Buy Sheds Direct is a specialist online retailer of garden buildings, fencing and decking that has been trading online since 2005 and have rapidly positioned themselves as one of the UK’s largest suppliers to the public.
All of the company’s wooden garden products from its sheds and outdoor storage buildings through to its fencing and decking are produced in the UK to the highest standards from timber sourced from well-managed forests.
Buy Sheds Direct has a friendly, helpful and knowledgeable team where customer service is of the highest standard.
Challenge
With the business achieving rapid growth and market penetration, its former solution was struggling to cope with the volume of visitors and orders.
Buy Sheds Direct commissioned PureNet to design and build a trading platform that could cope with high volume, multi-site B2C e-commerce. The solution for all three of their websites; BuyShedsDirect, BuyDeckingDirect and BuyFencingDirect, needed to be in place within a tight schedule, so that they would be ready to start taking orders in their peak trading period in the Spring.
The company’s objectives were to improve the functionality of their existing websites, allow easy integration with internal IT, distribution systems and call centre operations, include flexibility in terms of content management and multi-site trading, and achieve fast return on investment to capitalise on the potential for growth.
Multi-site capability was imperative. The business would need to centrally control different web sites on different URLs across multiple servers. The solution had to be flexible enough to allow the in-house team to control all aspects of product presentation across all three sites and support the company’s regular promotions and marketing activities from a single web console.
Solution
Choosing PureNet for its cost effectiveness and impressive functionality, the websites were launched within a three month timescale.
The company’s three sites incorporate a range of best practice merchandising functions to present thousands of products in the best possible way. Marketing tools, easily managed in-house, drive a host of up-sell and cross-sell features. When viewing selected products, multi-buy offers, complimentary product options, free delivery and discounts are displayed to encourage increased spend. Powerful reporting tools allow the success and profitability of marketing activity to be closely scrutinised.
The sites feature built-in functionality for the company to do their own A/B and multivariate testing, which enables the company to simultaneously test different variations of the website’s design in order to gauge the success of different page layouts and messages to ultimately maximise the value of each visitor.
Included as part of the solution, a ‘sandpit’ site was created for training, testing and experimentation purposes. The sandpit site can be synchronised with the live site so that it contains the same products and images, allowing the Buy Sheds team to continually monitor and improve the performance of its product presentation and promotions.
Standard site features include product customisation, featured products and user reviews, all of which can be controlled internally reducing the volume of calls and emails and increasing their return on investment.
Benefits
Buy Sheds Direct have been delighted with the response to their new websites. Immediately after launch in January 2010, the sites are achieving better visibility on search engines, and visitor traffic and online sales are continuing to grow strongly. In the first half of 2010, conversion rates were up 15% and the number of transactions had risen by more than a fifth on the previous year.
The company are confident that the sites and administrative functions are robust and flexible enough to grow as the business does, effectively future proofing their investment.
The new sites with their significant improvements give the company total control over web properties, and provide the ability to manage content for their many different product types and specifications.
Website visitors benefit from the streamlining of e-commerce and content functionality, and internally Buy Sheds Direct staff will have their workloads decreased due to shifting more of the application and maintenance processes online. The new sites position the company as an industry leader for years to come.
To discuss how PureNet can help you improve your eCommerce business please Contact Us or call us on 01904 898 444.