Claymore Digital has created over 50 different E-Commerce websites for various businesses throughout the UK & Ireland with total sales in excess of £25 million.
Claymore Digital has created over 100 different E-Commerce websites for various businesses throughout the UK & Ireland with total sales in excess of £25 million. Covering a range of industries from autoparts, clothing, food and supplements to service based ones such as booking cleaning services and services booked by residential and commercial customers.
We are used to working with various systems within the WordPress platform. This allows for the largest range of affordable well tested plugins that are available ‘off the shelf’ and can be personalised to the requirements of the individual business. We are used to working with multi-currency, customised product pages, products with multiple variations or customisations, quantity based discounts and prices that only show to certain logins or wholesale customers.
We will sit down and chat through any e-commerce ideas that you are considering and will be honest with how well we think the concept will be, the competition that already exists and how to best approach it and whether it is realistic or not.
With all websites it should not just be a case of creating a website and hope for the best. We can help with a strategy for how to promote, drive traffic and convert those visitors to customers or through our digital marketing packages we can help you with various marketing activities to get the best from your investment in an E-Commerce store.
Not only is it a case of the costs of developing a new online store but you also need to be aware of the following costs:
While we have created and work with clients with Shopify stores we would strongly recommend working with WooCommerce on the WordPress platform.
The main reasons behind this is the additional flexibility offered through WordPress as well as the reduced costs. Most additional add-ons with Shopify have monthly fees, while most are around £7-£15 per month, it is easy for these to mount up to over £100 per month. Another issue with Shopify is the restrictions in what you can change with Shopify, we have seen problems time and time again with a question being asked and the answer is that it is not possible!
With WooCommerce we have complete flexibility with product page design, variations, checkout page design and a range of options when it comes to shipping calculation which works better than the limited capabilities of Shopify.
We will sit down and chat through any e-commerce ideas that you are considering and will be honest with how well we think the concept will be, the competition that already exists and how to best approach it and whether it is realistic or not.
With all websites it should not just be a case of creating a website and hope for the best. We can help with a strategy for how to promote, drive traffic and convert those visitors to customers or through our digital marketing packages we can help you with various marketing activities to get the best from your investment in an E-Commerce store.
User Experience
If you have a current E-Commerce website that you would like freshened up or performing better for you then we can carry out an extensive audit to determine how it could be improved. If you are looking for additional functionality or the site to perform better on mobile get in touch with us today.
If you are considering a new E-Commerce site then we will put user experience at the forefront of the design. This means that the sections or layout on a desktop or laptop can be changed for how they appear on a tablet or mobile device. Reducing the clutter or the amount of scroll on a mobile is important and vital to make sure that your potential customers are able to find the most important information quickly.
Part of the user experience is how quickly content loads up on all devices. We can optimise your current E-Commerce store and consider this to be a vital factor when creating new E-Commerce stores. Things to avoid when building an E-Commerce store is to avoid autoplaying videos or loading your homepage with non-optimised images and YouTube embeds where possible!
Drive traffic to your site
We have over 18 years of experience in what works well for driving traffic to your website. It is important that any owner or decision maker of the business works with us to plan and agree the direction of your marketing moving forward. When it comes to social media and other forms of paid advertising such as PPC it is important that you are able to offer something different than your competitors, this can be the cost but you are more likely to convert a sale if you are able to offer additional value or benefits to your offering than the competition.
Paid advertising is changing. Facebook targeting is not as effective due to the IOS update and that is resulting in lots of agencies changing their focus on to other platforms such as adwords with Google, Instagram & TikTok and YouTube. This all depends on who your target audience, price point of your product/s and how flexible you can be on your offering.
Our preferred approach is to work on your organic rankings on Google as well. Organic traffic is cheaper and more likely to convert compared to the traffic sent from paid advertising. If you are appearing on the 1st page of Google, it is easier for your customer to find you again compared to if they clicked on one of your paid ads.
Organic and paid advertising should lead to specific landing pages relevant to the topic of how they found you. E.g. if they click on an ad for roasted coffee then the page they land on should list the types of coffee you have, reviews of the coffee, awards that your coffee has won or publications/blogs that you have been reviewed in along with any special offers or bundles that you have. With food and drink products subscriptions work well to encourage customers to buy again from you and help your cashflow! Therefore, subscriptions, gift packs and bundles work well on landing pages.
Strategy for how to grow your online business
As we have mentioned before it is not just a case of creating an E-Commerce website and hoping for the best! You need a strategy for how to encourage potential customers to your site and spend some money. We can help you with creating 3-12 month strategies or help you promote your business online with our digital marketing retainer packages.
Any digital marketing strategy will look at the content that you are putting out over social media channels, paid advertising with online blogs and relevant trade magazines as well as the content that you are adding in your ‘blog’. The content that you are putting out on your site needs to be relevant to what people are actually searching for and what helps them with a certain task or question that they have.
Calculators, guides, reviews, instructional videos all perform well. An example of this would be if you sell coffee, offer brewing guides and best tips for storing your coffee, etc.
Add options such as Collect at Store, Worldwide delivery, automatic detection of the currency that is displayed. ****
14th Avenue
We moved over the products from their existing Shopify store we had the opportunity to improve the overall experience for visitors and improvements over how to drive visitors to the areas that the client wanted to drive them to.
The new site allowed us to carry out extensive keyword research and optimise the different pages for keywords that were possible to rank for without a huge investment in backlinks.
The site that we created also includes the facility to book VIP shopping appointments during the evening times and takes a booking deposit to ensure that they actually turn up!
The main advantages of the new site are as follows:
Belfast Coffee Roasters
Belfast Coffee Roasters approached us to refresh their site from the Wix one they had to a Shopify one. They wanted to use Shopify and we moved over all of the products and added the following functionality:
As with all websites that we create we provide video guides so that our clients are able to update and make changes to their site themselves. These guides are great resources for the client to go back to again or train other staff who are going to be involved in updating or carrying out certain functions on the website.
Tori O’C Photography
We have created three different sites that use the Sytist system for uploading and selling photos online. This system is perfect for photographers who want to upload galleries for their clients to view and purchase images from.
This E-Commerce website allows our client to:
The new site has also been optimised for keywords/phrases that are relevant to being found by potential visitors who are in the right buyer journey to make a purchase.
Tori now has full access to her site and the capabilities to make changes herself and a marketing strategy for driving more traffic to the site.
JK Autospares
The owner of JK Autospares approached us looking for a refresh of their current online store. The new store guides people to the main sections of the site that have the best chance of making a sale. E.g. best priced, exclusive ranges, items that are not sold by the larger competitors, etc.
The site has the following features:
We have also provided one to one training for staff members to be able to update the store themselves and provided ongoing support for queries and strategy for how to promote the business on Facebook and Instagram.
Active Adventures NI
We were tasked with a website refresh and the introduction of selling tickets to Active Adventures NI’s outdoor activities.
They are able to add new events and add tickets to the site. The site has been optimised for all of the different activities and keywords/phrases that will help them be found on Google.
We continue to provide ongoing support and advice on how to attract new visitors to their site using paid advertising. This has involved recommendations on Facebook, Instagram and also setting up YouTube advertising.
Freemans Fuels
Freemans Fuels approached us for a new website with the capabilities to allow them to sell home heating oil, coal and gas online.
The site has been created to allow customers to easily find how to order oil online and choose their delivery dates.
Training was provided so they could easily update the prices of home heating oil as it changes on a daily basis.
The site has been a great success and they get regular orders without having to deal with as many orders being placed over the phone.
June’s Pet Bedding
Having never sold before this was the perfect opportunity to sell online instead of through the shows that were stopped during covid lockdowns. Within a week of the site going live they were already ranking for popular search terms because a lot of their competitors were not selling online or had not optimised their site for the terms that people actually search for!
The site has the option for collect at store as well as various shipping rates based on weight and location. The introduction of bundles has worked well for this client.
The new site is fully responsive and training has been provided so the client can update the site easily themselves. We have also provided strategy for how to advertise and improve their reach organically on Facebook.
Gamelocker
Gamelocker approached us for a new responsive website that comes complete with a booking system for their gaming arena located in Dundonald.
We created a new website that replaced their previous Wix website and the new WordPress one comes complete with Elementor to make it easy for them to update their own website.
The new booking system syncs up with Google Calendar and takes deposit or full payment for the different packages that they have to offer.