting Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply as the guide that will help their customers become BBQ experts.
Key Features of a Marketing Website
Logical User Experience
In the wireframe stage, we also make sure we provide the customer with clear Calls to Action (CTAs) so if they come to the website needing a specific item, they can easily find it without digging through convoluted pages or complicated menus. This makes the online experience a breeze, and helps to increase the conversion rate of incoming users.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Another important part of the Wireframing process is optimizing the site to rank in search engines like Google. We put deep effort into researching what queries users are searching, and which keywords provide a viable opportunity to rank. These keywords are then thoughtfully applied to the new layout in places like headings, URL’s, tags, and SEO blocks. This helps to make sure the content is relevant and valuable to questions users are asking, while also providing more context to search engine crawlers to know what your page is about. While the main goal of Search Engine Optimization is to improve online rankings, the content should always be focused on providing value to the reader.
In the end, this results in a website that accurately shows who Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply is, provides additional value and information to readers, and helps drive organic traffic that turns into recurring customers.
Design
After Meadow Creek was given an opportunity to review the wireframe, provide feedback, and approve the layout, the project could move into design. Our experienced designers would take the logical layout of the wireframe and make it feel like an engaging website that converts new users into loyal customers.
Attractive Design
Imagine walking down the street and seeing a store with a dirty and weathered sign on the face of an old building starting to show some cracks. You walk in to see a dirty floor, flickering lights, and disorganized shelves, and you immediately want to walk right back out. That’s what it’s like to have a poorly designed website that doesn’t do the products justice.
This is why our talented designers focused on creating a website that properly showcases the quality and professionalism Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply is known for. The design stays true to the brand guidelines defined in the Brand Manual and builds on top of their foundational brick-and-mortar store to provide a unified experience. The new design invites new users to read more about how they can take their BBQ game to the next level using products Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply conveniently provides.
The design is also consistent across all devices and optimized for mobile, since that’s where a majority of Meadow Creek’s online traffic comes from in today’s digital age.
User Experience
Once the viewer spends some time on the site and knows what they want, we aim to create a simple path to help them find the solution to their problem. While wireframing also plays into this, design is where this intuitiveness really comes to life. We want to provide logical Calls to Action (CTAs) strategically placed to provide a smooth experience. Our designers make sure each button adds to the overall design, while being visible when the user is ready to make a decision to learn more, purchase an item, or navigate to another page.
While providing valuable information to new users, we also want to make it easy for someone that knows what they’re looking for to find it. For Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply, this meant simplifying the menus and shop page, making it easy for someone to find a product category, brand, or even a specific product.
All these efforts produced an attractive yet functional website design that stays true to Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply’s goals and identity.
Development
Up to this point, the design is hosted in a semi-functional “mockup” stage. While we can create previews that showcase the new design, it’s not a live website accessible to everyone on the internet. Development was one of the most involved stages of the Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply website process as this is when it starts becoming a functional website that needs to link and interact with existing infrastructure, such as product listings and payment platforms. While making all this work together can be frustrating, development is also often the most rewarding part of the process as we can finally see all our hard work coming to life in a live website.
Technical Optimization
We all know the frustration of finding the perfect product we need at the local store, only to spend more time standing in line checking out than you actually spent shopping. This same principle also applies to online experiences, maybe to an even greater extent; if the website is slow to load or the checkout fails, customers are much more likely to leave and find what they need somewhere else. Our developers were able to optimize Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply’s website to run more smoothly, improve load speed, and reduce bloat that could slow down the website. These efforts, along with great design, valuable content, and thoughtful layout, led to much higher engagement and conversion rates.
Going Live
As the new website is being built, it’s hosted on an internal sandbox environment, allowing our developers to build a functional website that we can interact with to ensure a smooth experience. This also allowed Meadow Creek’s team to see how the new site would look and function and provide feedback before the actual website on their main domain would be updated.
After they approved it, the redesigned website could finally go live. Our experienced developers found the optimal time to take the new site live to reduce down-time as the website wouldn’t be available during the “go live” process. Just like any large-scale website redesign, Meadow Creek’s new site would see some glitches, bugs, and other issues that we work to eliminate as we discover them.
Finally, customers could visit the new MeadowCreekBBQSupply.com to learn about all things barbecue, shop their vast inventory of products, or learn from their expansive library of recipes and blogs.
The Result
As a result of all these efforts, Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply has a more refined brand identity, providing a valuable foundation for business operations and other marketing endeavors. Their revamped website streamlined the online experience, offering a smooth solution for barbecue enthusiasts nationwide. While it can take some time to see the results of Search Engine Optimization, we are already seeing a growth in organic traffic and engagement. Because of the streamlined purchasing process, we’re also seeing that more viewers are choosing to stay on the website longer, leading to increased online sales.
For all things barbecue, from grills and smokers, to barbecue sauces and rubs, check out Meadow Creek BBQ Supply.
Are Your Customers Looking For a More Complete Experience?
In the digital world we live in, your website is becoming increasingly important as the face of your brand. When Meadow Creek Barbecue Supply realized their website didn’t properly represent their brand identity, values, and mission, they came to us to build an online presence that matched the quality they stand for.