Upmarket furniture retailer Heal’s expects its website to account for up to 16 per cent of its sales after relaunching the site.
Heal’s head of e-commerce Mike Traill told Retail Week that the retailer was on target to generate about 16 per cent of sales via the web in its financial year to mid-September. Two years ago this figure stood at below 5 per cent.
The retailer relaunched its website at the end of February, working with e-commerce platform provider Venda to adopt new technology so that the site would better reflect its brand.
Traill said that by fundamentally changing the way the site is constructed it has achieved around a 20 per cent uplift in conversion rates. The average time consumers spend on the site has risen and there has been positive feedback from staff and customers.
It has integrated two tools from 10CMS into the new site. Active-Image allows Heal’s to turn large lifestyle images into selling tools. The retailer can add hot spots to the images, which site visitors can click on to be taken to the product catalogue. The SlideShow tool allows the site editors to create image slideshows and promotional banners, and quickly change their content.
Heal’s is due to incorporate live XML updates on the site within the next couple of weeks, which will allow the retailer to update product information more easily.
Other developments in the pipeline include a room planner tool, but Traill said that it will need more accurate computer-aided design drawings of its products for this to work well. He added that he wouldn’t put such a tool live on the site until he was sure it would provide a first-rate customer experience.
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