E-COMMERCE & RETAIL

https://www.rawwine.com/

RAW WINE, founded by Isabelle Legeron in 2011, aims to unite wine growers, makers, and enthusiasts to foster connections and spread knowledge. It is the largest community of growers, producers, and lovers of low-intervention organic, biodynamic, and natural wines. It organizes fairs and RAW WINE weeks across various regions, including France, Berlin, Japan, and North America. These events offer opportunities for local growers, makers, importers, distributors, bars, and restaurants to participate by purchasing tickets on-site, available in multiple currencies.

Project Overview

It's not just an e-commerce marketplace platform, but they organize (in person) fairs around the world to showcase their community's growers & makers while simultaneously developing an online community where participants can buy e-tickets directly from the site to join these events and have created a UK online shop as well. Customers can engage further by creating profiles as wine lovers, enabling them to explore and purchase wines from the finest vineyards, certified growers, and makers, while gaining insights into each product.

Moreover, By joining the RAW WINE club, US purchasers of RAW WINE also have the opportunity to sign up for membership for recurring monthly wine deliveries.

A Glance

Challenges

Initially, the client wanted to make some major customizations to their e-commerce site; their old team could not fix the app and system scalability issues. So they were looking for an experienced Ruby On Rails development team who could take charge of the project, solve the blockers, and provide a technical approach to the scalability and on important pending features which was yet to be released on priority.

Raw Wine was expanding internationally, which meant that the platform needed to support multiple languages and currencies and introduce seamless e-ticketing for its fairs. However, as the platform grew and attracted more users, the existing server infrastructure faced challenges in efficiently handling the increased load and became more expensive to maintain.

Solutions

The solution implemented for RAW WINE focused on improving their website to ensure it works well and is easy to use. We fixed many issues and gradually added major features to ensure everything ran smoothly. Users can now easily buy tickets from the site directly in any preferred currency. Admins can create and manage RAW WINE events directly on the site. We also made other improvements like better banners and smoother product listings in other languages to make the website more enjoyable for everyone. Our goal was to enhance the RAW WINE experience for users and admins.

Services We Provided

Project Management

Overseeing and coordinating all aspects of the project, ensuring timely delivery, effective communication, and alignment with RAW WINE's objectives.

Frontend & Backend Development

We built a user-friendly and visually appealing online shop for wine discovery and purchase. We also developed a robust backend system to manage inventory, user accounts, and secure transactions. We keep on adding new features.

Quality Assurance

Our QA team does manual and automation testing to ensure the website's reliability and performance.

DevOps

Our DevOps services automate the deployment process, perform blue-green deployment to ensure zero downtime, and scale servers up/down based on the load to optimize cloud cost. We successfully migrated from Heroku to AWS within the given timeframe.

App Modules

Admin Dashboard:

1. Ticketing Management

2. Xero Configuration

3. Reports Management

4. Fairs Enrollments

5. Approval Processes

6. Raw Wine Weeks

7. Klaviyo Unsubscribe

8. Documents

User Dashboard:

1. View/Buy Products

2. Wine Shop

3. Wine Club

4. Edit Profile

5. Blogs

6. Add a Drink

7. Signup for a Fair

8. View Profile

9. See all Drinks

10. Pay for a Fair

11. Create New Events

12. View Orders

13. Account Settings

14. Communication Preferences

50+ More Features

Advanced Features & Integration

1. RAW WINE Week

Raw Wine Week is a cool feature; It manages the week's schedule and ticket bookings. Admin can Raw Wine weeks from the portal. It is a powerful marketing tool to promote their events through dedicated RAW WINE week pages. Various types of users, including local growers, makers, bars, restaurants, and importers, can create events based on these weeks organized by RAW WINE. Once published, events become visible to other users on the RAW WINE week page, facilitating easy navigation to the venue location via Google Maps.

2. Ticketing Platform Migration and Integration

The client needed to migrate their fair ticketing functionality from an external platform (xing) to the RAW WINE website. This migration aimed to streamline the ticketing process, provide different types of users with a hassle-free experience, and enable admins to manage ticket sales more efficiently. Additionally, payment gateways such as Apple Pay and PayPal were integrated to offer users flexible payment options, thereby enhancing convenience and accessibility.

3. Xero Invoicing

For streamlining invoicing, the client aimed to simplify the management of all product purchase invoices, covering items like wines and fair tickets. They sought automation through Xero, ensuring that invoices are generated seamlessly upon successful order placement, with customers receiving them in PDF format. Additionally, it gave the admin the ability to update records of invoices accessible through the Xero Dashboard. In case of a refund, order canceled, or voided, it is managed manually through the portal.

4. Multi Currency Support

Due to the global reach of RAW WINE fairs and the diverse customer base covering different regions, adding a currency selector on the website became necessary. Now, customers can purchase tickets in their preferred currency. Admin can also set ticket prices in different currencies, and each currency may have a separate value.

5. Localization and Multilingual Support

With RAW WINE hosting events and attracting participants from various regions globally, there was a need to provide multilingual support on the platform. We support 5+ languages, including Japanese, and we are constantly adding more.

Our Process & Approach

Our success comes from a customized approach for each project. We use RAILS, SPREE, RUBY, and AWS to ensure efficiency and client satisfaction.

Effective Communication & Reporting

We use Github and Slack to prioritize transparency, task management, and collaboration. Detailed daily progress reports keep stakeholders informed.

Daily Scrum

Every day, our team conducts Scrum meetings to gather and discuss the latest updates, challenges, and priorities related to our ongoing projects and tasks. These meetings provide us with an opportunity to collaborate, share insights, and make informed decisions to ensure that we are on track to achieve our goals.

Documentation

In order to effectively capture important decisions and discussions, it is essential to rigorously record minutes of meetings (MOM) during documentation. Furthermore, it is imperative to maintain comprehensive project documentation that can be easily understood and referenced. The implementation of development methodologies can also aid in this process.