E-Commerce UK case study
Sector: UK Charity
Project Scope: Website Design & Build, Rocktime E-Commerce Platform
Client: Sue Ryder Care
Sue Ryder Care is a national UK charity providing support for the disabled and people with life-shortening illnesses. The objective was to help the charity to maximise their return from online e-commerce opportunities.
Rocktime proposed that a separate e-commerce website be developed, with strong reciprocal links to the charity’s main website. Amongst a range of benefits the Rocktime e-commerce platform would enhance the customers shopping experience and Rocktime would in addition provide advice on how to effectively market the new site.
Rocktime recommended that the e-commerce platform was developed as a site in its own right separate from the main charity website. This would help to make the product catalogue and shopping information more readily accessible and user friendly. Very strong links would be maintained between the navigation of the two sites to ensure visitors would still be able to move freely from one to the other.
When the shop was an integral element of the old site, there were a number of issues with its usability. The home page had very little to pique the interest of a potential shopper and it was necessary to scroll down through a long list of categories (longer than a standard screen size) to see the complete product range. The navigation was scattered, with much of the key shop information contained in text links at the very bottom of the page and it was felt that much of the available space (especially on the top half of the screen) was wasted.
A simplified navigational system was implemented as part of the new e-commerce website with all the key shopping information (such as product categories, delivery information, shopping basket, security, terms and conditions, etc) being immediately visible and accessible to users. The 'central' area of selected web pages has been dedicated to highlighting a number of key products, with links to more detailed information about each product.
When viewing a particular category of products a select number of items are displayed on each web page with the ‘top selling’ product (within that category) featured at the top of the pages and other items displayed in two columns down the page (and subsequent pages). This means that the user can see the complete range much more quickly and easily than previously, when it was necessary to navigate through many more pages.
If a user is interested in a specific product, they can select a ‘more information’ button which presents one or two larger images of the product, full product information and a ‘buy’ button to add items to their shopping basket, which can be viewed at any stage.
In addition to designing and developing the charity's new e-commerce website Rocktime identified a number of areas of weakness with Sue Ryder Care’s online marketing strategy and offered advice as to how these could be improved. These topics included recommendations on pay-per-click, affiliate programmes and search engine marketing.
An effective, easy to use on-line catalogue of products makes shopping with Sue Ryder Care a much more attractive proposition. Rocktime’s e-commerce platform is extremely stable and secure and offers an unrivalled range of e-commerce website functionality.
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