Apothecary Oils

Client: Apothecaryoils

www.apothecaryoils.co.uk

Apothecary is a luxury organic body/skincare oil company in the UK, which is 100% naturally sourced and based in Lancashire. Apothecary informed us they needed an updated site that worked on mobile devices. The site they had at the time was slow and very unresponsive, which meant that people were less likely to stay on it for long periods of time. One of the reasons for this was because the website was built on an old version of OpenCart, which was no longer supported.

This was bad news for Apothecary, as no new update patches meant a higher risk of being broken into by hackers or malware, which could possibly infect the site. Virus infections could destroy the reputation of the business, with redirecting ads, inoperable navigation and spam downloads for the user.

Rebuilding the website was essential for Apothecary to continue making sales. Instead of sticking with outdated OpenCart for the backend, we decided to move to WordPress which is a more secure, easy to manage and fully supported site. This will make updating it far easier, and the client shouldn’t have any issues whatsoever.

Looking at the design of the store’s current site, it was extremely outdated and not focused on their target audience – which is mainly people buying skincare products. By creating a cleaner, more aesthetically appealing design, we can make the site relative to the potential customers looking for organic-based oils.

We knew the client needed a fresh look to gain more attraction and therefore also boost the likelihood of sales. Simple, clean websites usually achieve higher time spent browsing the website, because it’s much nicer to look at than the older site.

Another key point would be to add extra features to the website, specifically, Apothecary wanted somewhere to post their blogs introducing new products & news. With a better and fully supported backend system for the company, this is much easier done.

In terms of branding, we went for a warmer, more inviting tone of colour, which worked really well with the theme of the website. The font was also important, as choosing a font that is blocky or bold might not have suited the look of the site. We went for a dainty, thinner font which fits great with the branding and images.

We made sure the website was fast to load with a clean design, built to suit Apothecary’s brand. Functionality is key and compared to how the website was previously, this is a huge improvement in terms of responsiveness on mobile and tablet devices.