Coyote Moon Coffee

Coyote Moon Coffee is a small-batch roaster in Leander, TX. It sells whole-bean coffee, K-cups and mugs through a WordPress and WooCommerce store.

In the fall of 2017 the roaster was adding coffee subscriptions, sample packs and a new hot cocoa, and its store could not sell any of them. We took on the existing site under a monthly retainer, added the new product lines, and moved the store to faster hosting.

The store ran an old version of WooCommerce, products such as the K-cups kept disappearing from the catalog, and pages loaded slowly, including checkout. The owner wanted a storefront that took little effort to run and a way to run his own promotions.

The subscriptions were the hard part. Coyote Moon wanted every 1 lb coffee available as a 3, 6 or 12 month subscription, billed monthly or paid up front at a discount, and in two sizes. Some long-time customers paid a lower rate that had to hold on every renewal, not just the first order. WooCommerce Subscriptions does not handle that mix out of the box.

We did not design or build the original site. Everything below went into the existing theme without disrupting the orders already coming through it.

A safe place to make changes

We copied the live site and database to a staging server, put the code in version control, and made every change there first. Each change was tested in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer or Edge before the owner reviewed it. We upgraded WooCommerce from 2.x to 3.2 and brought the theme's store templates up to date.

Subscriptions, samples and gifts

Each coffee got a subscription version with a size (1 lb bag or 6 oz sample), a length of 3, 6 or 12 months, and a choice of prepaid at a discount or month to month. We added a Coffee of the Month subscription, a sample pack, and a sample tour with every roast in one shipment. Recurring coupons keep a customer's discounted rate on every renewal, and a "This is a gift" option lets shoppers send a subscription to someone else.

A catalog that is easier to shop

We reorganized the navigation around roasts (medium, medium dark, and darker roasts and breakfast blends), gifts and subscriptions, cocoa, the roaster's story and contact. We built a new Roasts landing page and a Cocoa page for Aunt Boochie's Olde Fashioned Cocoa, and pointed the cocoa's own domain at it. The store now sells whole beans only, with a note on each coffee and in the order notes for customers who need help grinding.

Checkout and follow-up

Orders now get a custom confirmation email and an editable thank-you page. We removed the compare and wishlist buttons, and fixed checkout layout bugs. We also installed Yoast SEO with an XML sitemap and answered the owner's questions on writing product titles and meta descriptions.

Speed and hosting

We raised the PHP memory limit, compressed images, added page caching and put the site behind Cloudflare. Pages that cannot be cached, such as the cart and checkout, were still slow on the old shared host, so we moved the site and its email to our own server, turned off unused plugins and switched to a current PHP version.

• The subscriptions, sample products and cocoa line went live on November 7, 2017, merged into the live store without overwriting orders placed during the work.
• Every 1 lb coffee sold as a subscription in two sizes, with prepaid and monthly billing.
• The owner creates his own discount codes, including rates that hold on every renewal.
• The store moved to faster hosting on November 15, 2017, with a test order confirming checkout still worked.