Helping Growers Choice Seeds Build a Reliable and Scalable E-commerce Platform

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Background and Challenges

Growers Choice Seeds is a popular online store in the horticulture space, with a steady stream of daily orders. But the team faced a tough challenge: their website was prone to crashes, especially when traffic spiked. With a small, non-technical management team focused on e-commerce and marketing, they didn’t have the expertise to judge the quality of code or deployment practices from the developers they hired. Only one team member knew anything about coding. Additionally, often third-party developers were making changes directly on the live site, which caused a new set of problems.

Approach

To turn things around, we took a hands-on approach, focusing on creating a stable, manageable development process:

  1. Better Hosting and Monitoring: We started by moving the site to a new hosting provider that could better handle high-traffic e-commerce needs. Then, we added New Relic monitoring to quickly identify performance issues.
  2. Safer Deployment and Version Control: We set up a development pipeline with separate environments for testing and production, using GitHub as a single source of truth for the code. This setup ensured that changes could be tested thoroughly before going live, reducing the chance of anything breaking on the main site.
  3. Knowledge Transfer and Empowerment: We worked closely with the in-house developer, sharing best practices for code deployment. Our goal was to make sure they could handle the day-to-day without needing constant outside help, putting the power back into their hands.
  4. Ongoing Maintenance and Support: Once the main issues were sorted, our role shifted to more of a consulting partner. The internal team could manage most tasks independently, while we remained available for occasional support and complex troubleshooting.

Results

This structured approach delivered big improvements for Growers Choice Seeds:

  • Greater Stability: The site could finally handle high traffic without crashes. Customers could shop reliably, without disruptions, which was huge for their business.
  • Increased Internal Capabilities: The in-house developer took charge of most of the website’s needs. They can now work with external developers on minor updates without risking site stability.
  • Reduced External Dependence: Growers Choice Seeds became less reliant on third-party developers, only needing us for occasional, high-level troubleshooting. This saved money and kept the team in control.
  • Improved Customer Experience: We set up a deployment process that kept all customer data safe, even when rolling back changes. This improved the customer experience and protected their reputation.

Conclusion

By helping Growers Choice Seeds build a more reliable e-commerce platform, we freed them up to focus on what they do best—serving their customers and growing their business. With a solid foundation in place and a capable in-house team, their site is now built to handle growth without the constant worry of crashes or setbacks.