Keeping a cut above the rest is not easy!
AVANTGARDE are now one step closer to cutting it now with their new hair care products website!
Avant Garde hair salons online store
The doctor's notes - August 2008
After successfully updating AVANTGARDE's brand identity, AVANTGARDE was so pleased, they commissioned The Site Doctor to develop their ecommerce website. The design of the website was based upon their new brand identity, designed to promote brand recognition and continuity between the salons and the new on-line store.
Having realised a gap in the market place for their services online, AVANTGARDE set out to produce a market leading hair care ecommerce site which would not only allow their existing salon based clients to purchase products from the convenience of their own homes but also service new customers from around the UK.
As AVANTGARDE were launching a new hair salon in Worcester at the same time, they felt that the outlay for the website would be too great. With this in mind, we worked with AVANTGARDE to achieve 80% funding from the West Midlands Business Link making the development of the site possible.
AVANTGARDE's ecommerce website has a powerful Content Management System (CMS) backend which allows them to manage their entire product catalogue and orders via a web based control panel. The easy-to-use administration system will help AVANTGARDE ensure the product catalogue has up-to-date prices and the latest catalogue items allowing them to react quickly to changes in the industry and new product releases.
The AVANTGARDE is one of the most advanced ecommerce websites we have developed to date, for instance, it has the ability to automatically up-sell products to website users. Once configured, the online store is able to offer customers larger quantities or related products (e.g. if a client is buying shampoo it can automatically suggest the conditioner in that particular range to the client, alternatively if the customer orders a 500ml item when a 1L item is available, it will again unobtrusively up-sell to the client). This up-selling is designed to maximise profits and return on investment.
The new online store has a complete mailing list facility integrated into the site. This facility allows AVANTGARDE to manage their e-mail campaigns automatically. Once a customer has supplied their e-mail address and given permission to be contacted; their details can be used in regular email newsletters to promote the site and offers.
As a growing number of customers are becoming tired of having multiple logins to various sites, we integrated an anonymous checkout option so those customers who do not wish to sign up for an account can easily checkout.
To help refine the site in the future, AVANTGARDE has very in-depth, real-time reporting capabilities integrated including a breakdown of current shopping carts, total value of orders broken down by payment status, time of day and day of week to name but a few. This coupled with complete Google Analytics integration allows AVANTGARDE to closely monitor the efficiency of the site and quickly react to customer's demands.
AVANTGARDE is planning a Google AdWords campaign with The Site Doctor which will be started shortly. The results of the Google AdWords campaign will also be recorded and closely monitored within Google Analytics.
Integrating with the AVANTGARDE online catalogue with third party directories such as Google's product listing site "Froogle" will increase their potential customer base. This coupled with full integration of the XML Sitemaps protocol ensures their search engine ranking is as high as possible.
Although the sale of salon quality hair care product is a very competitive market, we were confident that we could deliver a successful e-commerce website that achieved their Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) set by AVANTGARDE. This confidence was not misplaced, within the 12hours of the site being launched they received their first order and they had nearly £200 of orders within the first 72hours of being launched! Furthermore, none of these orders are linked to their existing client base or any form of advertising (which is due to be launched later in August 2008). We are now well on our way to meeting all the KPI's set!
What the patient said:
"We looked at and met with several web design companies when we decided to take our web business further. Having already had a website and image that had become dated we knew it was time for a major new look in time for our new salon launch.
We decided to go with The Site Doctor because they made it so personal to us individually, briefly touching on work they had done in the past but trying to understand our business so the site can reflect our corporate values as opposed to shadowing other projects. The personal approach The Site Doctor showed us only grew as the project started, not only by constantly updating us with progress but adding ideas to the site and showing an amazing level of expertise with the website development itself.
I look forward to working with The Site Doctor as my company and the website grows."
Ian Beswick (Managing Director)
Visit the site:
Homepage
Homepage
Brand Listing Page
Product Details Page
Cart Page
Checkout Page
Hair Salons Page
Original Homepage