Copper Bridge Soap And Body Online Shop
Bridget has a passion for making beautiful and natural body soaps and lotions. She had already had some success selling her soaps, but wanted to branch out with her very own online shop.
We kept the design of her website as simple and as elegant as possible because we didn’t want to detract from the very professional-looking product photos that Bridget had taken herself. We wanted those pictures to shine through!
Telling Bridget’s story
As well as a soap-maker, Bridget is a mother of twin boys. We agreed that it was very important to weave her story into the website copy. This is the story of solving her baby son’s skin condition by bathing him in soap formulated especially for him.
We decided it was also very important to highlight Bridget’s profession as a midwife, and her passion for creating nurturing products for both mother and baby.
Technical design
I built the website using Astro. This was my first e-commerce website using Astro, and it won’t be the last, because it paired with Snipcart extremely well, and was great to work with.
We chose Snipcart for the shopping cart because then Bridget could manage all her products inside the website using a simple CMS, and the day-to-day orders could be managed using Snipcart’s dashboard. The checkout process provided by Snipcart is both simple to navigate and elegant.
Hosting
As a Jamstack site, made using Astro, it is extremely fast loading, and because we chose to host it with Cloudflare, the hosting was free.
This is a new business venture for Bridget. I didn’t want to saddle her with expensive hosting, which is often the case with other e-commerce systems such as WooCommerce. A WooCommerce website would have required a monthly maintenance charge on top of the hosting charge.
Bridget’s Astro/Snipcart site should stay fast, secure and problem-free for years to come without costing the earth to keep it online.
Service summary
It was a pleasure working with Bridget!
Here’s a summary of the service I provided for her online business, Copper Bridge Soap And Body:
- Discovery. Our journey began with a video call. I got to know Bridget’s story, her passion for soap making, and her vision for the website.
- Content design. Once I understood Bridget’s story and her soap-making business, I was ready to begin writing the content. The content always comes first in the design journey because the words are the most important part of the website. I incorporated Bridget’s own words into the copy, so the site would come across to customers as authentically in her voice.
- Wireframe (coding). Once we had agreed on the content, I created a wireframe. The wireframe is where we take the copy, and then design and code a site structure around the words. The wireframe takes the form of a working website, so Bridget can see how the website flows exactly.
- Design. Once the content and the wireframe is complete and agreed on, most of the work is in fact done. I then go away and make the site beautiful. Before I started on the design, we agreed on a main accent colour. Bridget loved the green we chose because it didn’t compete with her beautiful photography.
- SEO optimisation. It is essential that an online shop has the correct schema (rich data) deep inside the code. This is so that Google can find the site, index it, rank it for keywords, and automatically add the products to the shopping tab in search.
- Importing products and testing. Bridget provided the product images, descriptions, options and prices which I then added to the website.
Speed report
The copy on a website is very important, but so is loading speed. If potential customers can’t access your site on all devices immediately, you’ve lost them, and all your hard work is wasted.
E-commerce websites are typically very sluggish, especially on mobile. This site however, is extremely fast.
Do you have something to sell online? Contact me today to discuss your new e-commerce website.
Here's what Bridget had to say!
Meghan has recently finished designing my website for a new venture. I had very little experience in this field so found it all a bit over whelming. Meghan was very understanding and has a wealth knowledge to put you at ease. She is very professional yet friendly and very easy to work with. Extremely prompt communication throughout the process with great ideas. She was able to explain all the steps involved and navigate me through any challenges we encountered. I would recommend her services to anyone looking to design a similar project. Many thanks Meghan.
