Farriers United

Abstract

Farriers United, LLC was founded by Jeff Denson, an accomplished farrier, to serve his brother farriers by providing them with online tools to help them increase their revenue through additional and enhanced services to their customers.

Jeff came to us with big ideas and plenty of ambition. We worked with Jeff to come up with a feature set that we could deploy relatively quickly to several already-interested farriers Jeff had been communicating with.

The main features we settled upon were:

1. A personalized web site
2. An online store for making direct sales to their customers
3. An invoicing system with the ability to accept credit cards
4. An e-mail system for communicating with customers

Personal Website

Up and running in minutes

Signing Up

Upon sign-up, the system requests some basic info about the farrier and his business. From this set of information it creates an initial web site. Content is generated in a search engine friendly manner to help local horse-owners find the site via search engines.

Content editing made easy

Content Editing

Knowing farriers spend much of their time away from a computer, we needed an especially intuitive, non-technical way for farriers to edit their websites. Fortunately we had already written such a tool for NCHE and were able to seamlessly leverage it for Farriers United.

The editor is designed so that if you have permission to edit a page, you can simply go to that page, click "Edit", and make your changes. The editor works inside the exact same layout as the published page, so you can see exactly how the page is going to look. Each time the page is edited, the previous versions of the page are saved. Old versions can be restored if desired protecting users from losing their work.

Interchangeable Templates/Themes

Custom templates

We designed 12 unique templates a member can choose from. Members can change their selection at any time. The template applies to both the Farrier's personal website as well as his online store providing a professional, unified experience for the customer.

The different templates are defined entirely by a stylesheet and a folder with whatever images apply to the template. This efficient structure came in handy when a farrier asked us to do a custom template for him. He had already spent money on a logo and business cards and was reluctant to join Farriers United if he couldn't apply his own personal design to his website. We were able to use his logo and color-scheme to quickly create a new template just for him.

Online Store

Thousands of products organized and searchable

Recommend Products

The online store has over 20,000 products related to horses and country living, so ensuring products were organized and easy to find was crucial. We started by dividing the products into nine major categories and giving each category an easily-recognizable icon. Beneath the nine major categories we set up trees of subcategories. When a user clicks on a category, he sees each of its subcategories as well as their first few products. Products have an image and detailed information viewable by clicking on the product. Customers are able to see the price of the product compared to msrp. Farriers are able to adjust prices within their own store to change their profit margin if desired.

Personal Product Recommendations

Personal Store

In stark contrast to the personal, face to face relationship people have with their farriers, the internet is often cold and impersonal. People trust their farriers and rely on them for sound advice when it comes to the products their horse needs. We brought that personal relationship to the internet by allowing farriers to recommend products to their customers. When users go to the store, they are first presented with a landing page that gives them the option to either go ahead and browse the entire store or choose from a recommended list of products maintained by their personal farrier. The farrier can add or subtract products from this list and add personal comments about each one.

Dashboard

Dashboard View

We wanted to make it easy for a farrier to see important stats immediately when he logs in- information such as how many invoices he has out, how much money he's made from sales, how this month's earnings compare to last month and the month before, etc. We created dynamically generated graphic representations of these statistics and arranged them on a dashboard page.

Invoicing System for Services and Products

Quickly generate invoices and receive payment

Invoice Creation

Farriers United expands a farrier's options for collecting payment by giving them the ability to generate professional invoices and receive payment via credit card online. Farriers specify their services and prices (fixed or variable). When services are performed, a few simple clicks are all it takes to generate an invoice that is e-mailed directly to the customer. Customers conveniently pay online by credit card and the Farrier knows immediately who has paid and who hasn't.

Add products to the invoice

Traditionally, farriers are limited to providing their customers with whatever products they happen to be carrying in their truck or trailer. Having to lug around a bunch of products is inconvenient and sometimes the horse needs something that's not in the truck. When this happens, why make the horse-owner track down the product when his farrier can do it for him? We leveraged the online store, building into the invoicing system the ability for a farrier to add products and have them shipped to the customer.

Email System

Closing the loop between farrier and horse-owner

Customer Management

The system stores customer contact information allowing farriers to compose and send emails to selected customers. Customers are able to input their own contact information, or farriers can do it themselves.