| http://www.ShopontheBeach.co.uk
Our company, Shop on the Beach, is a beach/surf/outdoor store located at the prestigious Watergate Bay Resort in Cornwall, alongside Jamie Oliver's 15 Restaurant and a busy hotel and watersports academy. Due to its location, our business is extremely seasonal and we wanted an ecommerce website that would give us business throughout the winter, when the physical shop is very quiet. We approached Citrus-Lime and immediately felt that they understood our aims and had extensive knowledge of the ecommerce market.
We were complete novices when it came to ecommerce, but the creative and technical personnel at Citrus-Lime were exceptionally supportive throughout the process of designing the website, explaining every aspect of ecommerce and working with us to find the best solutions to suit our budget, our personnel resources and our timescales. We never felt pressured to spend more than we felt comfortable with and Citrus-Lime was always very flexible both in terms of the time they spent with us and the pricing of the project.
The creative department really listened to us when we explained our target customer, the ethos of our business and the brands and products we sell. They took our very vague ideas and turned them into a website design that gives exactly the right impression and has a look and feel that reflects the actual shop brilliantly. The design process was quick and efficient and communication from the designers throughout was excellent.
We have been running the website for approximately 8 months (as at June 2008) and it continues to develop and deliver significant business. We were concerned that once the website had gone live, Citrus-Lime would leave us to fend for ourselves, but that has not been the case at all – they have continued to provide excellent support, helping us to grow sales.
We pay a monthly retainer for site development services, which covers e-newsletters and any changes that we make to keep the site fresh. This has worked well for us and enabled us to budget easily while developing the site month by month. We also use Citrus-Lime’s technical support service which is excellent – problems are sorted out efficiently, almost always on the same day that they are reported. Urgent problems are dealt with immediately.
We plan to use Citrus-Lime as our web developers for many years; they have shown us real commitment and have worked hard to make our website successful.
Christina Burnham
ShopontheBeach.co.uk |