Shed E-tailer Competes for Retail Systems and DADI Awards 2010

It’s great when a team-effort gets recognised, particularly when that recognition is by way of nominations for two prestigious e-commerce awards. It’s also great when I’m part of the team…

Against stiff competition, my client,  Buy Sheds Direct, a leading UK web retailer of sheds, garden buildings and associated garden products, has been short-listed for ‘Retail Website of the Year’ in this year’s Retail Systems Awards and ‘Retail/E-commerce Website’ in the DADI Awards.

The judging panels for both awards include well known European brands such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer. Winners will be announced in November 2010.

Though Buy Sheds Direct has been trading online since 2005, both award nominations recognise the company’s achievements in delivering its next generation e-commerce websites. Launched early this year, the websites were specified by their internal web team and Blue Snapper and designed and built by PureNet.

So what’s so good about the new system? Where to begin? Well, for a start it has multi-site capability so that the Buy Sheds Direct website and its sister online stores, Buy Fencing Direct and Buy Decking Direct, can be managed through a common interface. This saves a huge amount of time and the team can now react quickly to market demand, customer enquiries, product updates and to roll-out its regular product promotions.

For me, however, it’s the impact the new system has had on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising that’s particularly exciting (OK, so I’m biased!). I can customise extensively so many aspects of the websites that optimisation opportunities now exist that, previously, I could only wish for. Best of all, I can roll out these changes through the ‘point & click’ interface without needing additional development time and associated costs – good for me and good for my client!

Results so far are impressive. We’ve seen a big uplift in organic traffic from the search engines, transaction rates and average order values are up considerably and there’s strong Year-on-Year growth in new & repeat customer revenue.

So the results are impressive, I’m impressed, Buy Sheds Direct is impressed, let’s hope the judges are too!