Ramblin’ Sol Farm
Service
Custom Web Development & Ongoing Support
Features
Membership, subscription box, custom WooCommerce, custom reporting, automation
Live Site
ramblinsolfarm.com
Overview
Ramblin’ Sol Farm is an organic farm in Cream Ridge, NJ offers membership in their community-supported agriculture program. They had a disjointed website that was hindering their ability to grow and expand the farm. One part of the site was created as a React app that they couldn’t make any updates to without the developer, and the other part was what remained of their old WooCommerce site. They needed something that was all in one place, easy to update, and made the process better for their members.
Starting the Project
We wanted to not just enable them to make updates to the site without a developer. We wanted to make the entire site a more pleasant experience for people coming to the site. The less time they spent on order issues each week, the more time they could spend working on the farm.
The main function of the site is to allow members to add items to their share each week, but it was important that the farm could also set up events that they can sell tickets for, accept donations, and share recipes.
So we started fresh. We manually migrated the existing recipes and some projects and go to work on a freshly redesigned and developed site using the WordPress full site editor.
Building the Membership Flow
Each year, members sign up to receive 3, 5, or 8 items each week (known as a “share”). These memberships start and end a few times throughout the year.
When they first sign up, they also choose their main pickup location so the farm can anticipate how much they’ll need to bring to each location throughout the season. This is done through conditional checkout fields.
The members log in each week and see their specific order link that corresponds with their membership level.
They fill their box, add it to their cart, choose a pick-up location, and submit their order.
Since launching, we’ve added the option for delivery from a third-party service and the ability for EBT members to pay online. For both, we added messages to the confirmation page and email.
Product Boxes
It was extremely important that we streamlined the CSA member experience. We needed a single place where someone could see all the options, add them to their order at different quantities, and add only the amount they were allowed.
So we set out to find a subscription box plugin that would still be flexible enough to customize. And it was important that the plugin offered an accessible way for people to create those boxes. And luckily we found that without having to develop a custom solution.
We were able to disable the box quantity, add notices to these products, and limiting access based on membership level.
Additional WooCommerce Setup
We made sure to add order links in key areas of the site, including the account area, to try to make the process as easy as possible. There’s a message that displays at the top of each page if someone has a CSA order in their cart to encourage people to complete their order submission, since carts are cleared each week.
Anyone with a product in their cart gets an email reminder that they need to submit their order before the gets cleared. This is an important part of the process to make sure members are creating their boxes each week based on the current availability.
The site also includes a donation form on the checkout page and the ability for admins to add wholesale members who can access wholesale prices and an additional set of products.
The Admin Experience
We developed a custom reporting plugin that allows the farm to print custom packing slips and generate a harvest report based on the orders for a selected date range.
We automated the cart clearing process post-launch, so an admin no longer has to go in and manually clear the user sessions. The products are scheduled, so they are published on Fridays and automatically set to draft on Mondays to keep ordering confined to the correct days.
There’s also an automated process to move CSA orders from Processing to Completed each week, and we continue to discuss opportunities for automating these manual processes.
Looking Forward
The support requests that the farm received each week drastically fell since launching the new site, and we’ve been able to implement things like delivery, online EBT payments, process automation, discounts, donations, and new membership levels.
We continue to test for accessibility and performance and make incremental improvements to the site functionality as the needs of the farm evolve and grow.
“We so appreciate the care and skill Kinetic Iris has brought to our site. Thanks for all of the updates and for getting our site to a more user friendly place. I’m excited about the next round of improvements for our site.”
— Erica Woodland, Founding Director of National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network
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