Shopify Case Study: Floret Flower Farm

Erin Benzakein of Floret Flowers came to us in need of a better solution for her ecommerce site. While Floret had amassed a loyal following of customers, her old WooCommerce online shop wasn’t able to handle large spikes of traffic and didn’t fit the needs of her growing business. As this Shopify case study shows, we were able to create a strong and stable ecommerce website that could easily handle all of their excited customers.

Deciding to move from WooCommerce to Shopify

Erin came to us fed up with her existing ecommerce platform. She told us,

“We recently had our website redone, which I LOVE the look of, but when it comes to the shop functionality (WooCommerce), it has been a total nightmare. We chose to go with Woo since our site and blog are WP and I didn’t want to lose our blog comments and Google ranking by moving everything to Shopify.”

After trying to make things work with WooCommerce, Erin finally realized she needed a different solution. The years of frustration were taking a toll on Erin and her customers. She says,

“Our old shop wasn’t built for scalability and didn’t hold up to heavy traffic during product launches and crashed numerous times. No matter how much time and resources we invested into fixing the problems, the site just couldn’t scale with our growing business. With Aeolidia, we were finally able to have a shop that was not only thoughtfully and beautifully designed, but also functional, versatile and scalable.”

Erin was in search of a fully-functional ecommerce website that was mobile-friendly and easy for her customers to navigate and that was easy to use on both the front and backend. The ecommerce shop needed to be able to sync with Floret’s inventory management system, their shipping software, and Quickbooks. We sprung into action to provide a solution to Erin’s problem.

Creating a custom Shopify website for Floret Flowers

Our goal for this project was functionality and ease of use. Floret already had beautiful elements on the existing WordPress homepage, so we focused on decluttering and rearranging everything to provide a great shopping experience.

Throughout the entire project, Erin and the Floret Flowers team could communicate directly with Aeolidia’s project team, including designer Christine, Shopify developer Kelly, copywriter Natalia, and web analyst Helen. We use a project management tool called Basecamp where everyone involved in the project could collaborate and share information during each phase of design and development. Erin shared this feedback about her experience:

“Throughout our time working with Aeolidia, their team was excellent at presenting available options and suggestions for each challenge presented to them. They were fast and responsive and overall really good at communicating with us, which was a refreshing change from so many other outside vendors we’ve worked with in the past.

Their team was knowledgeable, friendly and always willing to take the time to explain and even demonstrate how to do something or take complex tech concepts and translate them into terms we could understand and act upon. We especially appreciated working with another female owned and operated business, especially one in an otherwise male dominated tech sector.”

How business has improved since the launch of the new website

Due to the seasonal nature of their farm business, many of the products that Floret Flowers offers on their website are not always in stock, and when they do release new collections of flowers, seeds, and bulbs, they often sell out extremely quickly.

With the old WooCommerce website, this led to web server crashes and upset customers. Now, with the new Shopify site we built for them, their website runs smoothly during big product launches. We knew their site needed to be able to handle large spikes in traffic, and when we reviewed their website traffic stats during their 6 month checkup, we could see that were going much more smoothly, even as website traffic continued to grow. Erin told us,

“While working with Aeolidia, we felt like they were truly invested in our longterm success. For example, rather than handing over the keys to the site and moving on to the next project without looking back, Aeolidia included a comprehensive six month check in process and progress report. The information they shared with us after analyzing and assessing the performance of our site was exceptional and truly exemplified top notch customer service.

This assessment process also helped us to identify new needs and opportunities for our site. For example, we identified a need to better communicate the availability of products offered on our site, since our farm business is different than most e-commerce sites. We enlisted Aeolidia once again to creatively problem solve and design solutions that have helped us to achieve additional success. Thank you Aeolidia!”

Overall, their new ecommerce site is performing fantastically well. We absolutely love how the site turned out and we are thrilled that it has supported such amazing growth for Floret Flowers.

View this project in our portfolio »

View the Floret Flowers website »

Do you need a more robust, stable ecommerce solution?

If you’ve found yourself in a similar situation to where Erin was, struggling with an ecommerce platform that your business has outgrown, contact us. As official Shopify experts, our team has been able to transform many businesses just like Floret Flowers. From building a custom Shopify website for your growing business to a full brand identity design or product photography we can help! Grab our rate sheet and learn more.