How we created an online brand for Hampshire Toffee with a new logo, responsive website, SEO, and food photography.

Hampshire Toffee approached us with the most delicious toffee we have ever tasted, and the potential to create a memorable New England toffee brand. We were challenged to develop a brand that was both homemade and honest, yet also sophisticated and classy.

Hampshire Toffee wanted a logo that incorporated pine cones, a symbol of rural New Hampshire. They also wanted to use colors that were unlike typical toffee company colors, but instead were earthy, chocolaty, and rustic. The font was selected for the sophistication and the tagline, “Lakes Region, New Hampshire” was used to anchor the brand to the popular summer tourist

We started the design process with the challenge of how to merchandise three simple products in a way that delivered an easy and complete online shopping experience. We accomplished this goal by creating different products for each size, and different products for shoppers looking for toffee as a treat and those looking for toffee gifts. To connect with more customers and promote the new website, we next established a Hampshire Toffee presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Any good e-commerce website must aim to build trust with the visitor. Beyond the security of the SSL-installed platform we use, we also aimed to build trust with the customer about the quality of the product. After all, if you haven’t tried a product before, ordering food online can feel like a gamble. Since we couldn’t provide free samples, we setup a tool to automatically generate real customer testimonials and publish them on the website.

Selling food online requires excellent food photography. After planning the shot list, our NH food photographer and project manager headed for Moultonboro, New Hampshire to capture the quality of the toffee and atmosphere of the brand, in a day-long photo shoot. The shot list consisted of a portrait shot for the “About Us” page, three “beauty shots” for the homepage during different seasons, and all of the product shots for the website.

To help the business promote their new website, we designed and ordered double-sided business cards for Hampshire Toffee. We also designed and ordered a large logo banner to be used at large events like the Made in New Hampshire Expo in the spring.

To help people looking to buy gourmet toffee find the new website, we conducted keyword research to identify the key phrases that represented the biggest opportunity to rank on the first page of Google. We decided on “buy gourmet toffee” because we wanted to target searchers with the intent to buy (as opposed to looking for recipes), and we wanted to find people looking for a higher quality toffee product online. We wrote title tags to help the Hampshire Toffee listing show up in Google and Bing. We also wrote meta descriptions to help encourage people to click to the website.

No one likes paying for shipping, including the business owners that must ship the orders! The challenge was (and always is) to find the right balance between covering shipping costs and encouraging customers to order. We also wanted a shipping pricing policy that helped increase the average order size.

We were honored to have this opportunity to work with Hampshire Toffee and highly recommend their toffee. Go ahead and try some at www.HampshireToffee.com. You won’t reget it!

Have a great product that you want help launching online? Please get in touch with us today. We look forward to chatting with you.