Inland Island Yeast Website 2021

We rede­vel­oped Inland Island Yeast Lab­o­ra­to­ries web­site in 2021. We built their pre­vi­ous site, and while it was still run­ning after 6 years, it was show­ing signs of aging, so we used this oppor­tu­ni­ty to sub­stan­tial­ly upgrade the func­tion­al­i­ty of the web­site. The site was redesigned from the ground up with a focus on cus­tomer usabil­i­ty. We over­hauled most every aspect of the site. We worked with Start Any­where Media to over­come a num­ber of tech­ni­cal hur­dles to make the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence as smooth as pos­si­ble. The result­ing site is easy to main­tain, very pow­er­ful for cus­tomers to iden­ti­fy and order the var­i­ous strains that Inland Island car­ries, and very dynamic.

Yeast Library

Inland Island car­ries near­ly 100 dif­fer­ent yeast strains, and has the abil­i­ty to bank cus­tom strains for cus­tomers. The Yeast Library was built with a focus on the future, and as such we have the abil­i­ty to eas­i­ly add yeast strains and update the yeast strain pages with a min­i­mum of effort. The main yeast library page was built to allow cus­tomers to sort & find yeast strains based on dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories, floc­cu­la­tion, and alco­hol tol­er­ance. We even set up a list of dif­fer­ent beer styles, and cus­tomers can click on the type of beer they’re inter­est­ed in brew­ing and the web­site will show a list of rec­om­mend­ed beer styles. The main yeast library page is dynam­ic, so when we adjust or add yeast strains, this page updates auto­mat­i­cal­ly with­out the client need­ing to do any oth­er work.

The yeast strain pages are also dynam­ic and built on a sin­gle tem­plate, so we can adjust all the yeast strain pages by sim­ply edit­ing one tem­plate. This results in an effi­cient web­site to update & main­tain over time. We devel­oped an easy-to-read table with the crit­i­cal details for each strain, but­tons to show which beer styles the yeast strain would be ide­al to use in the fer­men­ta­tion process, and equiv­a­lent strains from com­peti­tors in the same indus­try. Click­ing on the “order” but­ton on the page also auto-pop­u­lates the yeast strain field on the order page, fur­ther stream­lin­ing the order­ing process.

A More Powerful Ordering Form

Dif­fer­ent brew­eries require dif­fer­ent vol­umes of yeast to pitch into their brews, so there is no “one size fits all” solu­tion for spe­cif­ic order­ing yeast. We devel­oped a high­ly cus­tomized order form for Inland Island that lever­ages all sorts of dynam­ic data and math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions to cus­tomize each pitch of yeast for a brew­er’s spe­cif­ic requirements.

We added the abil­i­ty to order up to 10 yeast strains in one form using a repeat­ing nest­ed “mini form”. The mini form dynam­i­cal­ly updates the Yeast Strain drop­down based on the cur­rent­ly avail­able options in the Yeast Library, fur­ther sim­pli­fy­ing the clien­t’s require­ments to keep the form cur­rent. Addi­tion­al­ly we use some com­plex math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions to sim­pli­fy the order­ing process for the client, and min­i­mize Inland Island’s ned to reach out to cus­tomers to ask the same ques­tions over and over. A real­ly fun part of this was devel­op­ing con­di­tion­al log­ic in the mini form so that a cus­tomer can input either a Spe­cif­ic Grav­i­ty or Pla­to of their beer with­out need­ing to enter the type of units. The form will auto­mat­i­cal­ly rec­og­nize the type of input and do all the cal­cu­la­tions behind the scenes to devel­op a “Cal­cu­lat­ed Order Size” which is what Inland Island rec­om­mends (but the cus­tomer can enter their own Order Size.

On top of all of this cus­tomiza­tion, we imple­ment­ed 3 dif­fer­ent sched­ul­ing cal­en­dars (for pick­up, couri­er deliv­ery, or overnight ship­ping) that restrict the lead time to grow and per­form QA test­ing on each batch.

Customer Registration

Yet anoth­er rub in the com­plex­i­ty of this updat­ed web­site was giv­ing cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to reg­is­ter for accounts. Upon con­firm­ing their reg­is­tra­tion, cus­tomers are able to enter their brew­ery details once and then those details will pre-pop­u­late into the order form, fur­ther reduc­ing the time it takes to make an order. Brew­ers can even enter two dif­fer­ent deliv­ery loca­tions since some brew­ers have mul­ti­ple places they brew. Reg­is­tra­tion also gives Inland Island’s cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to go back through their pre­vi­ous orders, and even to search for spe­cif­ic orders.

Yeast Cell Count & Repitch Calculator

We rede­vel­oped the Inland Island Yeast Cell Count Cal­cu­la­tor with a spe­cif­ic focus on usabil­i­ty. Again, we lever­aged the pow­er of math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions to per­form a num­ber of behind the scenes cal­cu­la­tions to help brew­ers deter­mine if their yeast is viable to be re-pitched, as well as some crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to vol­ume & mass of the repitch­ing. This form is easy to under­stand and use, and the results are orga­nized, clear, and easy to read.