The Mission
SRS Flat Roof Centre Ltd came to us requiring a solution for selling an exciting new range of goods online. The company supplies materials and components for building and repairing flat roofs, and in the past these had been sold as individual items. What is more, all sales of flat roof products took place either inside the bricks and mortar premises, or over the phone.
In 2020, SRS launched a new innovation: pre-packaged flat-roofing kits. These kits include everything needed to cover a flat roof, and customers can choose the one they want based on the size of the roof to be covered. It is an incredibly simple idea, as all great ones are!
The website is aimed at professional roofers and this was something which was taken into consideration throughout the design and build process. Through consultation with our client, and after gaining a good understanding of the products and the market place, we planned, designed and built an ecommerce website that makes choosing the right product extremely simple.
The Work
Step one was to choose the right system for the project. There are many ecommerce platforms out there but some of them are huge, unwieldy beasts that contain enough functionality to rival Amazon or eBay. For many ecommerce projects, a great deal of the functionality contained in some of the larger ecommerce platforms is simply not needed, and that was the case this time.
Knowing that the number of products was relatively small, and that the USP of those products was their simplicity and deliberate lack of options, we opted to use WooCommerce for this project. WooCommerce is a lightweight system that can be bolted onto WordPress. It is easy to build with and simple to administer. A win-win.
With the platform established and the building blocks chosen, work on the new website progressed quickly. Inevitably, our developers realised during the build that a further WordPress plugin would be required to deliver an element of functionality not included in the basic WooCommerce package. This was still preferable to working with a bigger system - think of it as adding a panier to a bicycle instead of buying a lorry to carry your lunch!
The plugin enabled the use of conditional pricing on the website, in conjunction with minimum and maximum quantities. That means end customers can enjoy savings offered by economies of scale, and the shop owner can rest assured that the lower prices are enjoyed only by the customers who order sufficient quantities to earn them.
The use of WooCommerce (and a plugin) allowed us to showcase the products - including the images, descriptions and prices provided by the client - as clearly as possible and to develop a smooth, intuitive, user-friendly website.
The Outcome
SRS Flat Roof Centre Ltd now has a fully operational E-Commerce site which users are able to navigate easily and place orders through. This ecommerce website was designed and built in under a month, and the whole development project was delivered within budget.
The website presents the products clearly and reflects how easy they are to use through its simple functionality and clean, uncluttered style. One key aim of the client was to illustrate that the products offered are simple to work with. This has definitely been achieved and in the final stages of testing, our client remarked that the user experience was one of the best they had ever come across on an ecommerce website.
The project is a success and we - the client and the team at BBI - are all extremely happy with the outcome!