MAKE LIFE RICHER
" Digigrow really kicked off our company in the online space. They worked closely with us to understand where we were coming from and what our vision was which meant that we received exactly the stylish, easy to use platform we were hoping for. We also felt that they went the extra mile by helping us with our launch campaign which got us great traction and awareness. A pleasure working with them and we would highly recommend Digigrow to anyone. "
Niall Horgan, Co-founder of Gym+Coffee
Consultation & Goal development
As with every one of our projects, our first priority when working with Gym+Coffee was to ensure that we align our project plan with our client's mission. Therefore before ever beginning work, we met with the G+C team on several occasions in order to develop a clear understanding of their requirements, goals and future ambitions.
Through this process we were able to agree a clear project philosophy and a strategic roadmap underpinned by deliverables, milestones and timelines
Platform Design
Throughout our planning sessions with the G+C team, it became abundantly clear that design would play a vital role in achieving their business goals and objectives. We therefore set about aligning both the colour palette and the design of various pages with G+C's minimalist, stylish vision for their brand. After several internal iterations we selected shades of green, navy and grey as the principle colours for the platform as we felt that they represented the fresh, active, ambitious Gym+Coffee approach.
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Apple Green
G+C's message is to always push yourself and to become a rounded, balanced person. We felt that the growth of a bright, symmetric, vibrant apple could represent the clean, healthy, active G+C lifestyle.
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Milk Grey
An image which talking to the G+C guys always conjured for us was that of an active person embracing a crisp, cool morning, and we felt that this could be perfectly captured by the freshness and goodness of pure, ice-cold milk.
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Berry blue
To add that essential touch of contrast to the platform we selected the final principle colour as a fusion between blue and purple which symbolises the powerful determination needed to stretch yourself in new exciting ways.
Using this colour selection as a base, we worked closely with the G+C team to craft each page individually, creating clean, spacious, sparse themes highlighting the vibrant colours of the various products on sale, and then optimising and perfecting these designs by listening to the team's feedback and appropriately adjusting, merging, and improving the user interface.
Platform development
Once we had completed the design of the user interface, we began work on the technical side of the platform. The creation of the Gym+Coffee website required the development of a bespoke e-commerce platform tailored to the brand's unique needs.
One of the most important aspects of this work was ensuring that the site would be capable of scaling as the company grew in the future and we therefore based all development work around the creation of a highly re-usable, expandable object orientated programming paradigm utilising a combination of PHP, HTML 5 and JavaScript languages.
HTML
Java Script
PHP
An important element of Gym+Coffee's vision was to be able to engage in a personal manner with their community. One aspect of our development work therefore focussed on the creation of location based services which would allow users to easily locate the latest G+C event or to engage with the wider G+C community in their locality.
Mobile optimization
Initial consultations with potential G+C customers indicated that mobile phones would be the primary means of access to the platform.
Therefore our team worked tirelessly to ensure that all aspects of the developed platform performed seamlessly on all such devices and that users would be able to enjoy a smooth, beautifully designed and intuitive interface even on the smallest screens.
Search Engine optimization
One of the important outputs which was widely discussed with the G+C team during our initial planning sessions was that in order for an online e-commerce business to thrive it has to rank as high as possible in all search engine results.
Therefore throughout the development process we focussed particular effort on this element of development and site architecture. The result of this work can be seen today by typing the words "gym" and "coffee" in to any Google browser and seeing the G+C website appearing as the top organic search result.
Social Media Integration
One of Gym+Coffee's primary business objectives was to build a community based brand centred about their customers and their partners.
This therefore placed additional importance on the easy integration of the website with social media platforms such that members of this community would be able to share their experiences and organically develop the G+C following.
One of Gym+Coffee's primary business objectives was to build a community based brand centred about their customers and their partners.
One vital aspect of optimum social media integration is to ensure that the platform always looks its best. We therefore worked closely with the G+C team to carefully devise our Open Graph Meta strategy which ensured that whenever anyone would copy a www.gympluscoffee.com link in to a social media forum that the most beautiful images and most appropriate messages would appear.
Launch Campaign
No matter how beautiful your website is or how optimised it is for search engine performance, obtaining your first customers is difficult, especially if you don't have a large advertising budget. Therefore we worked with G+C to devise an innovative, viral and low-cost solution to this problem. We created a unique, landing page for the G+C domain which encouraged visitors to register their e-mail addresses and to partake in a lucrative referral reward scheme. This campaign was a resounding success with thousands of e-mails captured over the space of three weeks.
The G+C platform design, development and launch campaign were a resounding success leading to the creation of a large community following, thousands of e-mail subscribers, a growing partner network and unprecedented levels of product sales in the first 6 months.
