Haw River Catering – Case Study

Overview and Scope

Catering is a competitive business. Catering websites are competitive, too. Haw River is a Nashville catering business that grew out of many years of catering, restaurant, and event planning experience. A lot of the ideas for the direction of Haw River Catering web development and internet marketing were evolving during the Web Presence Development process. This project was a full Web Presence Development Project and also included our Pro Logo Design Package and Pro Email Marketing Design Package. The company, owned by two brothers that grew up in Haw River, NC, is targeting the high-end of the catering market and they are focused squarely on Weddings, Corporate Events, and Private Parties. Ultimately, the owners wanted to make sure that their Website and Web Presence included all the elements necessary for visitors to make a buying decision but they also wanted to make sure that they stood out above their competition.

The primary visitor for catering websites will be female between the ages of 25 and 55. As such, it was important to convey elegance and soft colors in order to make a quick visual connection. Because the catering business revolves around food, it was important to make sure that there were plenty of pictures of irresistible food. This was a big challenge for two reasons. First, the company is brand new. While both brothers have been in the restaurant and catering business for many years, they didn’t even have a menu at the time we were engaged to begin their Web Presence Development. Second, displaying large pictures of more than 40 main dishes could potentially lead to some serious usability issues. We were able to secure quite a bit of high quality stock photography of some very attractive high-end food. We used a select number of menu items and created a visitor controlled slide show to display some of the very enticing menu items.

Another important aspect of the scope was to present the “Full Menu” in a manner that was something other than a boring, never-ending list. (If you’ve ever visited other catering websites, you know they love lists that are a mile long). As such, we decided to organize the menu graphically by food type. We chose this method because graphic organization makes processing information more intuitive for a Website visitor.

Social Media Integration

Even though the owners of Haw River Catering are very new to Social Networking Websites and Social Media, they are embracing the concept with full intentions to leverage every connecting point possible. We have given them a Web Presence Development system that will automatically generate a Tweet from their Twitter account each time they publish a new Blog Post. As well, every new Blog Post published will also be published automatically to their Facebook Business Page. One of the owners is very active on LinkedIn so we have also integrated the LinkedIn page as well. Probably the most important tools for them in the future will be the use of their Flickr and YouTube Social Networks, because, after all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Unique Aspects of the Site

As mentioned above in the Overview and Scope section, the project called for many pictures of appealing food. We took the approach of a visitor controlled slide show to display a selection of foods that are available. As an added touch, every page has at least two pictures displayed as well. These pictures are selected at random when the page loads which brings in a nice dynamic element not usually seen on other catering websites.

One of the most important aspects of marketing a catering business is to acquire testimonials from past customers that can be shared with new prospective customers. We decided to use the Blog section of the site to share the testimonials. Because testimonials are typically short, we decided to customize the Testimonials Archive Page to display multiple full testimonials instead of short excerpts. This helps the Testimonials section of the Blog stand out.

Pictures

Home Page with Featured Content Slider

Menu Slide Show Page

Graphically Organized Full Menu Page

Customized Testimonials Page

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