The BIG Optician

The BIG Optician are one of the regions leading opticians with branches in Newcastle City centre and a Superstore based in Byker. They have a unique position in the Northeast market as they can rightly claim to hold one of the largest selections of designer eyewear in the UK.

Offering Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Maui Jim and a long list of other prestigious brands they wanted to ensure their online marketing communicated the true style that their brand represents and the service that marks them out as official stockists of some of the worlds leading names.

Having had an internet presence for a number of years they wanted to increase the profile of holding such an esteemed range, capture a specific set of visitors and ensure their leading position was recognised by as many internet users as possible.

The need to self-maintain their site content was prerequisite to any future solution.

They approached ClarityWEB to assess their site and give suggestions for achieving their goals.

Karen Little of The BIG Optician said "We had been frustrated for some time regarding the poor performance of our website. We invested quite considerably in the redesign of our website two years ago, by another design company. The design company used our, already well established, corporate branding and produced a website that was good to look at but that performed very poorly with the search engines."

"Another problem we experienced was that we were unable to amend the content of the website. This resulted in the content of the website being very fixed. Our business is very dynamic and we introduce new equipment and new products very regularly. There was no way of promoting these changes via our website and we felt this was having an effect on our business. "

"We had decided upon the need to find another web design company to work with us to make the required changes to our website. As someone who has very limited knowledge regarding the workings of websites and the internet per se, I needed to choose a company who could understand my company's specific needs and communicate with me in a way that I could understand. "

I stumbled upon ClarityWEB one bank holiday weekend whilst on the internet, and sent an email enquiry - not expecting a reply until resumption of normal business hours. I was astonished to receive a detailed reply within a few hours from Chris Shaw and was immediately impressed with the service. "

"Following a number of contacts with Chris, and a very competitive quote for the redesign project, we decided to award the contract to ClarityWEB."

Project Assessment

The BIG Optician website captured their brand image well at the time ClarityWEB were commissioned. We saw little need to recommend a complete site redesign and maintained our ethic of only recommending work that would represent value for money to the client and that we felt was absolutely necessary.

However, it became quickly evident that the use of embedded text in graphics throughout the site didn't optimise their potential to capture visitors using search engines such as Google.

Our SEO assessment process soon identified a number of other areas that required work in order to drive Google searches to the site. The site was completely static in its content with no ability to change content frequently and the value of content (i.e. the interest of it to visitors), of particular importance nowadays, was gauged as very low.

Changing the site to a dynamic one, with content under the compete control of the client, represented a challenge due to the very fixed parameters within which the design of the site was bound. A thorough review of the capacity of the site to accomodate dynamic text content lead to our recommending that a custom written Content Management System (CMS) was required.

Custom Written CMS

The ground-up development of a CMS was a task we viewed as fundamental for a number of reasons. Firstly, the system needed to be easy to use – and no third-party CMS system could offer the level of interface customisation that we wanted to give the client. So, in keeping with all ClarityWEB projects when we refuse to compromise by choosing something that would be easier for us, we began work on a CMS built from scratch.

The system includes the ability to upload logos for brands with full editing capability.

in addition to the facility to choose pictures to accompany News items. Combined with the power to change all of the newly introduced true-text elements of the site we adhered strictly to the requirement of putting The BIG Optician in complete control of their site content in future.

The end result is a CMS that is fully branded, simple to navigate, powerful in its text editing tools and required minimal training time due to its intuitive and self explanatory design.

Content Consulting

An important part of the SEO process is consulting with the client and understanding their business, their market, their unique selling points and most importantly the visitors they want to attract. Having met with the client on numerous occasions and discussed content value and style we worked with them to produce content that communicated the right message for visitors and search engines alike.

We advised on creating content that was wide in its appeal but focused enough to ensure visitors were within the target market and of a demographic that increased their likelihood of becoming customers of The BIG Optician.

A significant part of the SEO process was researching search volumes and trends that would be critical in ensuring we were able to attract the visitors the client wanted. In completing this stage we reviewed searches over a full 12 month period and content elements on each page were strategically positioned and coded for maximum search engine impact.

Big Results

The BIG Optician are now in possession of a website that is completely under their control in respect of content, is easy to administer, communicates their brand, services and products clearly - and is extremely popular with search engines.

Less than a month after going live our client achieved Google search result placements of #1 or #2 for no less than 22 targeted keyphrases. That figure excludes phrases including the word 'optician' (for which they saw a marked improvement in placement too) and searching for the actual company name; it is also an achievement realised long before the site optimisation has been completed.

What the BIG Optician said...

In closing this case study we asked Karen Little of The BIG Optician for an honest opinion on the services and results received to date from ClarityWEB:

Karen said: "ClarityWEB have not disappointed throughout the course of the redesign project. They have worked very closely with me to ensure the project outcomes are what my business requires. Chris Shaw took the time to understand the nature of my business and our unique selling points, and this has paid dividends in that the redesigned website is now feels very relevant and targeted."

"ClarityWEB have responded very promptly to any queries I have had along the way, and have given me just the right level of guidance and prompting to ensure that I completed the tasks required of me. "

"They have delivered the project ahead of agreed timescales and the results speak for themselves. The Content Management System is very easy for me to use and I am now able to update the content with text and images as frequently as required which reflects the dynamic nature of our business and keeps the site fresh and contemporary."

"We are absolutely delighted with our positioning on the search engines, and the results of the SEO work have taken effect very rapidly. We are hopeful that, with the continued relationship with ClarityWEB, this performance will be maintained."

"I have no hesitation in recommending ClarityWEB. In our experience they are a company of knowledgeable professionals who have integrity and who deliver on their promises."