Dynamic Vines is a leading biodynamic wine importer, primarily in the B2B sector. Founded in 2005, the company has grown significantly, establishing itself as the UK’s leading supplier of premium biodynamic wines.

Dynamic Vines caters to a diverse clientele, selling directly to the UK's top restaurants, bars, and wine shops, as well as to the general public. Their commitment to quality and sustainability has earned them a prestigious reputation within the wine industry, making them a trusted partner for both businesses and individual consumers seeking biodynamic wines.

Dynamic Vines sought a reliable and efficient support provider. Transitioning to a new support provider can potentially be both painful and expensive. Dynamic Vines needed a flawless transition to ensure their Umbraco website continued to operate smoothly without any interruptions. 

Our primary challenge was to address the shortages experienced with their previous provider and to instil confidence in our ability to deliver superior service. By effectively managing this transition and demonstrating our capabilities, we aimed to establish a long-term partnership with Dynamic Vines and showcase the reliability of our hosting and support services for their Umbraco website. 

We initiated our comprehensive onboarding process to begin our work with Dynamic Vines. The first step involved conducting a thorough health check of their Umbraco website. This health check was crucial in identifying existing issues and recommending any remedial work required to stabilise the site.

We scheduled a handover meeting with Dynamic Vines, during which we gathered essential information and discussed any known problems, bugs, and minor change requests. This collaborative approach allowed us to align our services with their specific needs and expectations.

Following the meeting, our team conducted the health check. Once completed, we provided Dynamic Vines with a detailed report outlining our findings. This transparent approach ensured that Dynamic Vines understood the required steps before support for their Umbraco website could commence.

Once we received approval from Dynamic Vines, we undertook the necessary remedial work to address any identified issues. Concurrently, our team configured the hosting environments and arranged an orientation session to familiarise the Dynamic Vines team with the practical aspects of our support services.

The final phase of the onboarding process involved the hosting migration. This migration included a brief period of scheduled maintenance downtime, updating domain records, and a final refresh of the site content.

We coordinated with Dynamic Vines to ensure a smooth transition from their previous supplier and provided any necessary support during the brief overlap period.

Living Style Guide:

After the migration was successfully completed, our support services commenced, and Dynamic Vines benefited from the expertise of our experienced DevOps team.

Our proactive approach ensured the consistent management of security patches, updates, and the overall health of their systems. By leveraging our active monitoring systems, we were able to take preventive measures against potential issues and minimise the risk of outages.

We provided Dynamic Vines' website with a sturdy hosting solution within Microsoft Azure. As a cloud-based service, Microsoft Azure specialises in hosting .NET solutions and offers additional services, including APIs and data analysis tools. This choice gave Dynamic Vines the peace of mind of a secure, scalable, and globally trusted hosting platform.

Under our hosting service, we provided Dynamic Vines with various services, including regular backups and 24/7 reboot and restore capabilities. If ever there was a critical fault, our commitment to a swift response time ensured that any issues were promptly addressed.

We took full responsibility for the Umbraco application, ensuring that Dynamic Vines' website consistently performed at its best. To maintain this high level of performance, we deployed a suite of external monitoring tools to oversee the website application and hosting environment vigilantly. These tools allowed us to identify and address potential problems early, preventing them from escalating into site outages.

Our targeted approach to reactive support ensured that the website remained efficient, responsive, and aligned with the business needs of Dynamic Vines.

While working with Dynamic Vines, we’ve undertaken multiple standalone projects to ensure their Umbraco website's continued success and functionality. Our projects have included:

Storage Solution:

We added a shipping method that allowed purchases to be stored at the Dynamic Vines Warehouse for users in the Friends and Family or Trade Groups. To implement this, we integrated the new shipping method into Vendr and updated the Vendr Checkout view to display the shipping option exclusively to members of the relevant groups.

We enhanced the Checkout pages with theming to improve user experience. The themed checkout pages not only reinforce the Dynamic Vines brand for a consistent user experience but also add to a smoother, more intuitive checkout experience, leading to higher conversion rates. 

The standard delivery option was set as the default to streamline the checkout process. The aim was to minimise the number of steps a user had to take to complete their order. By simplifying the delivery section process, we decrease cart abandonment rates, create a streamlined process and enhance user satisfaction. 

We added a field to the shipping methods template in Vendr, enabling Dynamic Vines to provide additional information on delivery options. This allowed customers to make more informed decisions about their shipping preferences, enhancing their overall shopping experience. This required customisation of Vendr, which we meticulously applied to ensure it did not affect future upgrade paths.

Product Listing:

Dynamic Vines's product listing feature allowed users to ‘Download Our Wine List’. This process was manually updated monthly, which was time-consuming and prone to manual errors.

We developed a solution that allowed users to download a bespoke wine list ordered for retail or trade prices. This included functionalities to:

• Sort by regions.
• Group cuvées together.
• Sort by price within grape colour.
• Enable bespoke ordering.

This enabled users to easily find and select wines tailored to their preferences, significantly enhancing their user experience and increasing website conversions and orders.

A display out-of-stock notification on the product listing page was also added to allow users to leave their details to be notified when an item was back in stock. Offering a notification system helped retain customers who might otherwise look elsewhere for out-of-stock items. This proactive approach helped convert potential lost sales into actual sales when items become available again.

Add Filters and Order Sort for Price & Vintage:

We added filters for Vintage and Price, enhancing the user’s ability to sort and find products. Users can now sort/order by price (from low to high and vice versa) and vintage (from young to old and vice versa). This improvement provided a more personalised and efficient shopping experience, allowing customers to locate products that matched their specific preferences and budgets quickly.

We implemented a slider feature that allowed users to filter products by price range. By offering these enhanced filtering options, we significantly improved the website's overall usability, which in turn increased user satisfaction and boosted conversion rates, ultimately leading to higher sales.

Membership Sign-Up and Product Pricing:

Dynamic Vines identified an issue with their membership sign-up process. Some users were completing the sign-up form without making the required payment, which caused confusion as unpaid memberships were mixed in with paid ones. The root of the problem was that the membership details and newsletter opt-in occurred before the payment was made, triggering a notification email to Dynamic Vines prematurely.

We changed the button text on the membership registration page to "Go to payment" to clearly indicate the next step, reducing user confusion and ensuring a smoother sign-up process.

These changes streamlined the membership sign-up process, ensuring that only fully paid memberships were recorded and notified to Dynamic Vines, thereby improving the accuracy of their membership records.

Dynamic Vines also needed a solution to display different prices for the tickets they sold based on the user's status (Trade, Member, or General Public). We proposed changing the document type for tickets to include Trade Prices, similar to wine products. This required careful consideration to avoid data loss when switching compositions.

Implementing these changes enabled Dynamic Vines to display accurate pricing for different user groups on their ticket products, ensuring that members and the general public saw their respective prices.

These enhancements improved the functionality and user experience of the Dynamic Vines website and ensured accurate membership management and pricing display, ultimately supporting their business operations and upcoming events.

These projects were pivotal in enhancing the user experience on the Dynamic Vines website and streamlining their operational processes. Our tailored solutions ensured the website remained functional, user-friendly, and aligned with Dynamic Vines' business goals.