Quba & Co

Background

In May 2010 Gibe Digital was selected by Quba & Co, the Salcombe clothes manufacturer and retailer, to handle its digital account. Appointed on the strength of our performance in a four-way competitive pitch, we took over the account from the incumbent agency and got straight to work on a complete overhaul of the Quba ecommerce site.

Objectives

• To drive sales and achieve turnover targets for 2010 and beyond
• To deliver a brand experience that positions Quba as an established, aspirational boutique brand – justifying their products price point
• To assist in becoming a recognised household name in the UK
• To be recognised as providing outstanding customer service
• To be the best performing store in the Quba business

The solution

The project started with an extensive scoping period to draw out all the business requirements and clearly set objectives for the development work. This included a series of IA, creative and technical workshops to ensure the project had a solid foundation for success.

The Gibe design team worked closely with the in-house product designers and print design agency to come up with a design that truly reflected the new Quba brand and its values.

The development team built the site using HTML 5 and the latest version of MS Commerce Server and Umbraco CMS. The development team also worked with Sagepay as the payment provider and integrated with Quba’s legacy Sage 200 system to manage stock, orders and customer information.

The key areas of functionality for Quba were the homepage, product page and create your own functionality. The homepage was designed to be flexible and scalable; it has a scrolling hero area that is content managed, allowing Quba administrators to refresh it with key product and marketing messages. The new product pages contain a lot more information about the product to try and reduce the number of returns and there are also deep zoom images allowing the users to zoom right into the fabric of each product to get a real feel the quality.

The create your own functionality has been one of the biggest successes on the site. The jackets and bags tools are built in flash and allow users to customise their own jacket or bag and then purchase them through the standard checkout process.

Technology

• Microsoft Commerce Server 2009
• Umbraco CMS
• HTML 5
• Flash
• .NET 3.5
• Microsoft Deep Zoom

Results

Since launch the new Quba & Co site has increased turnover by 90%, with site transactions up 68%. Unique visitors are also up 54% and total number of items purchased increased by 126%. Average order value has increased by £2 and the sites conversion rate has increased  to just under 3%.

The new customise your own tools have performed extremely well with 163 customised orders in the first 3 months after launch. Also the streamlined process for taking customised orders has resulted in fewer returns and quicker production process for the internal team at Quba.

Through our work with Quba we have been listed as a finalist in the Retail category 2011 NMA Effectiveness Awards.