Agway

www.agway.com

The Client

Agway, a division of Southern States, Cooperative, Inc. since 2000, is a wholesale product distribution company serving a network or 460 private dealers in eleven states throughout the northeast.

Agway, located in Westfield, Massachusetts, provides the dealer network with national brand products as well as Agway's own line of private labeled products such as Agway, Feathered Friend, Pro-Pet, Big Red, and Lil' Red.

The Challenge

Agway wanted the site to reflect their tagline: "Brands you trust. People who know." Because the Agway brand is well known throughout the communities they serve, Agway wanted their site to become a resource for their customers to refer to for lawn, garden, pet, wild bird, farm, and equine questions they might have.

Agway also felt challenged by building email lists to market to, as well as using the site as a way to create revenue. Since each Agway store is unique in its products and services, creating an easy way for users to find information on their local stores was imperative.

Through their new website, Agway hopes to be in constant communication with their customers.

The Result

Tortus built a website using Ruby on Rails, CSS, and XHTML, with two separate informational areas. One is an articles area for research and scholarly articles, and the other is a know how area with how-to articles broad enough for every home owner, farm owner or pet owner. Since Agway planned on updating these articles on a regular basis, Tortus created a content management system (CMS) which allows Agway easy access to update the content on their website.

Since one of Agway's main goals was to emphasize their stores, we created an extensive store locator feature which, once a user enters a zip code, that zip code remains stored in memory for the next visit, as well as throughout the current visit. Linked to each zip code are not only the nearest stores, but also each of those store's individual flyers detailing the store specials, as well as information on the store's gift certificate and Agway credit card policies.

On their homepage, Agway has an email opt-in for the customers who would like to stay current with Agway coupons and special offers which helps build their email marketing list. Tortus also created two separate email templates, which Agway can utilize to send an email marketing campaign message to their customers thus enhancing the constant communication Agway desires.