Context
Truman Chocolates is a family-run chocolate shop in College Station, Texas. It makes colored, filled chocolates in a long list of rotating flavors, sells them in boxes and as hot cocoa bombs, and takes custom orders where the color, filling, and packaging are chosen by the customer. Those custom orders run from weddings and large events to corporate gifts and one-off personal requests. The shop sells over the counter, ships to customers around the country, and is known locally as a gift stop rather than an everyday purchase.
By the fall of 2022 the balance between the counter and the website had shifted. Online ordering had grown into a real part of the business, the owners had built a new store on an ecommerce platform during that period, and their stated plan for the next few years was to grow online before taking on more physical space. Around them the local market had more chocolate sellers than it once had, including another shop nearby that shoppers sometimes confused with theirs, and a large university audience sat next door that the business had never marketed to directly.
Challenge
Truman Chocolates is a family-run chocolate shop in College Station, Texas, known for its colored, filled chocolates and custom orders for weddings, events, and corporate gifts. Everything was run in house, from the recipes to the online store the owners built themselves, in part because the flavor list changed too often to wait on an outside developer for every update. The shop wanted to grow online before growing physically, and the questions it brought to TASK followed from that: how to show up more reliably when someone searched for chocolate nearby, how to be told apart from the other chocolate shop in the local market, how to make the website and the in-store point of sale work together instead of being kept by hand, and how to reach new customers, including the university community it had never marketed to directly.
How the team worked
The team met the owners at the shop in October to learn how the business ran: what the website was built on, how in-store sales and inventory were handled, who the customers were, what made the chocolates different, and what the owners hoped search could do for them. That conversation set the three parts of the engagement, SEO, website, and customer expansion, and the team agreed to work on all three together rather than splitting into separate tracks.
For SEO the team ran the store through free audit and mobile-readiness tools and translated each finding into a plain recommendation, keeping only the fixes the owners could carry out themselves inside the ecommerce platform. On-page content, image attributes, analytics, structured data, social sharing tags, link readability, and touch usability each became a separate item with a reason attached.
For the website the team went through the store the way a customer would, testing every tab, filter, and button and reading each product page, then looked at other chocolate sellers and at design studios whose typography matched the shop's own style for reference. The same walk-through produced the point-of-sale question, so the team worked out the connection steps and wrote down what the integration would and would not keep in sync.
For customer expansion the team studied how other local businesses and campus organizations ran promotions, gathered platform guidance for Instagram, TikTok, and Google Ads, and compared the shop's own social presence with the other chocolate shop in the local market to see which habits were already working.
The final written deliverable was structured so that each section covered the research, the recommendation, and how to carry it out, and it closed with a resource list of links for every tool and idea mentioned. The team presented the work to the owners in person in December.
Workstreams
- Audited the online store with free SEO and mobile-readiness tools, reviewing on-page content, image attributes, analytics, structured data, social sharing tags, link readability, and touch usability, and wrote recommendations for each area that could be carried out inside the store's ecommerce platform.
- Compared the site's search performance against the other chocolate shop in the local market to show where usability and links made the difference.
- Walked every page, tab, and filter on the store and recommended changes to product photography, flavor descriptions, fonts, gift-message wording, the filter set, and a custom-order gallery organized by weddings, personal orders, and corporate gifts.
- Documented step-by-step instructions for connecting the in-store point-of-sale system to the ecommerce platform, with the advantages and limits of the integration for payments and inventory sync.
- Developed promotional ideas for reaching new customers, including a recurring monthly discount day, a student mystery box, email and online ads, pairings with other local businesses, campus-organization promotions, and incentives for leaving Google and Yelp reviews.
- Wrote a social media playbook covering Instagram business tools, stories and highlights, hashtag types, reels, profile setup, TikTok, and Google Ads.
What the team found
- The audit showed the store was strongest on page performance, with the most ground to gain in areas an owner can change without a developer: image attributes, structured data, and link readability.
- Comparing the store with the other chocolate shop in the local market showed the difference in search visibility came from usability and link structure rather than from products, presentation, or price.
- That same comparison showed the local market rewarded publishing seasonal flavors and their availability windows on the website itself, which shoppers used to plan gift buying ahead of a holiday.
- Social and review platforms behaved differently from one another: consistent posting carried the social accounts on its own, while review platforms only moved when customers were asked directly.
- Walking the store as a customer showed the shopping path turned on filters and flavor descriptions rather than on imagery, since the home page and packaging already did the work of drawing attention.
- Guidance across the social platforms pointed the same way, that searchable keywords and descriptive captions were doing more for reach than hashtags alone.
What the client received
- SEO audit with recommendations across on-page content, usability, page performance, social sharing tags, and links
- Mobile compatibility review covering page weight, caching, script placement, and touch targets
- Search and social comparison against the other chocolate shop in the local market
- Page-by-page website recommendations covering product photography, flavor descriptions, fonts, and gift-message wording
- Filter set recommendations for best sellers, new flavors, and seasonal items
- Custom-order gallery plan organized by weddings and events, personal orders, and corporate gifts
- Step-by-step guide to linking the in-store point of sale with the online store, with its advantages and limits
- Promotion and review-incentive ideas for new and returning customers
- Social media marketing strategy for Instagram, TikTok, and Google Ads
- Resource list with links for every tool and recommendation
Outcome
Truman Chocolates now has a prioritized list of search and mobile fixes it can make inside its own ecommerce platform without hiring a developer, a page-by-page set of website improvements covering product presentation, flavor descriptions, filters, and a custom-order gallery, a written procedure for linking its point of sale to the online store along with the limits of that link, and a set of promotion, review, and social media tactics it can try in the order it chooses as it grows online first. The team also pointed the shop to campus student organizations that could help with web work.
Recommendations
- Work through the search fixes that can be made inside the ecommerce platform first: fuller page text, image alt attributes, an analytics tool, structured data markup, and readable shortened links.
- Optimize the store for small screens next, enlarging the links and buttons that are hard to tap and following the platform's mobile themes and caching guidance.
- Rework the product pages so every flavor carries a description, product photographs show the item as it ships, and the gift message is clearly optional and free.
- Rebuild the custom-order section as a gallery organized by weddings and events, personal orders, and corporate gifts, with customer permission secured before any past order is shown.
- Repair and simplify the filter set so best sellers and seasonal flavors lead the page, and retire the sorting filters that do not help a shopper choose.
- Connect the in-store point of sale to the ecommerce platform for one payment and inventory path, noting that the inventory sync runs in one direction only.
Next steps
- The client was handed a written deliverable in which every section covers the research, the recommendation, and how to carry it out inside its own ecommerce platform.
- The client was handed step-by-step instructions for linking the in-store point of sale to the online store, together with the advantages and the limits of that connection.
- The client was handed a social media playbook covering business tools, stories and highlights, hashtag types, reels, profile setup, TikTok, and Google Ads.
- The client was handed a set of promotion and review-incentive ideas, including a recurring monthly discount day, a student mystery box, and pairings with other local businesses.
- The client was handed a resource list linking every tool, guide, and example referenced, plus campus student organizations that could help with web work.