Not everything in life is black and white but we like to make building a successful e-commerce website as simple as black and white.

After a very successful 2010, subsidiary of the Porter and Woodman Group, Chalkboards UK asked us to redevelop the previous e-commerce website we designed and built for them. They were also interested in incorporating any other recommendations we had.

View The Site

The 2010 Redesign

As the chalkboard business grew, so did the number of product categories which made it increasingly hard to find the product you were interested in.

Analysis of the users' clicks quickly showed that users were also finding it hard to find products. A couple of the category names were split over two lines.

Although this may appear a very minor issue, the category in question was "Chalkboard and Blackboard Accessories" which resulted in the menu item looking like "Chalkboard and Blackboard" so people were clicking it but then leaving the page as there were no chalkboards or blackboards (just chalkboard and blackboard accessories).

We suggested splitting the top level categories into three new categories which were more intuitive to the user. These top level categories could then contain categories which were more specific.

We moved the website to a Content Management System (CMS) to allow Chalkboards UK to manage the content of their website themselves and upgraded the e-commerce engine to the more feature rich uCommerce.

In an effort to make the website more personable, we recommended having one of their staff (Vicky) with a message board. This message and the one across the top of the site can be changed to better suit an offer.

It worked surprisingly well with an increase in the number of people calling the sales line. Many call asking for Vicky despite never having spoken to her! It took a little getting used to but the calls are defiantly up.

To make it as quick and easy as possible to complete the order, we designed a single page checkout so the user never needs to leave the page to complete their order.

The redesign, addition of a CMS, re-categorisation and upgraded e-commerce engine combined with lots of hard work has resulted in a continued growth of sales despite a tough climate.