Over the last two years Fortnum & Mason has delivered significant growth figures, in part due to new store openings such as Heathrow Terminal 5 and St Pancras, but also through an excellent online performance. In line with its continuing digital success, Fortnum & Mason has launched its brand new, fully responsive eCommerce site, to ensure that online customers enjoy the same high quality experience that the brand has been providing in store for over 300 years.
Designed and developed in just eight months, the new site is one of the few truly responsive eCommerce sites currently live. As well as being a beautiful visual interpretation of the brand, the new site is scalable, agile, highly flexible, and able to handle complex orders and delivery across more than 130 countries.
Since its rollout mobile visits have improved 77 per cent YOY, and mobile conversion has increased 57 percent YOY. Developed to deliver an improvement in conversion rate, new customers are
currently converting 15 per cent more than on the previous site. In addition, the business has seen an 18 per cent reduction in calls to the customer service centre.
The new website has been built by experience led software development studio, Red Badger, under the stewardship of Fortnum’s Customer Experience Director and Board member, Zia Zareem-Slade. Using modern and progressive technologies, including open source eCommerce platform, Spree Commerce, and Facebook’s React, Red Badger was able to focus on creating a user
experience catered to Fortnum’s customers’ needs.
Key to the success of the project was engaging Fortnum’s customers to help drive the direction of the design and development of the site by allowing them to provide feedback directly to the team. Throughout the project the Red Badger design team ran guerilla testing in its flagship store in Piccadilly to get customer feedback on the look and feel of the site.
Throughout its long and illustrious 308-year history Fortnum & Mason has been at the forefront of retail innovation, and in 1998 it was one of the first retailers in the UK to launch a transactional website. In recent years a number of design changes had been made to the site but last month’s re-launch is the first full-scale redevelopment in four years.
Commenting on the new website, Zia Zareem-Slade said: “Collectively, we’ve achieved something very special. As well as being beautifully designed, the new site is fast, slick and easy to navigate – and is truly responsive, providing the same experience across multiple devices. The site reinforces the brand experience that our customer’s expect and since the site went fully live we have seen incredible results in increased revenues, increased conversion rates, but most importantly, amazingly positive customer feedback.”
Cain Ullah, CEO of Red Badger, also commented, “By working in full collaboration with both Fortnum’s and its customers throughout, and testing at every phase, we have managed to deliver a brand new fully responsive site in just eight months. The new site provides Fortnum’s with a robust and agile platform to support future business expansion and take advantage of the explosion of mobile and tablet usage.”
“We were ecstatic to hear that a company as renowned as Fortnum & Mason wanted to make the switch to the Spree and Wombat platform,” said Spree Commerce Chief Product Officer, Sameer Gulati. “Our robust platform serves retailers of all sizes and complexities; but to have a 300-year-old luxury retailer on board presented a new challenge. The customer metrics achieved by Fortnum & Mason so far are incredible and we fully expect the new site to be a benchmark for retailers to strive for.”
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