We specialise in
ecommerce websites here at Designer Websites, and so we often receive enquiries from business owners who are wondering whether or not ecommerce is the right choice for their company.
More often than not, the answer is a resounding 'yes' - ecommerce is a fantastic way to grow your business, reach new customers, and increase your profits. However, we do occasionally come across clients for whom an ecommerce website simply wouldn't make sense; sometimes, it's better to have a simple brochure website that drives lots of enquiries than to have an awkward ecommerce website that makes life difficult for potential customers.
So which side of that line does your business fall on? Read on to find out whether or not an ecommerce website is the right choice for you...
An ecommerce website is ideal if:
- You sell a wide range of products. Websites are capable of showcasing far more products than a bricks-and-mortar shop, and if you have a lot of different items on offer, an ecommerce site will probably be the single most efficient way for you to sell.
- You wish to market to a wider audience. If you're only selling from a physical location at present, you're only reaching a tiny percentage of the market (i.e. those within travelling distance of your shop). Even if you have multiple locations, that's still nothing compared to the reach of an ecommerce website - imagine what could happen if you made your products available to the entire country, or even the entire world!
- You already have a non-ecommerce website that gets a lot of traffic. If you have a website that doesn't allow people to buy your products, chances are you're missing out on a lot of sales. Many internet users now expect the option to purchase online, and if your website doesn't offer this, you'll lose your customers to a website that does. The solution, of course, is to upgrade your site with ecommerce functionality - you'll be improving user experience, and since your website already has some history with the search engines, it will likely rank much higher than a brand new website would.
An ecommerce website probably isn't right for you if:
- You aren't equipped to deal with a large volume of orders. Opening up your business to the whole country (and possibly beyond) will almost certainly result in a lot more orders. This is great news if you can handle the demand, but if you can't, things will very quickly turn sour, especially if customers aren't receiving the goods they've paid for. In the age of the internet, disgruntled consumers can ruin a company's reputation astonishingly quickly!
- You only want to target a small area. Want to keep your business local? If so, ecommerce may be the wrong choice for you, particularly if you don't have the means to fulfil orders from outside your chosen territory. That said, we have produced ecommerce websites for a few region-specific businesses, and they've done very well indeed - just make sure that visitors know right from the outset that your site only caters to one location!
- Your products are too complicated for ecommerce. Some things simply can't be sold directly over the internet. This is often the case for companies who specialise in bespoke items; it is possible to integrate some customisable features into an ecommerce website (for example, we have built sites that sell things like personalised clothing and customised labels), but after a certain point, it just becomes too complicated for the end user. Alternatively, perhaps you'd rather get people on the telephone instead of selling to them online - giving your customers a phone number instead of an online checkout allows you to speak to them personally, provide a better solution for their requirements, and perhaps even upsell your products and make more money!
First Encounters Ultrasound is a company that provides private pregnancy scans for expectant parents. They have state-of-the-art clinics in Bristol, Cardiff, and Swindon, and are among the UK's leading experts on 3D/4D ultrasound technology.
While First Encounters offer a variety of different scan packages, the company specialise in 4D ultrasound scans, which allow you to get a detailed look at your unborn baby:
We recently designed a
new website for First Encounters Ultrasound, and since then, they've seen a major boost in traffic and enquiries. The new and improved version of their website (
www.firstencounters.co.uk) went live on the 2nd of June 2015; the following thirty-day period saw an
18.79% increase in organic Google traffic. That's almost
800 extra visitors over the course of just one month!
Traffic stats from Google Analytics.
This additional traffic comes thanks to some superb organic rankings. At the time of writing this post, the website now appears on the first page* of Google results for a number of relevant keywords, including 4d scan, 4d pregnancy scan, and gender scan (*please note that Google results may vary based on your location).
Responsive Design & Mobile Traffic
One of the biggest driving factors behind the decision to redesign the First Encounters website was the continuing swing away from desktop computers and towards mobile browsing. The First Encounters team wanted a site that would look good and function well on smartphones and tablets (as well as on larger devices), and our web design specialists rose to the challenge as usual, creating a responsive, user-friendly website that adapts to any screen size:
We are very proud of the website that we created for First Encounters, and sure enough, our efforts to make the site 'mobile-friendly' yielded great results. After the new site went live, First Encounters saw a 66% increase in mobile traffic, and a 27% increase in traffic from tablets:
Stats from Google Analytics.
PPC Advertising: Google AdWords
Once we had completed the new First Encounters website, our
PPC specialists were asked to take over the company's Google AdWords account. Within thirty days, we had increased the site's AdWords traffic by a spectacular
90% (roughly
1,160 extra visitors) - and all
without any change to the company's AdWords budget!
First Encounters received a total of 315 bookings in June 2015 - their highest monthly total to date! Here's what Warren Boulton, the company's Commercial Director, had to say about this outcome:
"As a company targeting a particular audience within a specific demographic, our website is the foundation of our marketing strategy. However, in recent times, it had become increasingly evident that our continued growth and development in both existing and new territories would require an online presence that reflected the changes in SEO criteria, combined with compatibility across the multitude of devices from which our site is accessed.
"In response to these demands, Designer Websites have developed a fully responsible website that provides clear functionality across all platforms, particularly the mobile and tablet devices that our clients commonly use. The search engine optimisation used in conjunction with this design has enabled us to achieve the #1 in many Google organic listings within one month, and their continued support with social media and news blogging further assists with this cause.
"The Designer Websites team are friendly, professional, and extremely knowledgeable, delivering results in a timely manner and providing a highly commendable service from an extremely trustworthy organisation."
Can we help your company to succeed online? Would you like us to create a mobile-friendly website for you, or manage your AdWords accounts? Whatever you need, you can get a quote here.
HenStuff.co.uk is an ecommerce website that sells a huge variety of hen party accessories and novelty gifts. The site attracts a colossal number of visitors - especially at this time of year - and desktop users only account for around 50% of this traffic. The others are using smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices to shop for their hen party supplies.
In light of this fact, the HenStuff team decided that it was time to go responsive. They contacted Designer Websites and asked us to come up with a responsive design that would give mobile users a better experience on the HenStuff website. They also requested an updated payment system that would make it easier for their customers to complete online purchases.
Responsive Design
HenStuff's old website was good-looking and reasonably user-friendly, but it had been designed with desktop computers in mind, and didn't cater to mobile users very well. We addressed this by creating a brand new responsive design that adapts to the screen on which it is viewed, meaning that all visitors now get an equally excellent browsing experience, regardless of what kind of device they're using.
The HenStuff brand has been around for quite a few years now, and it was important for the new website to retain the image and personality that the company has established for itself over time. As we reimagined and restructured the HenStuff site, our design team kept a close eye on all branding elements (including logos, site copy, and images used) to ensure that everything remained consistent - after all, we wanted to make sure that HenStuff's customers still recognised their favourite party store!
Improved Payment System
The new HenStuff site uses Sage Pay Version 3, the latest version of Sage Pay's much-lauded payment gateway, to process customer payments. Simple, user-friendly, and exceptionally secure, we feel that Sage Pay is a superb choice for any ecommerce website, and HenStuff have already been reaping the benefits of this improved system (as have their customers!)
Tokenisation is a major feature of Sage Pay's latest version, and we incorporated this functionality into the new HenStuff website to make life easier for loyal shoppers. Customers can now make use of a Fast Pay option, which uses Sage Pay's fast and hyper-secure token system to store customer details, allowing near-instant checkout on future purchases.
This is a particularly great feature for HenStuff, a company that gets a lot of business from repeat customers who organise/attend a lot of hen parties. HenStuff.co.uk is one of the first websites in the hen party industry to utilise a tokenisation option like this, and this - together with the new, mobile-friendly design - will really help to give the company an edge over its competitors.
