Harney & Sons Fine Teas
Client
Harney & Sons Fine Teas
Description of Online Store
Purveyor of a variety of gourmet teas and tea blends, including gift and holiday collections.
Primary Markets
United States
Live Site
Primary Challege
Migrate content to a more powerful and expansive Magento platform, incorporating custom Magento design overhaul to better align with the Harney brand.
- Custom Magento Design bringing out the brand essence and family heritage of Harney.
Statistics
GROWTH
RANKING
Overview
Aware of Hara Partners’ consistently strong reputation for Magento design and development, Harney & Sons approached the Hara Team to better capture the Harney family heritage and essence in their online presence. A well-respected institution in the gourmet tea industry, Harney’s former website left much to be desired in terms of both customer interaction and modern e-commerce standards. The framework was frustrating and couldn’t accommodate appropriately sophisticated design; aesthetic inconsistency produced a disconnect with their older target demographic. Hara Partners set to work porting products and functionality to Magento’s flexible Enterprise environment, ultimately producing a dynamo platform—one capable of matching projected future growth and more in keeping with the Harney ethos.
Understanding the Customer
Design efforts were intensive and took Harney’s unique position into consideration to create a singular web experience for the tea giant. Product management was completely overhauled from the front and back end. Multiple product images are provided in the context of detail-rich, individualized product pages, which gives customers a better idea of their order as well as options for informed consumption. For such a cultured and ritualized lifestyle element, tea demands plenty of page real estate; each product page delves into extensive history, instructions, flavor notes, optional packaging, and in-depth staff reviews that would satisfy the most discerning tea enthusiast.
Question/answer segments are clearly apparent, with a ubiquitous “website help” tab to resolve any issues and curtail abandonment. Calls to action are brightly colored and large enough to indicate themselves as such, accompanied by wishlists and comparison tools for an immersive shopping experience. Taken together, the composite design vastly improved merchandising, spurring 80%+ year-over-year sales growth.
The Full ToolkitA suite of Enterprise-specific features combine forces to drive rapid conversion and fulfillment on the revamped site. Solr’s intelligent search optimizes results, incorporating predictive logic and correction to mitigate user error and put the right products in front of the right visitors. The highest customer service standard is upheld via SafeCC payment and Return Merchandise Authorization features, ensuring full support and follow-through for each sale. Geo-dependent fulfillment takes advantage of global warehouse and shipping channels to maximize efficiency. Hara Partners also executed a full data migration onto the new platform, formatting the database to expedite back-office product management and instituting full-page caching to boost page load speeds. |
Harney in Feel and Performance
All things considered, moving Harney to Magento has been an exceptionally smooth transition. The user experience on the website reflects Harney’s authority as a brand, which is reinforced in turn by navigation and the order process once visitors begin to explore. Thanks to Hara Partners’ Search Engine Optimization campaign and seamless WordPress integration, Harney’s ranking for “tea” jumped from page five to page one on major search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo), giving it the place it deserves. The sheer amount of design energy that went into the site redesign really shows in the finished product, especially considering the tight timetable. It’s a class site for an elegant, peerless brand.
About Harney: Harney & Sons has been in the business of gourmet tea for over 25 years, their products widely recognized as amongst the finest available by tea lovers everywhere. They craft teas for the enjoyment of their customers and take pride in meeting and exceeding their expectations from every cup of tea. Their large selection spans many customer favorites, including green tea, black tea, and white tea. They also have a selection of tea gifts for all kinds of occasions, especially end-of-year Holiday Gifts.
About Hara Partners: Hara Partners, founded in 2006, provides industry-leading, innovative, and cost-effective web solutions based on Magento, the e-commerce platform trusted by the world’s leading brands. From concept to execution to ongoing support, Hara Partners secures clients’ bottom-line revenue growth and profitability via customized website development and design. HP has served 250+ Magento-based stores in a variety of capacities— content, photography, video, development, consulting, IT services, hosting, etc.—all out of one hand.