Blog: New site helps Cath Kidston find the right spot for dog beds

We’ve just taken the first (pretty major) step in our technical investment roadmap with a brand new e-commerce site. We’d had a bit of refresh, design-wise, last year, but the new platform that now underpins it all has really brought the change to the fore.

Long before the project kicked off, we’d drawn up a hit-list of what the new platform should be capable of. Getting something stable in place, something that wouldn’t fall over as we continued to grow was a given; but we also wanted a genuine multichannel hub, and one that could be a springboard for an ambitious international expansion plan.

Top of the list, however, was getting an engine that would help us trade the site better.  So what have got for our money?

In terms of the roll-out itself, it was a textbook project, delivered on time and within budget. This was no doubt due to the fab project team we had. It was all very collaborative and confirmed that we were right to go with a supplier who knew the retail sector just as well as it did the technology.

Behind the scenes, we now have a centrally managed online presence, with one central database. Previously, we had to manage separate sites for each country manually so there was a lot of duplication and things tended to not get updated. With a new French site on the horizon, this is going to be much easier to maintain.

We’ve also got a mobile site in the pipeline, to make things as easy as possible for our customers. The redesign also means we have more space to showcase our beautiful products and, for a visual brand like Cath Kidston, this is absolutely vital. The new BT FrescaCommerce platform enables us to pull up products and promote them easily, with a simple drag and drop utility.

So for example, on the old platform our ‘Big Spot Dog Bed’ always appeared at the top of pages no matter what we tried! It’s a lovely bed, and any dog would be proud of it, but the fact is, we don’t sell a huge amount of them and we have so many other items that were never promoted. Now the dog bed – or anything else we choose to promote – has to earn its place on the site…