Harts of Stur, one of the UK’s largest in-store and online retailers of cookware, kitchenware and kitchen electrics, have won the “Britain’s Best Housewares Retail Website Award 2016″ for the second year running, beating fellow finalists including ecommerce giants such as Lakeland.
Their award winning website (www.hartsofstur.com) was designed and built by the teclan team during 2014.
Speaking about their achievement at winning the website award Graham Hart, director of Harts of Stur said, “We are very proud of our website. It’s fully responsive design means it can be viewed on mobile, tablet, laptop or computer and we’ve worked closely with our website developers, teclan, to make sure it is clear and simple to use. We always include a selection of seasonal offers alongside our ever-increasing core range of products. There are a number of ways to view these products – you can choose between shopping by brand, viewing by department or checking out the special offers – (the ‘Clearance Offers’ section is always a particular favourite)!”
The winner was judged by a panel of industry experts that comprised Patrick Gardner (T&G Woodware); Melanie Harradine (MJ Harradine); Patrick Winters (Pendeford Housewares); Lisa Scott (Gourmet Gadgetry); Peter Battersby (Charles Viancin); Russell Elmes (Russ Elmes Agencies) and Kevin Towler (Kevin Towler Agencies). About our website, the judges commented: “They have nailed it, it’s so easy to use with good search engine optimisation.”
The Harts of Stur website implemented many versatile and innovative design techniques which teclan embedded into a fully responsively designed website.
teclan’s graphic designer Moya Howie was instrumental in creating the overall look and feel of the website.
“Working with Graham we were able to clearly identify the requirements that Harts of Stur had for the redesign, and following extensive market research we created a visual style and tone which was to run throughout the entire website. Graham and his team’s input at every stage enabled us to create a comprehensive design that worked across multiple sizes of screen including mobile, desktop and tablets.”
teclan’s responsive web designer Rory Baldwin faced many technical challenges during the design integration stage. “The large range of sections and products – plus the data required for filtering them – within the Harts of Stur website presented some unique performance and user experience challenges for us to overcome in making a ‘mobile-first’ website. We custom built a responsive and touch friendly ‘mega menu’ for their website as well as making the traditional sidebar menu work for touch devices. As Harts are very brand focused, we also developed a number of custom solutions within the ecommerce platform to enable flexible and dynamic cross-selling of their brands and products across sections, but with minimal maintenance.”
teclan’s Managing Director, Fergus Weir said, “Once again we are delighted that a teclan designed website has helped our client Harts of Stur beat the likes of Aga Cookshop and Lakeland to this national award. Harts of Stur continue to demonstrate what it takes to be an award winning online retailer. We look forward to continuing to help them grow to continued success in the future.”
teclan are Award Winning Ecommerce Responsive Designers with over 100 years of combined ecommerce, marketing and retail experience. Contact us today on 01463 898 043 to discover how we can grow your business – our success is based on your success.