E-commerce Case Studies

With several thousand live sites, Actinic Ecommerce software is the backbone to many successful businesses. The following case study examples highlight the challenges customers have faced and the success they have achieved with the help of Actinic solutions. To see more customer example sites.

Teleflorist

teleflorist

www.teleflorist.co.uk

With the time-critical nature of its business Teleflorist required a robust ecommerce solution for taking orders to be fulfilled by its network of 1,500 member florists. Having initially dabbled with a bespoke content management system (CMS) costing over a six figure sum to deploy they decided to turn to Actinic to meet their expanding needs. Using Actinic’s Business Plus software for its multi-user and multi-site capability to manage a series of Teleflorist sites they highlight their experience so far.

Teleflorist comes up smelling of roses with Actinic’s help

Founded in 1947 as a family-run business, Teleflorist employs over 60 staff at its headquarters in Romsey, Hampshire. It doesn’t deliver flowers itself, but rather sells a range of flower bouquets, baskets and floral arrangements both via its network of 1,500 member florists in the UK, as well as via the website www.teleflorist.co.uk.

With the time-critical nature of its business the right choice of technology was essential to fulfil on the promise of same day, hand delivery for all orders received by 3pm anywhere in the UK. Alistair Weatherill, IT Director, is the person responsible and when it came to deciding on a platform for the ecommerce website, he picked Actinic.

The ecommerce software was originally purchased to develop a sister site www.floralessential.co.uk in 2004 selling sundries for Teleflorist’s network of Flower Shops.

The main ecommerce site, www.teleflorist.co.uk, was initially created in 2007 using a bespoke content management system (CMS) costing over a six figure sum to deploy. Alistair elaborates:

“The cost of making relatively minor changes to the original site often ran into thousands of pounds and this was in addition to the thousands spent each year on maintenance. It wasn’t viable and we needed to take a fresh approach to our ecommerce needs.”

Alistair and his team looked again at what Actinic had to offer and decided to upgrade to Actinic Business Plus for its multi-user and multi-site capability. They also implemented Actinic Payments for taking secure credit and debit card transactions on their site and had staff trained up on the software. Paul Isaia, Online Marketing Developer at Teleflorist says,

“The training really opened our eyes to what could be achieved with the software. In some respects it made us turn the project on its head: creating images of exactly what we wanted the website to look like and the facilities it would offer visitors, and then worked out how to accomplish it with Actinic.”

teleflorist-case-study

Another resource which the development team found invaluable was the Actinic Community. Paul comments,

“It did not seem to matter whether I was posting questions day or night, I would get a response from fellow users. This really helps when you are trying to get up to speed with a new piece of software.”

The www.teleflorist.co.uk site was completed in a month and a half and the developers’ efforts have really paid off. The company has now seen a 50% increase in conversion rate and is confidently predicting over a million visitors to the site within the next 12 months.

“Now that site changes are handled internally we can experiment with different page layouts to optimise the user experience as well as fine-tuning our search engine advertising campaigns and affiliate strategies. Since launching the new Actinic site the cost per customer acquisition has plummeted, primarily because the site is now much easier to navigate and use,”

says Alistair.

Paul adds,

“The money we have saved by using Actinic has helped increase our available budget for spending on marketing the site. For example, in the past we have run campaigns on Facebook and posted videos on YouTube. One which has proved very popular is based on the film American Beauty with a model and rose petals to raise awareness of real floristry."

To watch the video visit www.campaignforrealfloristry.co.uk.

Paul Continues;

“The extra budget is allowing us to look at more of these types of activities.A lot of people invest time and effort into making a fantastic website and wonder why they aren’t getting results. In today’s ecommerce world just as much effort needs to be put into marketing the site as into building the site.”

For the future Teleflorist is using Actinic to roll out other web stores, such as a re-launch of its Irish site and creation of a totally new ecommerce site for its South African operation.