Shadrachs is one of Jonesboro's favorite local coffee businesses; very popular with the college-age locals. To coincide with the launch of their new, well-designed location on Red Wolf Blvd., Shadrachs asked Pleth to create a new e-commerce website for Shadrachs to sell bags of fresh-ground coffee and branded apparel. I was tasked with the design and development of the website, so I was able to carry this project from start to finish.

Challenge

My top priority was making sure that the website was complete and launched alongside the opening of the new location, so there was a slight time crunch. We tweaked our normal timelines to make sure that the project was done quickly with no dip in quality; I was able to put aside other projects and focus on this.

My personal goal for the website was to truly give Shadrachs a 1-to-1 pixel perfect development result; for the website to look exactly (or as close as possible) like the mockups.

Approach and Solutions

The design started with a rough sketch that was provided by Larry, the owner of Shadrachs. From there, my team and I discussed which features to include and an initial layout based the drawing, which (no offence to Larry) was a little hasty. Larry suggested a few iterations and additions, but for the most part, the first design stuck.

I took a modular approach to the sections so that mobile adaptive layouts could be easily implemented. The resulting WordPress theme started as a blank WooCommerce store theme, Storefront. I developed the website in one week to meet the timeline that we had established earlier and the website was launched in March of 2016.

A feature that I, personally, felt was too — uh — personal was a "Prayer Request" section on the website. We spoke to Larry and discussed the upsides and downsides, but eventually left the feature in.

Results

The website was announced to the public on April 11, 2016. The audience loved the website and the most widely praised feature was the Prayer Request section that we nearly removed. Since the launch, Shadrachs has focused more on their social media presence, which is smart, considering their audience. The website served as a catalyst to focus more on electronic promotion for their business.

I've built better performing websites, but to bring light to the importance of design in all aspects of a business is, to me, an equal success. Shadrachs is doing better than ever. They have since moved to a new platform.