Avern Cleaning Supplies

Rebuilding from the ground up

Our relationship with Avern began way back in 2013 when they contacted us to help them start some online marketing activity. Avern is a familiar face across Worcester, working with many local schools, shopping centres and pubs. With the launch of the new internet side of their business, they asked us to create new Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns to help them promote their products and their new Website.

In the years that followed, we helped Avern Cleaning Supplies branch out of Worcester, and they now supply many businesses up and down the UK. Thanks to our SEO work, the Website became a solid performer, but the design started to look a little tired after seven years. The other issue Avern faced was mobile phone performance. Opencart 1.5 was initially released back in 2011, right around the Responsive Website revolution. Back then, only 8% of people used their mobile phones to browse the web, compared to 55% in 2020. With their competitors using more modern platforms like WooCommerce and Magento, Avern's mobile presence fell behind.

Avern were very happy with Opencart as a whole, so it didn't make sense for them to move to a new platform. We set them up with a new version of Opencart 3, which made migrating their thousands of products, customers, orders and reviews a breeze! When moving to a new platform, it's not always possible to preserve customer information which can make offering Customer Service a bit of a nightmare, so Avern was pleased that we could do this for them!

Optimising the front-end

Using everything we had learnt from our eight years of analytics information and product performance, we got to work on modernising the front-end of the Avern Website. We didn't want to deviate too much from the original layout, as this would confuse the customers who used the website weekly to place their orders. Instead, we focused on optimising the routes customers would take to place their orders, narrowing down their choices each time until they landed on the exact product they were looking for. We used a vivid orange that pops against their blue branding for any calls to action, such as viewing products or the cart.

Simplifying the site for commercial customers

Another sticking point for Avern was the distinction of ex VAT pricing for their commercial customers, as this wasn't always clear. We built a brand new toggle right at the top of the page that would dynamically change the pricing, depending on which option the customer had set. The browser remembers this setting, so customers returning to make regular orders wouldn't have to change it each time.

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