Case Study: e-Commerce Website Development and Branding for Raff UK Ltd

Executive Summary

Raff UK Ltd, based in Redhill, is a leading retailer of electrical appliances to households across the country. They have two stores based in Redhill and Barnes which each have a very good turnover but based only on customer word-of-mouth and passing trade. What Raff discovered they needed was additional exposure on the internet to remain competitive pricewise and more in line with their competition.

In addition, Raff UK for good business reasons decided they needed to distance themselves from similarly named competitors, and so needed to be re-branded and have that brand fully integrated into the website.

Client Situation

Raff UK Ltd gave Pure Project Solutions the task of developing this new branding and bespoke Website within a tight budget and a short timescale. Raff knew that they wanted their website to have the look and feel of similar websites but better functionality. In particular, time was short because it was clear that time and care would be needed for the shop staff to accurately and with some sales sense enter details of all their products onto the online database. They knew the sooner the website was operational it would be making them money.

Pure Project Solutions’ Answer

PPS has years of experience managing complex projects and has always put a high priority on lessons learnt from every project delivered. Our project managers are taught from day one to plan, do and review every step along the project lifecycle. These lessons proved invaluable during the development of these products since they both needed to be created using cutting-edge technology to ensure slick usability, customer friendliness and expandability.

PPS put their .NET-trained developers on the case immediately to ensure there was time to develop and fully test the products before the launch date.

The Result

The Branding was an instant hit. The use of in-house staff with 10 years design experience produced the look Raff wanted. The website is now fully complete, with all the hundreds of products being populated onto the simple-to-use database by Raff staff as we speak. The whole process was so smooth and results generated so quickly that Raff have now asked PPS to develop an electronic Stock Control System to ease to ongoing workload that a paper system generates. This system will be available on the shop floor to take orders from customers and in the office to monitor ordering and stock levels.

Here is what the Managing Director of Raff UK Ltd had to say about PPS:

“Raff UK Ltd is a typical example of a ‘high end’ Electrical Appliance store. We have two showrooms, our largest in Redhill and another in Barnes, West London . Traditionally we have relied on passing trade combined with recommendations to sustain business but we felt we needed more. Leading comparable businesses have an online presence which serves not only to increase their exposure across the UK , but also to work for them as a low-overhead selling tool.

We asked Pure Project Solutions to help us develop our entire e-commerce strategy, including a new look to our traditional brand, and to design and implement a new cutting-edge online store.

The results were outstanding. Their in-house designers really captured the ethos of our business in the new branding and worked with us to build a very impressive online store which puts us right up with the very largest appliance retailers. Our new website is not only user friendly, but will enable us to gain business from areas we couldn’t previously reach. For example, the current consumer trend is to decide on a desired product, then search for the cheapest place to buy it using websites such as ‘Pricerunner’ or ‘Dealtime’ which in turn redirect the customer to the best value store. We will now be included in those listings and fully expect our turnover to increase dramatically because of it!

We would certainly recommend PPS to anyone in a similar position to us; in fact, we were so impressed that we have employed PPS to develop an electronic Stock Control and Purchasing System which, by linking our two stores and our warehouse, greatly streamlines our whole administration process – thank you Pure Project Solutions”

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