The BIG Optician Case Study

The BIG Optician - Full CMS Driven Website

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.

After coming to ClarityWEB several years ago, The BIG Optician have once again trusted ClarityWEB with their requirements online going forward. With an aging web presence, The BIG Optician initially asked ClarityWEB for help with SEO and adding a Content Management System to their old website back in 2009. Now, two years on and with a website over 3 years old, The BIG Optician decided that the time was right for a complete website redesign.

Project Brief

With an already established website and social media presence this project was not just a case of designing a website, it is also transferring several years of SEO work and a whole database of content from their existing website without compromising the excellent listings on search results.

The BIG Optician wanted to bring to the web the wow factor that they portray in their showrooms, as well as reinforce their brand identity and philosophy. One of the biggest factors on this redesign was the ability for The BIG Optician to have full control of their website with the ability to react to market changes, new stock, offers, promotions and news from the business. We needed to provide an online solution that would be both stylish, but future proof.

Website Design

This project needed to communicate an immediate ‘Wow’ factor to site visitors. With so much excellent photography and imagery in the fashion industry with the brands stocked by our client, we have incorporated a fully updatable, interactive and cycling header graphic for maximum impact on the redesigned homepage.

The design utilises a top and sub-level navigation system, custom coded, that means once a user enters a sub-category they remain under those pages until scrolling back to the top of the web page and using the main navigational menu. Furthermore, each top level category is entirely controllable from within the CMS – as are sub-categories.

Working to well established brand guidelines that cover fonts, colours and logo presentation style, we’ve managed to create a site that adhere to all given protocols but has an immediate impact and stands out from the plethora of dull and uninspiring Opticians in Newcastle websites.

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.

Every part of The BIG Optician site is now in control of our client. This is the most advanced CMS system that we have ever produced.

Content Consulting

An important part of the SEO process during our existing relationship with The BIG Optician was consulting with the client and understanding their business, their market, their unique selling points and most importantly the visitors they want to attract. Having worked with the client over numerous years and discussed and understood their 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.

New Blog

With the redesign of the new website, we have also provided The BIG Optician with a 100% custom written and designed blog. Both ClarityWEB and our client decided that this, as a more informal approach to the news section already present on the site, should be designed with a more of an informal look, keeping within the brand colours and identity, but being distinctly different with no less impact to the website.

ClarityWEB designed a simple to use, easily updateable and visually appealing optical and designer glasses blog.

What the BIG Optician said...

“Clarity have done an amazing job, yet again. They should be congratulated on producing the exact look and feel we wanted. The features we now have behind the site are vastly superior to anything we had on our old site and the feedback we’ve had to date has been excellent. Thank you again for all your help and the effort that you so clearly put in to everything you do.”