The Crab Place

Crab Place has been shipping True Blue Maryland Crabs and other premium seafood products to happy customers all over the U.S. since 1997. As their business and product offerings grew over time, their vision for growing their business was no match for their outdated orderform style website. They looked to find an agency partner and an ecommerce platform that could help them scale their business and meet their complex requirements. After three failed launch attempts with different agencies on Magento, Shopify, and a custom build, they came to ATF looking for a partner who could not only help them select the right platform but also architect and build a solution that could handle fresh and frozen perishable shipping, VIP memberships, and monthly subscriptions.

Website

crabplace.com

Platform

BigCommerce

The Challenge

With the reality of having failed to launch three different times, Crab Place was left wondering if their vision for an ecommerce site that could handle their complex inventory and shipping rules was even possible. They needed a customized cart that could manage precise delivery date and time window selection, blackout shipping dates for certain products, and next day shipping options for others, just to name a few of the lengthy list of cart rules. They also needed to incorporate their VIP Membership rewards and shipping benefits into an already highly complicated checkout. And lastly, Crab Place wanted to expand their existing special occasion customer base to new customers who looked to them as a grocery alternative for fresh fish and seafood with the addition of a monthly subscription option.

The Solution

We completely redesigned and rearchitected the site to better serve Crab Place’s customers with a streamlined, modernized UX/UI and intelligent shipping logic tailored for perishable deliveries. After requirements gathering and in-depth analysis of Crab Place’s needs, ATF recommended leveraging BigCommerce as the ecommerce platform of choice because of its flexibility and built-in capabilities. We also developed a custom app to handle the other pieces of the puzzle that weren’t doable in the platform itself including—managin VIP memberships, recurring billing, and recipe content.

The custom app hosted in Azure powers the VIP membership system, recurring payment automation, and a recipe content hub. The app integrates with BigCommerce’s API and Azure Cosmos DB to manage VIP subscriptions, reward transactions, and membership settings dynamically. It also includes a recipe management system, allowing customers to discover meal ideas tied directly to product SKUs, enhancing product engagement and cross-selling opportunities. The app is deployed using a CI/CD pipeline in Bitbucket, ensuring seamless updates and scalability.

For checkout, we developed a custom delivery date picker that dynamically adjusts based on product lead times, blackout dates, and VIP shipping benefits.

Monthly seafood subscriptions are planned as a post-launch phase 2 initiative, but we laid the groundwork by integrating recurring payments and rewards tracking within the VIP membership model.

Services

Discovery
UX/UI design
Information architecture
Development
Custom app development
SEO
Maintenance & Evolution

Project Highlights

Crab Place’s new website showcases their outstanding product in the way it deserves and sets them up for exponential growth.

Custom Calendar Picker

We built a custom delivery date picker that dynamically adjusts based products in the cart to show the correct lead times, blackout dates, and VIP shipping perks—ensuring that perishable orders arrive fresh and on time.

VIP Membership System

Integrated Recharge for an annual subscription model with recurring billing, unlocking free/discounted shipping, waived packaging fees, and monthly loyalty rewards for long-term retention.

Enhanced Content & Engagement

A custom recipe management system, connected directly to product SKUs, encourages customers to discover new ways to prepare seafood, improving engagement and cross-sell opportunities.