Shopfloor DEALER PROFILE: KNEES HOME AND ELECTRICAL THE POWER OF ONLINE: DEALER PROFILE
“Your website is a window into your business”
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To get a better idea of what’s involved in setting up and running a leading retailer website, Jack Cheeseman spoke to Matt Renaut from Dacombes of Wimborne. who shares his experiences from recent years to help encourage others to explore the opportunities of online.
E
RT Award-winning Dacombes of Wimborne started out online with its original website around the turn of the millennium. In 2011, the retailer then
launched a new website that was transactional – in order to compete with similar retailer s at the time. But in 2016, the existing site was redesigned again and redeveloped to bring it bang up-to-date in terms of its modern look. Matt Renaut is the MD of the Wimborne
retail store and taking ERT through the various website processes over the years, he explains that in the early days he wanted to at least have an online catalogue in order to tempt customers in-store. More recently, however, technological advancements have encouraged him to update the site more often. In the ‘About Us’ section of the
site, there are even clever Google Street View-inspired interior images of the store – to allow customers to virtually browse around before visiting in person. “It’s staggering how fast websites
Matt Renaut, MD, Dacombes of Wimborne
move really, the things you can do with them, and people’s perception of what they want,” he says. “Your website is the first port of call for any customer and if it’s ‘clunky’ or difficult to navigate, people will think twice about coming to you.
“Websites do date and you need to look
at them every two or three years really. The website is my baby – it has been from day one; I saw the potential of what it could be. The whole look of the website really is a window into the business and if you haven’t got a particularly good website then it might reflect badly on how the business comes across.”
External services Mr Renaut used an external website development company to design and set up this latest website version; he says he spent a lot of time with the team discussing what he wanted and the exact look he was aiming for. He adds that he did a lot of research and it was important to choose a local company so that meetings could be held during the development process. For day-to-day hosting and maintenance, Mr
Renaut uses this same external company. The website content, however, is all down to him and a newly-employed, part-time assistant in the business. “It’s one of those things that I think retailers
do neglect; they put it out there and then just forget about it – I hate to use the phrase, but it’s like the silent salesman, it’s always there. It’s staggering the amount of people that, at any one time, can be browsing on the website; they could be potential customers, or they could be just killing time, you just don’t know.” Talking of website traffic, Mr Renaut adds that
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