The photo on the Oz BBQ home page: an open barbecue with beef skewers on the top rack and cheeseburgers and sausages on the grill below.

Work(04) Oz BBQ

Photo: bbqs.com.au home page

Oz BBQ

A store for barbecues, grills and outdoor cooking that helps people work out which cooker suits them before it asks for the sale.

Visit bbqs.com.au (opens in a new tab) See what we built
What it is
Specialist e-commerce store
Our role
We built it and run it
Status
Live
Visit
bbqs.com.au ↗ (opens in a new tab)
In Fig. 1
Smokers, sorted by how often you want to get up and tend the fire.
The Oz BBQ smokers page: a search bar and a menu of cooker categories, the headline 'BBQ Smokers' beside a photo of a charcoal smoker cabinet, then a row headed 'How hands-on do you want to be?' that sorts offset, charcoal, gas, gravity-fed, pellet and electric smokers by how often you tend the fire.
Fig. 1The BBQ Smokers range on bbqs.com.au, captured from the live site

(01)The problem

In a thumbnail, a kamado and a pellet grill look much the same.

A barbecue isn't something most people buy often, so they arrive knowing what they like to eat and not much about charcoal against gas, or what size suits a family of four. That choice decides whether the thing comes out every weekend or spends summer under its cover.

Nobody wants to find that out in February, with the cooker already on the deck. So help with choosing is the first thing a specialist store has to offer, and the barbecue comes second.

  • Kamado
  • Pellet
  • Gas
  • Gravity-fed
  • Offset
  • Electric smoker
  • Pizza oven
  • Which one is mine?

Each one means a different Saturday afternoon.

(02)What we built

We put the buying guides in the same shop as the cookers they explain.

Oz BBQ is a specialist store for barbecues, grills and outdoor cooking. Someone reading a guide is a tap from the cooker it describes, and someone looking at a cooker can find the guide that explains it.

An Oz BBQ buying guide titled 'Which Kamado Actually Fits Your Backyard', comparing three kamado sizes, with a photo of a red kamado grill smoking on a timber deck. The store's search bar and category menu sit above it.
Fig. 2A kamado buying guide on desktop, pinned to the list below
A second buying guide on a phone, 'How Gravity-Fed Charcoal Actually Works (and Why Masterbuilt Owns the Category)': the search bar, shortcut chips for smokers, kamado and pellet, a breadcrumb back to Expert Advice, the headline, a photo of a charcoal hopper and the byline, in one column.
Fig. 3A gravity-fed guide on a phone

  1. Shortcuts by cooker type

    Smokers, kamado and pellet each have a shortcut above the guide, for a reader who already knows which one they're curious about.

  2. Every guide has a page of its own

    A breadcrumb leads back to Expert Advice, where the rest of the library is waiting.

  3. Expert Advice is a menu item

    It's listed in the store's main menu with the cooker ranges, where a shopper would look for any other category.

  4. Which kamado fits the backyard

    The guide in Fig. 2 weighs three kamado sizes against the space a buyer has to put one in, so size gets settled before checkout.

  5. One column on a phone

    On a phone the search bar, shortcuts, headline and photo line up in a single column, as in Fig. 3.

Expert Advice

The guides are there so the cover stays off.

A guide that helps someone choose does more for a specialist store than another banner. The library covers kamados, gravity-fed charcoal, electric smokers, pellet grills and thermometers.

Read the buying guides ↗ (opens in a new tab)
Fig. 4Four guides from the Expert Advice library, each linked to the live page. Swipe for more.

(03)How it runs

We built Oz BBQ, and we still run it.

When a product changes or a guide falls out of date, the job comes to us, because there's nobody else to give it to.

The Oz BBQ Expert Advice library: a dark hero over a photo of chicken on a kamado grill, a line counting the guides and head-to-heads, the date of the latest guide, and filter buttons for kamado, gravity-fed, electric smokers, pellet, thermometers, buying guides, how-to and low and slow.
Fig. 5The Expert Advice library on bbqs.com.au
  1. Catalogue

    Keeping the specs right

    New products go in and categories change, and the details people compare cookers on have to match what turns up.

  2. Expert Advice

    The guides belong to the store

    A guide that names a cooker is only as good as that cooker's page, and both are ours to look after.

  3. The site

    Whatever breaks

    If the search, a product page or the checkout stops working, fixing it is our job.

(04)For your business

What this store taught us to build for yours.

Selling something people research first?

Tell us what you sell and who buys it. We'll build a store that helps your customers choose well, so what they buy doesn't end up under a cover.

Or email contact@jola.com.au directly.

This opens your email app with your answers filled in. Nothing is sent until you press send.

Email contact@jola.com.au

Next case · (05) Spambuster A Shopify app that stops spam and bot submissions on store forms, using Google reCAPTCHA.