Posted October 14, 2014
Earlier this year, Philsquare was involved with the redevelopment of The Community Mercantile’s new website. Philsquare teamed up with a local user experience group who focused on design elements that worked within The Merc’s existing branding. The team spent considerable time organizing content since content architecture was key in making sure The Merc’s priorities were being communicated through the web; these include their focus on local food, the opportunity to become owners and their impact on the local economy and community.
"At The Merc, we also strongly value supporting local vendors of all types so I started to look for a local company who could accomplish our goals and in turn we could offer economic support. Philsquare was highly recommended by friends and had a strong portfolio to share, making them an easy decision", said Stacie Doyle, Marketing Manager at The Merc.
The Merc’s new website needed to be easily accessible for the staff to update weekly coupons, daily specials and Merc News. The Merc needed a reliable calendar for posting classes and a registration system that allowed fervent fans of their classes to easily register. The custom website development allows The Merc team to post blog posts quickly, update page headers to reflect the current season or event, and update their list of local products and producers.
“Working with Philsquare was great. They did an awesome job of understanding our business needs and building a website to meet those goals. We needed a site that was easy to navigate on the front end so that our customers could be inspired and informed to shop with us. We also needed a streamlined backend to update content on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The Philsquare team met with several different groups of people at The Merc to understand how they needed to manage their web content and built intuitive workflows to meet those demands,” said Doyle about working with Philsquare.
Since the initial launch of the website, The Merc has hired Philsquare to develop new features for the website including a module that allows Merc owners to vote in the yearly election of board members. This one time cost will save The Merc from spending thousands every year on a voting tool. The Merc also has an ongoing agreement with Philsquare to provide hosting and web support for any questions that arise.
“With our ongoing support agreement I have peace of mind knowing they are always there to support our needs and make little enhancements along the way. We continue to be happy with our working relationship with Philsquare. Supporting an awesome local development firm is the way to go and you will not be let down with the end result,” said Doyle.