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How did the project start?
Having provided the company with an online presence (www.durhamlifting.co.uk), the next objective within the marketing strategy was to deploy a dynamic online catalogue to incorporate the sales department for Durham Lifting. The company was constantly expanding and felt that by having their products online this would further expand their target market and provide an accessible medium for customers to view these products, read up full details on such items and then proceed to place an enquiry or request a quote.
What options did you consider?
The website uses a bespoke dynamic system of php scripted web pages to extract details from the database all of which were developed specifically for this project. For their pricing strategy, the business could not publish prices to every potential user due to certain pricing being bespoke for such client or project whilst not giving away their prices to their competitors. Hence it was not possible to use an open source shopping cart solution which would have made the categorisation and implementation of the website a relatively simple task. The various categories also required custom pages to be designed and thus it was decided to create such navigation pages as static linkage pages in order to keep the user's experience relatively painless and enjoyable.
What help and expertise did you receive?
The project was fully developed internally whilst making sure the website fits the precise needs of the business, their customers and the industry they are competing in.
Did you face and challenges or learn any lessons?
The project was very time consuming whilst attempting to capture data from various sections. Attempting to make sure all products followed a similar categorisation of attributes in order to sit well within the database was a challenge due to the diversity of products supplied by the business.
What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?
The customer has been very pleased with the end product, having also setup an AdWords campaign and made sure the website visibility was also addressed. The customer receives quotation requests and enquiries on a daily basis from the website which has seen a profitable investment wow even the company’s major suppliers, where it was mentioned that Yale was taken aback by the design and functionality of the website which belittled their own website.
What are your plans for the future?
There is a full marketing strategy which was put in place at the initial stages of the proposal. To date, the company has been very happy with our level of service and commitment and await our next development of other departments within the business into an electronic medium available to all.
