2 min read

Website Launch: The Big Horse Shop

A lone horse stands in a field
Updated on 09 Mar 2024

A few months ago, we pushed a brand new eCommerce website live for The Big Horse Shop. The client approached us as they felt that their online presence was lacking the functionality they required to take their online business to the next level. And also to refresh their brand identity on the web.

The Brief

With a number of functionality limitations in their previous platform, Shopify seemed to best suite their requirements. This platform has an admin area that is extremely user friendly, and has an incredibly active app store which was a big decider here.

The big horse shop homepage hero header
The big horse shop homepage design
The big horse shop homepage hero header
Before
After

Design Improvements

The client was also looking to sharpen up the appearance of their online site, bringing their old, dated site into the modern age. After carefully considered research into their brand and their business, we chose a direction which was very clean and image driven which allowed them to showcase their products to their best ability.

We took the wonderfully minimal Shopify Theme Prestige and tweaked it to compliment the brand identity of The Big Horse Shop. With fully responsive scaling, this brought their website completely up-to-date, allowing customers to view and purchase their products across all devices.

A big part of the new design and build was to allow the customers to filter their products down easily and effectively - allowing them to find exactly what they are looking for. Utilising the tag system within Shopify, this allowed us to integrate a completely dynamic filtering system, which can be easily managed in the Shopify admin area.

The big horse shop product detail page

Shopify Build

The great thing about Shopify is that their system is pretty much ready to go as soon as you have signed up. They have refined their framework over the years and you can really tell. In terms of scalability, it has its limits, but that’s when their app store comes into its own.

One of the most important Apps we integrated into this site was Postcode Shipping. This is a very powerful app which allows you to use postcodes to setup worldwide shipping rates without the hassle of having to add specific postcodes in yourself. All the labour is taken care of in the app, which is a massive time saver.

We also installed and setup a bespoke collection of email notifications with Orderly Emails. This meant their brand identity could be carried across all the way to the end of the customers experience.

The big horse shop horse listing page

Photography

One of our recommendations to the client was to get their photography redone for the new website. We are always passionate about the photography that is used on the websites we design and build. It really can make or break the project. It was great to see that they took our advise on this, and it has really helped to show the top quality of the products that they sell.

Horse in a field wearing a red coat
Epic horse logo product close up

I've been at Shape for around 8 years now. I bagged a couple of weeks of work experience at the end of my first year at Salford Uni and from then on, well what can I say, they couldn't get enough of me.