The high street bricks and mortar retailer is under a barrage of attack from major supermarkets and online 'e-tailers', whose pricing means that many smaller shops simply cannot compete. As we embrace e-commerce as a means to getting the product we want, the retailer that adopts a 'clicks and mortar' attitude, supporting its high street sales, with an alternative access point via the web, is giving itself the best possible chance of survival.

Harwayes Lingerie is a specialist lingerie retailer, whose business was established in 1947. They have 26 stores across a wide geographical area, covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and West Midlands.

Harwayes were looking for a capable web design agency that could provide assistance in a number of areas, relating to their online presence, helping them to embrace the Internet and capitalise on the advantages of e-commerce. The requirement was for a new, revitalised corporate/consumer identity and a brand new interactive e-commerce web site, along with assistance in online promotion and marketing.

In a highly competitive market, dominated by big players like Figleaves, price and availability of stock are highly important, in order to encourage ‘impulse’ purchases. Entering this cluttered environment had to be considered carefully, to ensure that Harwayes were to be able to secure customers’ purchasing decisions quickly, and that they were able to deliver on their promise, without the purchasing process taking any longer.

The web site Harwayes required had to capitalise upon their unique wealth of specialist experience in lingerie for larger cup sizes and mastectomy products, along with more general ranges, to ensure that:

1. It projected a contemporary and sophisticated image that was consistent with the stores
2. It could be independently promoted from the stores
3. The public at-large could access Harwayes’ stock outside the regional coverage of their stores
4. The stores are supported, via a central point, to allow individual customers to be able to find their nearest store and arrange

It was also a requirement that the entire site was able to be administered through a content management system (CMS), allowing for all pages’ content to be edited and added to, along with in-depth administrative control of all products and orders, and that capture, storage and management of customer records was possible, both from the stores and the website, in one secure central location. All orders needed to be taken care of by the site, reducing administrative tasks for the management team.

To this end, the web site became a partnership of thoughts between our organisations, to ensure:

1. the design worked with the understated style of Harwayes
2. it allowed speedy access to products via a simple, highly intuitive usage/type selector
3. it allowed online consumer access to ‘live’ stock status
4. they could administer and maintain the site’s contents easily, without further charges in the future
5. there was a strategy for marketing of the site for its first year online

The corporate ID was to be driven online via the site, and would also be used offline for advertising and branding in their 26 stores.

Corporate/brand ID

The original corporate ID was tired, and in need of refreshment, as Harwayes did not want to have a totally new logo, bearing in mind their history, so our team devised a new look, using more modern typeface and an improved colour scheme, without changing it beyond all recognition.

Web site
The site uses a combination of languages to achieve the required objective, of a simple-to-navigate, simple-to-use site. The front-end, visible to the consumer, is clean, intuitive and highly informative, with in-depth product information accessible with the minimum number of clicks. Customers can see at a glance which items are in stock, once they have selected their size. If the item is in stock, they can order it, with the knowledge that it’ll be delivered within a few days.

The back-end of the site allows for an unprecedented level of control from Harwayes’ perspective, in that products, sub categories and categories can be added, edited or deleted, thereby keeping the contents up-to-date with the minimum of fuss.

Access is made via a username and password, and allows only specific people to make changes within the structure. Stock levels can be adjusted and items can be removed from sale without deleting altogether. All orders are collected into one section and are identified as ‘successful’, ‘pending’, or ‘failed’ (according to payment status) and the appropriate emails are sent automatically by the site, to the customer and Harwayes, negating the need for additional correspondence to be entered into. Picking/packing forms are generated automatically, to reduce the administrative impact of orders coming in.

Harwayes' management team has been very happy with the website and the service that Skylight Media have provided. See Emily's testimonial here. There has been a lot of positive feedback from customers about the look and the functionality the website offers, and there has been several hundred orders since launch in late October 2006.