Introduction

Meat & More is an idea of delivering meat and more to your doorstep with a click on your mouse or tap on your screen, an approach of becoming a reliable online meat delivery services’ platform for the ones who are pressed for time. Meat & More is specialized in providing high-quality meat services that make life more comfortable. It offers a variety of fresh meat types that are available to anyone to choose and drop in his cart, and with just one click, the order will arrive in no time.

Challenge

Meat & More discovered the significant growth of online businesses across the world instead of the traditional ones and the impact of having one. And since Meat & More had no online presence, it needed to choose one of the best web development agencies in Egypt in 2020 to handle creating and operating its e-commerce web portal; it decided to hire Pencil Solutions’ professionals. Pencil Solutions’ mission was to establish Meat & More’s online presence from scratch by setting up an e-commerce platform, including its design and development. It was required from Pencil Solutions’ experts in designing and building a responsive e-commerce website for Meat & More to study the whole project from its point of view by immersing and absorbing all the client’s needs and requirements. Finding a professional outsource web development company is not a simple task; it needs a wise decision. It is all about reaching out to the dream outsourced team that will support and control over your business. Therefore, by choosing Pencil Solutions, all that Meat & More had to do from its side is to settle an agreement with Pencil Solutions and leaves the rest in which the team members can focus on the critical business activities. Choosing a web design and development company in Egypt, such as Pencil Solutions in initiating their online business, was a smart decision from their end as Pencil Solutions employed the best of the best developers, testers, analysts, designers, product, and account managers. Meat & More requested from Pencil solutions the following set of functionalities:

• Admin users with access rights to manage orders, customers, products, offers, etc..
• To create payment methods for the e-commerce web portal
• To design a creative UI
• To customize the front-end design to show Cattle’s body sections and display products related to this body section

Provided Solution

Pencil Solutions skilled team worked on this project using WooCommerce that helps you build a fully functioning e-commerce online store by utilizing the underlying operating system of WordPress, the most popular way to make a website. Pencil Solutions agency also operates its processes fundamentally by using agile methodology in which interactions of the team members outweigh the process and tools and collaborating with customers outweighs negotiating contracts and responding to change better than following an exact plan.

Agile is centred on the concept of iterative development; solutions and requirements evolve through collaboration. It is a dynamic process where the team should face uncertainty with a creative mindset that will encourage every team member to try a solution he thinks might work and adjust according to the feedback he received after. Accordingly, instead of delivering the project as a whole in the end, Pencil designs used the lean-agile approach in working according to sprints or milestones that in each, Meat & More saw a tangible outcome or viable features that came to life. Pencil Solutions divided the whole project into several sprints in which the system, including its design and development, has been created to support the following:

Store Management

• Configuring payment and shipment methods
• Allowing editing the store details and the content of different pages on the website.

Product Management

• Allowing creating categories and sub-categories on the system
• Creating products and configuring features and values
• Attaching files or displaying additional information in product pages
• Setting a minimal quantity to purchase for some products
• Choosing which message to post for out-of-stock items

Order Management 

• Getting an overview of the orders
• Creating and editing the orders
• Receiving notifications for new orders and the ability to print a delivery slips in PDF

Offer Management 

• Configuring coupons and choosing the discount mode
• Making special offers on various basis: products, customer or on order
• Offering free shipping

Checkout & Payment 

• Configuring the one-page checkout
• Displaying a summary page before the customer validation on the cart
• Allowing the customer to navigate in the checkout process, create a new account, and select the payment and shipping methods
• Displaying a confirmation page with related details

Customer Management 

• Configuring the customer account creation form
• Allowing customers to run and track their orders
• Managing addresses of the customers
• Editing the existing customers
• Importing or exporting lists of customers

There are more and more features than we mentioned above that Pencil Solutions worked on, to build an e-commerce platform that meets the needs of Meat & More and its customers. In general, Meat & More customer will have the ability with Pencil Solutions’ help to do the following:

• Browse all product and information pages
• View product details page with pricing, product options, and descriptions
• Add multiple products to the shopping cart
• Preview shopping cart
• Checkout and choose payment and shipping options
• Pay by card or cash on delivery
• Place their orders and receive email notifications with the order status
• Preview the details of previous orders
• Add Recipes to educate the customers and provide fresh content for marketing purposes

e-Commerce Services by pencil solutions

Starting up your own online business will make you face the dilemma of hiring an in-house developers team or go with an outsourced team of experts. If you still do not know the advantages of retaining an outsource e-commerce development company, then Pencil Solutions will help you figure out this point with the following benefits of outsourcing:

• Outsourcing teams save money; if you compare the money you will pay on an in-house development department, you will find that they cost more than outsourcing teams.
• It helps to reach out to the top industry specialists that will create killer products with their combined knowledge.
• After an outsourced team handles your business, you will have the ability to concentrate more on the fundamental business values and activities.
• Outsourced teams save time as the assigned team to your project will handle and work on your project on a full-time basis.