Drysdale Couture

Drysdale Couture finds the perfect fit with Fusionsoft

For many companies – particularly those that aren’t selling to a technology-based market  – two of the primary requirements for a website are that it should have a stylish and appealing design and should be easy to use. A case in point is a new company, Drysdale Couture. It needed to build a website that would attract customers and that would allow them to order bridesmaid dresses quickly and easily. The company called on Fusionsoft’s eCommerce and search engine optimisation expertise to develop and market the site, using its proven web development skills.

Drysdale Couture specialises in providing bespoke, high quality bridesmaid dresses. The company was formed with the aim of helping brides who were unable to source the right types of bridesmaid dresses, in the colours they wanted, and in made-to-measure sizes for both adult and children.

As a completely new brand in the marketplace, Drysdale Couture knew that  the first step to building a strong customer base was to sell its products online. Research had shown that there was a thriving online community for prospective brides and that there would be demand for its bridesmaid dresses.

The company therefore decided to develop a website that would make the whole ordering process easier and more painless, and would offer a swift delivery. One of its main aims was to reduce the stress for couples who want a hassle-free wedding and are often working to a tight budget.

Drysdale Couture’s had a vision of a versatile ecommerce website that would allow customers to order dresses in made-to-measure sizes, with a choice of a wide range of colours. The site needed to focus on the company’s ability to produce unique and classic designs, using high quality materials, yet at competitive prices.

The business issues

As the company was newly formed and didn’t have any established sales, it needed a website that would be able to meet all of its needs, but at a low cost. This involved several different challenges:

Processing – The site needed to be able to handle multiple orders for dresses of different sizes, colours and designs.

Design – The dress designs and colours needed to be presented in a bright and fresh way, and the site had to be easy to use. It needed to have an instant appeal to brides who didn’t have the time to wade through lots of information or who might already have been bombarded by a surfeit of material from other sites. 

Purchasing – The site needed to enable customers to pay for items quickly and easily, rather than a long, drawn-out purchasing process.

Philippa Drysdale, Founder of Drysdale Couture’s, comments: “When I was getting married, I found that the whole process of buying bridesmaid dresses was very frustrating. There was no easy way of finding a company that could provide me with a range of colours and designs and which would also allow me to use individual dress measurements for each bridesmaid - and would let me order online. In the end, I decided to make my own bridesmaid dresses!”

She continues: “I realised that there was a gap in the market for people who needed this online service. My friends and family had commented on my bridesmaid dresses and several had asked me if I could create something similar for their weddings.”

The options

The limited budget available to the company affected the degree of design and functionality offered by different website designers or developers. Ultimately, Drysdale Couture was faced with three main options:

1) One company proposed a template-based website. However, this would have restricted both the functionality and the design of the site. This would have meant that the unique nature of Drysdale Couture’s products could have been lost on a website that would have looked very similar to many others.

2) Another company also offered a website based on a template design. However, this was combined with a promise of high Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which would help to drive more traffic to the site. Despite this, Drysdale Couture felt that the website design probably wouldn’t be sufficiently striking. It needed to catch the customer’s attention for long enough so that they could see what made the site different from everyone else’s. Without this emphasis on design, the website would fail to appeal to the target audience. The added degree of bespoke functionality would also push up the ‘basic’ price.

3) Fusionsoft’s proposition was to build a site based around its own web development tool Weblinc, with an easy to use Content Management System (CMS). This would allow Drysdale Couture to update the website from anywhere in the world, using an Internet connection. Search Engine Optimisation would also be simplified as the website tool stores the content in a search engine friendly way. This meant that, rather than paying a lot of money on a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, traffic would be driven to the site naturally. Finally, the site would have a bespoke design. This meant that its whole look and feel – as well as its functionality - could be tailored to Drysdale Couture’s specific preferences.

Drysdale Couture subsequently chose Fusionsoft’s Weblinc web development tool as the foundation for its new ecommerce website. The new site has since gone live and is now providing brides with a unique online service. 

The benefits

Drysdale Couture’s new website (www.drysdalecouture.com) enables online customers to find the bridesmaid dresses they want, at an affordable price, rapidly and easily.

The key challenges that had faced the company initially have all been addressed by Fusionsoft’s web design solution:

Processing – The website is integrated with PayPal. This enables it to capture the unique specifications relating to each order. To ensure that each individual dress is exactly right and fits perfectly, the customer can select the colour, the design and either a regular UK dress size or personalised fittings.

Design – The bespoke nature of the site enables customers to view the available dress designs at the click of a mouse. The unique functionality that has been built into Drysdale Couture’s site also allows potential customers to order colour swatches so that they can see the colours available and the quality of the silk for themselves.

Purchasing – The single page ordering design enables customers to enter their information quickly. The site’s integration with PayPal then provides them with a well-known and trusted payment portal so that they can complete their order and buy their dresses within a matter of minutes.

The verdict

The new ecommerce website provides Drysdale Couture with a continuously open and very attractive ‘shop’. This allows customers to place orders whenever is most convenient to them – even if this is in the middle of the night.

The feedback from the company’s customers is that the new ecommerce site has provided them with the service that they had been yearning for – a simple, fast and cost-effective way of ordering unique bridesmaid dresses online.

 

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