talking trade
The evolving world of websites Green Pioneer sales director Charity Nichols shares her website story
and for our retailers. It meant they could find all the information in one place, see what was in stock, and place an order knowing that they would actually get what I had ordered. It also meant that we could grow our business whilst keeping a small team, as the admin involved in each order was lower. When we briefed that initial website to our agency we didn’t really know exactly what we needed. We thought it would be useful to be able to create bespoke catalogues for customers using the information on the site, so we had a special module put in - and never used it, as customers were quite happy just buying off the site. We didn’t ask for the ‘back in stock’ notification system that came as part of the software - but it has been one of the most appreciated features of the site by our retailers! A business review last year showed us that the majority of our business now comes through our website and so, instead of focusing our marketing on trade shows, it was better for us to focus on making improvements to our site.
These improvements covered three main I
t’s amazing how quickly time passes in the world of websites isn’t it? It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were managing
our distribution business, Green Pioneer, using Excel spreadsheets and pdf catalogues and had a simple Joomla website with a few pages. When we first started up back in 2008 that was fine. But as we grew and took on more brands - each coming from different places with different lead times - things got more and more complicated.
It was clearly time for a new system, so in 2015 we launched our first ‘B2B’ transactional site which made things much easier both for us
areas: • Moving the site to the latest version of the software it is run on, to make sure it’s as stable and fast as possible.
• Making the site easier for us to keep up to date. We have over 400 products on the site and 13 brands, so products are being added and discontinued all the time. That means that all the lovely lifestyle images we chose to include in the design were very quickly out of date - and not reflecting the actual products on the site! One of those things you don’t think about until you actually have to do the updating! • Adding new features to the site that we knew would be useful for our retailers. These included simple things like allowing products to be
added to a basket from a category/summary page, making pack sizes clearer, making main images bigger so they didn’t needed to be ‘popped up’ - and, of course, reducing the number of general lifestyle images that needed updating!
We also included some lovely testimonials
from some of our brands and longest standing retailers.
The other big improvement was the addition of a well signposted ‘trade news’ area for logged in retailers, highlighting little updates on anything from new products and new packaging to stock delays and even interesting background information on a particular product or brand. It’s been a particularly complex project, as it is a multi-currency and multi-language B2B site. But now it’s done we’re really pleased with the result - and we’ve had some great feedback about how easy it is to use from regular retailers too, which definitely makes it worth it.
20 years ago this month in Housewares Magazine…
• Almost 500 guests attended a celebratory lunch in London to honour the winners of the 1999 DIY Week and Housewares Magazine Industry Awards. The roll-call included four names from the housewares sector. The cookware and bakeware category was won by Dexam for its Chasseur oven-to- tableware; KitchenCraft’s blowtorch won the kitchen equipment award and the Vin Chiller electric wine cooler took the small electricals award, while Haden scooped the advertising effectiveness award.
• Brabantia revealed details of its consumer advertising schedule for the second half of the year. The theme of the £250,000 promotion was ‘solid company’. The message was that Brabantia is a brand that ‘makes solid products that can be relied upon to retain their beauty and performance for the next 20 years’.
• Meyer targeted the wedding gift market with the launch of a guide to cookware. The booklet contained information on each of Meyer’s ranges with an introduction by celebrity chef Brian Turner.
• Villeroy & Boch launched its biggest ever UK consumer advertising campaign at a cost of £150,000, in a selection of home interest and bridal titles. The ads featured its Switch 3, French Garden and Twist Alea tableware ranges.
• Newell announced the winners of its 1998 Pyrex Centre of the Year awards. The commended retailers were: C G Reid in Helensburgh, Kitchens in Cardiff and My Favourite Shop in Ilford.
Source: Housewares Magazine July/August 1999
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