Penrith Rubber Stamps had been online for a number of years successfully selling to a large customer base without any form of ecommerce, instead relying on downloadable order forms and faxing to enable sales. It was time for that to change!’
“The old site worked but not very efficiently, and it was looking tired. Our customers deserve better than that.” says Maggie Crowell, owner of Penrith Rubber Stamps. After we successfully launched their niche business site JP Stamps Online, Maggie again contacted us to help to bring the main business website inline with what we had done for the JP Stamps Online website.
The main issue with the old site were the product pages, each was a mishmash of design and difficult to decipher one stamp size from the next. What was needed was a simpler approach and more importantly a consistent approach across the site from one product to the next.
The next issue was product imagery. Like many businesses they relied on whatever images could be sourced from the manufacturers, but unfortunately images that were available were rather poor quality and again, inconsistent from product to product.
Finally, because each stamp is different in terms of the content, an off the shelf ecommerce solution was not going to work here. However we needed to move them forward to streamline the buying process and move away from order form downloading and faxing orders through! We had our work cutout on this one!
“The old site worked but not very efficiently, and it was looking tired. Our customers deserve better than that.”
Maggie Crowell, Owner
The first challenge was to design a site that provided all of the information on each stamp, including it’s product code, dimensions and price as well as showing a relatively accurate representation of the size so customers could get a good idea of the actual size of the stamp they were purchasing.
Next we needed to work with the team at Penrith Rubber Stamps to produce quality images of their products for the website. We spent a day with Maggie’s husband Mark to to shoot the images we needed so that we had consistency across the site.
The final stage was the ordering process. We decided to place online ordering forms on each product page to allow customers to more easily order the product they need. Maggie’s response was not all that positive initially: “Yes, I must admit I was not really a fan of this idea but I listened to what your designer said and thought I’d give it a go. But I’m so glad I did.” We persisted, and after a few tweaks in the weeks after launch, we managed to perfect this process to a point where Maggie and the team were very happy with the new process.
“I love the way Steve came out and spent time to see how our place functions. I truly believe that doing that gave him a better understanding of the way we work and he was able to convey it to the site brilliantly.”
Maggie Crowell, Owner
The Outcome
The new website has made ordering a much simpler process for their customers, with not only the ordering process being simpler, but also the product layouts being easier to understand. “It has definitely made life a bit easier as it’s so simple to use.” says Maggie.
It took less than an hour from launch for the first order to come through using the new online forms and within a few hours several more came through. It was at that point we realised that we had achieved our goal of providing Penrtih Rubber Stamps with a website that moved their business forward.