About Procter’s Sausages

Procter's Sausages isn't just another butcher's shop. This is a business with genuine passion and provenance behind every product. The current family purchased the shop in August 2024 after an extensive search for the perfect outlet to showcase pork from their award-winning farming business in Essex. What makes them truly special is their complete control over the entire production process—something pretty rare in today's food industry.

Let's talk about that farm-to-fork story, because it's genuinely impressive. The family behind Procter's, F J Bosworth and Sons, have been raising pigs since 1919. They grow their own cereals, fertilised with manure from their pigs, which they then harvest and mill using solar energy to create pig feed. It's a closed-loop system that gives them complete traceability from soil to sausage. Their pigs are certified to Red Tractor Assurance Standards, and they're even one of just 15 pilot pig farms in the UK participating in AHDB's Environmental Baselining Project—a five-year commitment to reducing emissions and working towards net-zero agriculture.

But Procter's is about more than just sausages (despite the name!). Their shop stocks a fantastic range of locally sourced products including bacon, Gates Farm eggs, pies and quiches from Capel St Mary, and jars from Stokes and Garden of Suffolk. They've even got a South African range that's become incredibly popular with customers. Their team of experienced, professionally trained staff are always ready with advice, recommendations, and recipe tips. Plus, they offer delivery for their wholesale customers across Suffolk—from traditional cafes to prestigious hotels and restaurants.

Objectives

Creating a Brand That Tells Their Story

Our first challenge was developing a cohesive brand identity that would capture everything Procter's stands for. We needed to communicate quality, modernity, heritage, provenance, and sustainability—all while telling that compelling farm-to-fork story. The brand had to work across multiple touchpoints, from their website to packaging to social media, and it needed to resonate with both their loyal existing customers and new audiences discovering them online. Most importantly, it had to emphasise their unique selling point: complete control over the production process from rearing pigs to crafting premium sausages.

Building Their First Ecommerce Platform

Despite being an established presence in Ipswich town centre, Procter's had never explored online markets. We needed to develop a user-friendly, responsive ecommerce platform that would make it easy for customers to browse products, place orders, and complete secure transactions—all while maintaining that personal, welcoming feel of their physical shop. The website had to work seamlessly across all devices, from desktops to mobile phones, ensuring every customer has a great experience regardless of how they're shopping.

Empowering the Team with a Manageable CMS

Here's something we always think about: what happens after we hand over the keys? Procter's has a small but dedicated team, and they don't have hours to spend wrestling with complicated website updates. We needed to build the site on a client-editable content management system that would let them manage updates, add new products, adjust pricing, and keep content fresh without needing to call us every time something changed. The system had to be intuitive enough that anyone on the team could use it confidently.

Getting Found on Google

What's the point of having a beautiful website if nobody can find it? We needed to optimise the site for search engines from the ground up, establishing an online presence that would attract organic traffic. This meant thinking carefully about site structure, page load speeds, mobile responsiveness, content strategy, and all those technical SEO elements that help Google understand what the site is about and rank it accordingly.

Making Online Shopping Smooth and Secure

Trust is everything when you're asking customers to enter their payment details online. We needed to implement secure payment gateways and create a seamless checkout process that would give customers confidence while making it as quick and easy as possible to complete their purchase. No abandoned carts because the checkout process is too complicated or feels unsafe.

Procter's Sausages ecommerce website design

Approach

Designing in Figma

We kicked things off in Figma, where we spent considerable time creating wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, and interactive mockups. What we love about Figma is how it facilitates collaboration—we could share designs with the Procter's team in real-time, get their feedback instantly, and make adjustments on the fly. This collaborative approach meant we could iterate quickly and ensure the designs met both their expectations and the needs of their customers before we wrote a single line of code. We mapped out the entire user journey, from landing on the homepage to completing a purchase, making sure every interaction felt intuitive and aligned with the brand.

Crafting the Logo in Adobe Illustrator

The logo needed to work everywhere—on the website, on packaging, on shop signage, in social media posts—and it needed to look crisp and professional at any size. Adobe Illustrator was the perfect tool for this job. We created a vector-based logo that captured the essence of Procter's: premium quality, heritage, and that farm-to-fork story. The precision of Illustrator meant we could create something that would scale beautifully whether it was printed on a business card or blown up in the shop's window, maintaining that professional look across every application.

Building on WordPress

For the website foundation, we chose WordPress as the CMS, and it was absolutely the right call for Procter's. WordPress is flexible, user-friendly, and has an extensive ecosystem of plugins that let us add functionality without reinventing the wheel. More importantly for the Procter's team, it's incredibly intuitive to use. They can log in, update product descriptions, add blog posts, change images, and manage their site content without needing any technical expertise. The admin interface is straightforward, and we provided training to ensure they felt confident making updates independently. This means their website can stay fresh and current without being dependent on us for every small change.

Adding Ecommerce with WooCommerce

To handle all the ecommerce functionality, we integrated WooCommerce—a powerful WordPress plugin that's become the go-to solution for online stores. WooCommerce gave us the tools to manage product inventories, set up different product categories and variations, process payments securely, and create a smooth checkout experience. We customised it extensively to match Procter's specific needs, from setting up delivery zones and minimum order values for their Tuesday delivery service to creating a bespoke flavour calculator so that minimum quantities were met when ordering. The beauty of WooCommerce is its flexibility—it could grow with Procter's business, adding new features as they needed them.

Challenges

  1. Building a Brand from Scratch

    Creating a brand identity from initial conversations about business direction is always an exciting challenge. We needed to dig deep into what makes Procter's special, understand their values, and translate all of that into visual and verbal language. This meant considering their vision, their heritage, their farming practices, and what they wanted customers to feel when they interacted with the brand. We developed a brand that honours their 30+ years of heritage while positioning them as a modern, forward-thinking business. The logo, colour palette, typography, and tone of voice all needed to work together harmoniously, creating a cohesive brand experience that would resonate with their target audience and differentiate them from competitors.

  2. SEO from the Foundation Up

    Building a website with search engine optimisation in mind from day one is very different from trying to retrofit SEO later. We needed to think strategically about site architecture, URL structure, page hierarchy, metadata, content strategy, and technical performance. This meant making decisions about everything from how product pages would be structured to how quickly images would load. We focused on creating high-quality, relevant content that would answer the questions potential customers were asking, while ensuring the technical infrastructure supported good SEO practices. Mobile responsiveness was crucial, as was site speed—Google prioritises sites that load quickly and work well on all devices.

  3. Security, Compliance, and Peace of Mind

    When you're handling customer data and processing payments online, security isn't optional—it's absolutely essential. We implemented secure and reliable hosting that protects sensitive customer information, ensured compliance with GDPR and Data Protection regulations, and set up SSL certificates for encrypted connections. We configured WooCommerce with secure payment gateways that never store sensitive card details on the server. Every form, every data collection point, every customer account had to meet stringent security standards. We also set up regular backups, security monitoring, and update protocols to keep the site protected against emerging threats. For Procter's customers, this means they can shop with confidence knowing their information is safe. For the Procter's team, it means peace of mind knowing they're meeting their legal obligations and properly protecting their customers.

Procter's website screenshot on desktop

“Working with Accent has been a pleasure! They are incredibly responsive and always quick to communicate and make updates. What really stands out is their creativity-they bring fresh, thoughtful ideas to the table while still staying true to our brand, goals & vision.

Jack Bosworth

Owner, Procter’s Sausages