CASE STUDY

National Wildlife Federation
Custom eCommerce Development with Shopify and Salesforce

How we helped Garden for Wildlife by NWF successfully foster habitats for local wildlife species by selling plants in the ecoregions where they would survive and thrive. 

Introduction

Garden for Wildlife, a program by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), aims to empower individuals and communities to create wildlife-friendly habitats in their own backyards.

By providing resources, tools, and plants specifically suited to local ecosystems, Garden for Wildlife helps to foster environments where native species can thrive. 

This initiative not only enhances biodiversity but also contributes to the conservation of wildlife by encouraging sustainable gardening practices.

Through its online platform, Garden for Wildlife offers a variety of native plants that are carefully selected to ensure they are appropriate for specific regions, making it easier for gardeners to support local wildlife.

Challenges

Ensuring Plant Survival

Selling plants online is easy, but ensuring the new environment is suitable for the seedling is challenging. Garden for Wildlife (GFW) partnered with Codup to address this issue. The primary challenge was to ensure an effective, efficient, and scalable solution to minimize errors and support growth as operations expanded to other business models.

Mapping Products to Ecoregions

Each plant species needed to be mapped to specific zip codes for availability and delivery, minimizing plant mortality. Managing over 300 zip codes for each plant in Shopify was a daunting task, with maintaining data integrity being a significant challenge.

Data Integrity

Each plant was mapped with extensive data, including its scientific name, habitat, and growing conditions. This information needed to be displayed accurately on the front end. Maintaining and inputting this data in multiple places increased the risk of errors and inconsistencies.

Complex Salesforce + Shopify Integration

To avoid data silos and ensure data integrity, GFW used Salesforce as the master data source for all plant product information, including their suitable growth areas. This data needed to be pushed to the Shopify storefront to avoid manual data entry errors.

System Design and Architecture

1.

Product Mapping with Zipcodes

A research team was responsible for adding scientific and R&D data about each plant species that was sold by GFW. This data, stored as a Salesforce object, included information about the plant growers and the ecoregions where this plant species would thrive.

A child object was created, named eCom Species that inherited all the properties of the Plant Species object but also included other eCommerce related data such as pricing, etc.

Different ecomm objects were combined to create product bundles in Salesforce.

The zip codes mapped to each plant species object were compared, and the bundled product was mapped with the common zip codes. This process occurred in Salesforce, and the product bundles were then pushed to Shopify as individual products.

Zip Code Query System

On Shopify storefront especially on the Product Listing Pages and Product Detail Pages, users were prompted to enter their zip code. Shopify then queried Salesforce to fetch data on products suitable for that zip code.

Zip code validator on checkout

A sophisticated zip code product validator was integrated at the checkout phase to confirm that the product being order was suitable for the zipcode provided in the shipping address.

Product recommendation quiz

A multi-step product recommendation quiz was developed, comprising questions about zipcode, user preferences on native plantings, garden space, and sunlight exposure, offering personalized product suggestions.

ZIP CODE VALIDATOR FOR DONATION REQUESTS

Users submitted donation requests via HubSpot forms. Salesforce checked the entered zip code and queried product availability. Donations were automatically denied when plants were not suitable for the zipcode provided.

2.

Shopify Liquid Template Customization

Information stored in the Plant Species object was pulled into Shopify and stored as Shopify meta object. That meta object was used to populate the product detail pages on Shopify.

This ensured data integrity as the data appearing on Shopify storefront was coming straight from the master data source on Salesforce. 

The liquid templates of Product Listing Pages and Product Detail Pages of Shopify were customized and a custom React block was added to display product information. 

3.

Donations Workflow

HubSpot forms were used for donation requests.

When a user submits a donation request form, the request is sent to Salesforce, which checks the zip code entered and queries if there are products available in that area.

If no products are available, the status of the donation request is automatically updated to “Denied.”

If the query returns a positive result, the team performs manual checks and updates the donation request status in Salesforce. These updates are pushed to HubSpot to ensure data synchronization.

When a donation request is approved, an order is created in Shopify for the plant donation.

4.

Content Management and Marketing Campaigns in Hubspot

Salesforce is integrated with HubSpot to send the data related to Plant Species, storing it in the HS content hub for use on HS landing pages.

Customer order information from Shopify was also sent to HubSpot, triggering email marketing automations.

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