It all started with a simple idea: let customers add gift tags with a custom note to individual items in an order. But then the questions started coming. How will we display the gift tag designs available? How about the grandparent who wants to send a product with a note to 8 grandchildren in 6 states—do they have to place 8 separate orders? And how can we make all 8 orders count towards the free shipping threshold? That’s when JollyBod knew they needed some custom WooCommerce development and got in touch with dbdc.
JollyBod is a company that develops and sells petroleum-free, natural cosmetics. Husband and wife Chris and April Pangburn founded JollyBod after failing to find a moisturizer that would work on their son’s chronically dry skin. They make their own custom developed recipes themselves, and sell their products both online and at local events and markets.
Connecting with their customers and sharing the stories of how JollyBod’s products contribute to their travels and adventures is important to Chris and April, and the personalized Gift Tags are a way for customers to share stories with one another.
The Challenge
- Needed help developing the UX of the Gift Card Feature
- WooCommerce and their existing Shipping Fulfillment service could not handle multiple shipping addresses per order
- Cart Discount, Free Shipping, and Local-Pickup Coupons needed to continue to work as expected with multiple shipping addresses
The Solution
- Switch the store to another Shipping Fulfillment service that allows multiple addresses per order
- Custom WooCommerce development to extend the WooCommerce Shipping Multiple Addresses Plugin to restrict shipping options to a specific carrier when multiple addresses were entered
- Design and Implement the User Experience of selecting a Gift Tag and entering a custom note
The Results
- Successful Roll-Out of the Gift Tags feature
- Seamless transition from one Shipping Fulfillment provider to another
- Increased flexibility in offering targeted coupons linked to specific shipping methods or customer types
We started with the WooCommerce Product Add-Ons plugin to allow customers to add and personalize Gift Tags to products. dbdc customized the UI of the plugin to give customers a way to preview the Gift Tag designs, a place to enter their custom note, and also a way to remove the Gift Tag if the customer changed their mind.
In developing the User Experience of the Gift Tag feature the scenario described above came up: someone ordering many items, each with a gift tag, and each going to a different shipping address. We decided that forcing a customer to place a separate order for each item would be cumbersome and would also prevent the customer from reaching the threshold for Free Shipping, which at the time required a minimum total order cost.
Another plugin for WooCommerce, Shipping Multiple Addresses, seemed like the solution. All items would be ordered at once, and the customer could assign a different shipping address to each item. However, JollyBod’s current Shipping Fulfillment service didn’t support shipping items from a single order to multiple addresses, and one that did only supported it for orders shipped via FedEx.
dbdc extended the Shipping Multiple Addresses plugin to automatically restrict shipping options to FedEx only when multiple shipping addresses were entered, and migrated JollyBod to their new Shipping Fulfillment service.
Finally, dbdc customized the WooCommerce coupon system to allow coupons to restrict access to the “Local Pickup” shipping method so that an existing “Family and Friends” Local Pickup option could continue to be used with the updated shipping system.
The end result of dbdc’s custom WooCommerce development was a flexible and powerful ordering, shipping, and couponing system that will allow JollyBod to offer their customers unique products with a smooth and intuitive User Experience, now and into the future.
Client Testimonial
“Jeff is great because he understands more than just website design and ecommerce. He’s been very helpful in increasing JollyBod’s SEO results and optimized our site to work in concert with our social media marketing campaigns.
“I also cannot say enough about his customer service—he gets it and is very responsive.”
— Chris Pangburn, Owner, JollyBod
Images copyright and courtesy JollyBod. Links to the WooCommerce website are affiliate links.