David Clulow Opticians is one of the largest optical retailers in the UK with more than 50 locations. Being one of the largest stockists of designer frames and sunglasses in the UK, the next step was to expand their presence on the Internet with a new full e-commerce site. They were looking to roll out a new concept with their e-commerce offering, which would differentiate David Clulow from competitors on the web.

The Brief

The Main features of the brief were as follows:

• A state of the art catalogue and shopping cart system to cater and handle a large product line
  
• Sophisticated searching and display system custom developed for optical products
  
• Features that would differentiate the David Clulow website from other web based optical retailers
  
• Online accounts system for their clients
  
• Improve the communication flow between the client base, potential clients and the company
  
• A store locator for all of their retail locations
  
• To somehow involve the stores with the website
  
• Powerful and easy to use Administration system including content management and order management

Activate Solution

Working with the David Clulow marketing department Activate Media designed and developed an attractive and easy to use e-shop, underpinned by our tried and tested Content Management System.

In addition to the normal e-commerce fulfilment options, the site allows visitors multiple ways of purchasing products online, including a unique 'Book a Look' facility whereby visitors can browse a product selection, select their choice and arrange a viewing of what they selected in a David Clulow shop near them, utilising the retail shops to their best advantage.

The site is fully integrated with the Secpay Credit card gateway, and uses Activate’s invoicing engine to generate digital invoices for customers. As per our standard operation procedures, this site was built using the “best practices” for W3c compliance and search engine optimisation.

Finally, we integrated our powerful list Management and Newsletter system into the administration system of the site for sending out their weekly newsletter and other promotional e-mailings.

In building the new David Clulow site, Activate released following core software activities:

• Activate CMS that allows full control of all aspects of the website
  
• Activate Catalogue and Shopping cart
  
• Activate Invoicing engine
  
• Activate CRM and Newsletter system