New online presence for fruit giant.
Guaranteeing continuity of supply, especially after the decimation of Ceres crops by hail in 2013, is one of Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing, the largest marketer and distributor of South African apples and pears, primary business advantages.
How best to communicate this, especially to those not aware of South Africa’s geographical setting, was one of the tasks put to Marc Mallet of Insynnc Digital by Tru-Cape’s Marketing Director, Conrad Fick.
Fick, along with Marketing Assistant, Chris Kolbe, felt an overhaul of Tru-Cape’s on-line presence was long overdue but they had to be sure that a new site would meet all the business’s communications objectives.
“We wanted to stay within the WordPress format”, says Fick, “as we are familiar with updating content using WordPress’ backend but we also wanted a site that would have more functionality than an off the shelf WordPress template. Isynnc’s solution was to design a number of custom-built plugins that made the site unique but also familiar and thus easy to update.”
Marc Mallet explains: “We needed to find a way to show the brand in a more visually appealing way, yet retain some of the existing style so that it would continue to work with the current advertising campaigns. What we came up with was a modern approach that sits between the old and the new. We didn’t go too overboard with design elements as this is a business that needs some formality while at the same time a site that is easy to use even for the non tech savvy.”
According to Kolbe, who worked closely with the Insynnc on the job, Tru-Cape also wanted a number of new features: “Having a gallery for images from Tru-Cape sponsored events that allowed people to easily share images across social-media outlets as well as download high-resolution versions they could print from, was one of the new elements we wanted along with an easily updatable Millionaires Club that records our top customers.”
“The biggest change we wanted”, says, Fick, “was an interactive map that demonstrated our growing area so that we could visually communicate our favourable risk profile.” Mallet explains how it worked: “We decided to go with Google Maps and work with their API (a programming interface) in order to achieve the best results for these maps. The main reason was that it would be the most reliable and easiest to use for the end user as most people with a smart phone already have Google Maps installed. The tricky part was ensuring that we loaded each farm correctly. We initially wanted to outline each farm, but we found that it might not be accurate enough, as we would need border points per farm. We decided to pin point them using Latitudes and Longitudes as these are the most accurate when it comes to location-based services.”
Fick says that with a single view supermarket buyers around the globe can see Tru-Cape’s vast grower footprint. “Our buyers were rightly concerned when they heard about the serious hail damage to some crops in Ceres but this map accurately demonstrates that we also have growers in Ceres that were not affected and have growers in the Grabouw valley, as well as in the Langkloof which is removed from the Western Cape’s climate.
“We also wanted a map that showed Tru-Cape’s availability around the world – knowing our fruit is sold in 103 countries isn’t as impactful as seeing an interactive global map punctuated with Tru-Cape outlets.
Mallet says that Insynnc is very proud of the site they built for Tru-Cape as a single site delivers all the functionality the business needs now but will also allow for new areas to be easily added in the future. “There are also areas of the site that require login details to access which are used internally for the marketers to manage, among other things, real-time stock availability. We used JQuery and PHP to facilitate this and other functionality as well as built the site in such a way that it automatically resizes to accommodate hand-held and tablet devices.”
