The Challenge
A trading division of E.A. Clare & Son Ltd, Drakes Pride is a manufacturer
and worldwide supplier of bowling green bowls and
accessories. Their bowls have been used by World Champion and
Commonwealth Gold medalist bowlers. Drakes Pride picked Connect to
create a fresh, new website to promote the world-renowned brand and
provide a wealth of information about products and stockists.
The Solution
The foundation for the website build was provided by the
Umbraco content management system, a
user-friendly system that allows site updates to be made quickly
and effortlessly. The website was designed to make use of
Umbraco’s features which include a straightforward user interface
with WYSIWYG editor and a media library which stores the site’s
digital assets (images, documents, videos etc) and makes them
available within the CMS.
Connect customised the Umbraco administration system to enable
Drakes Pride to manage their online categorised product catalogue,
including the creation, modification and removal of product
categories, subcategories and individual products.
Drakes Pride also asked us to develop a stockist
list, searchable by postcode or place name and integrated with
Google Maps, allowing enquirers to identify stockists within a
chosen radius of their given location. The stockist list is
also managed through the Umbraco administration system.
A jQuery carousel on the home page, managed via the CMS, allows
the company to pick and change selected products to be displayed,
enabling targeted product promotion.
Connect also provided search engine optimisation services to assist in
increasing targeted traffic to the website.
The Results
Drakes Pride has been delighted with the user-friendliness of
the Umbraco CMS, which has been tailored to meet their
requirements, giving them full content control. Changes to
the website content appear in seconds, so it’s easy to keep the
website fresh and current.
The addition of videos in May
has been particularly successful. The online videos, which
help bowlers decide which models of bowl will suit them best, have
received an impressive 21,000 hits in less than six
months. Moreover, redirects to stockists have been very
good, increasing month on month since the site went live.