In the past two years, Traidcraft, a charity trading arm
specialising in fair-trade products sourced from the developing
world, has made a £50,000 investment in its website and a
£100,000 investment in its marketing and mail order
business. Now, two years later, Traidcraft is reaping the
benefits of those investments.
In 2008, the decision was taken to integrate the website with the
back-office system for more flexibility. It moved to a new
ecommerce platform, built by Maginus, the vendor it had been
using for its back-end operations for the past seven years.
Traidcraft spent 12 months refining the site, “enabling
customers to make more informed choices,” say Paul Oliver,
Traidcraft’s mail order, database and ecommerce manager. Oliver
explains that the new site provides visitors with more product
information such as ingredients and nutritional information on
foods, as well as information about the history of the product
and its origins. The site also has more advanced filtering,
allowing customers to narrow down search results by country of
origin, whether it’s fair trade or organic, and by producer. From
a business point of view, says Oliver, the new site is more
search-engine friendly, ranking highly for searches of fair trade
products.
Another aspect enhanced in the last year, is the way Traidcraft
manages its affiliate sites. Traidcraft works with affiliated
charities including Christian Aid and CAFOD, which drive
supporters to the Traidcraft website to make purchases. In order
to make the experience more consistent for the supporter, those
visiting the website by clicking through from the charities are
shown a different “skin” of the Traidcraft website,
displaying the charity’s branding.
The web is not the only aspect improved by Traidcraft. The
business began a review in 2008 looking into ways to make the
mail order side of the business more profitable too.
Catalogues back on track
In 2008, Traidcraft felt it was sending out too many untargeted
catalogues, says Oliver, and catalogue activity was scaled back
dramatically as a result. In the summer of 2010, Traidcraft
carried out consumer research to find out how customers
interacted with the company, and looked at “the entry
points” of new customers, and how they found Traidcraft.
Based on the results, Traidcraft decided to ramp up catalogue
production in 2011. This year, Traidcraft will produce two main
editions-one in the spring to take advantage of February’s Fair
Trade Fortnight, and one in the autumn for the Christmas season.
It will also distribute “direct mail bulletins” to
its most loyal customers throughout the year.
The focus in 2011, says Oliver, will be on continuing the upward
growth trends. In the year ended March 2010, direct sales were
£2.5 million and this year Oliver aims to break the
£2.8 million mark. The business is currently growing at 15
percent year-on-year and Oliver expects to sustain that
level.
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