Cables Direct ltd is the UK's leading trade supplier of computer cables, networking products, USB products and general connectivity accessories. In many cases they are the first to supply the market with new design and innovative products.
The Challenge
Cables Direct required a complete redesign to their existing website
as it looked dated and the content had out grown the navigation
structure. The website had to be a fully functional ecommerce solution
that offered a wide range of features that would help both Cables Direct
to administer their large product catalogue with ease and users to
easily find the products they needed.
Products and ranges needed to rank well organically in search engines
as search was a key area that Cables Direct could increase sales.
The product catalogue had to offer the ability for Cables Direct to
show users all the technical information they would need to make a
buying decision.
The Approach
We implemented the River CMS ecommerce solution which offers all the tools required to run a fully featured ecommerce website,
with all elements of the product catalogue controlled entirely by
Cables Direct staff. The final solution is a fully functional ecommerce
website that allows Cables Direct to not only manage its products and
sales but also manages personal and trade accounts.
As well as a site wide search that allows users to quickly find what they are looking for, a range of dynamic call-to-actions have been created to show off the product catalogue, including a popular products carousel (see the Home page for an example). There is also the recently viewed products call to action that allows visitors to see which products they have recently viewed and navigate to them without having to find them again. Product category navigation and a breadcrumb trail complete the methods that users can use to locate their products.
To enable Cables Direct to best display their product information we split the information on product pages into logical tabs (example).
A brief description and an image gallery allow users to decide if the
product is for them. For users that want to find out more information
about the product, a specification is available as well as FAQs about the product. We also provided a bespoke solution to allow the creation of PDFs 'on the fly' for product information via the downloads tab. Users wanting similar or associated products can find them in the dedicated tab.
River CMS’s ‘out of the box’ Ecommerce SEO features were used. Product categories and products use best practice SEO techniques
(title tags and URL structures for instance) as well as providing a
good amount of relevant information about each product/category on each
page without the need for any administration by Cables Direct. The sophisticated SEO tools make product pages very SEO friendly with the option of the administrators overriding the default SEO settings for each product page.
The Results
The website is looking and performing great and selling electrical
products to trade and consumer customers. A page one ranking for ‘computer cables’
is proof of River CMS’s SEO qualities. Over 40,000 pages are indexed in
Google, with approximately double the daily visits than the previous
website within 6 weeks of launch. Over half of these visits come from
organic searches.
Visit www.cablesdirect.co.uk to see our work.