Once the new website was up and running, online sales increased dramatically with no immediate promotion or publicity.
Within just a few hours of the launch, online sales had more than covered NS&I’s investment in the design. And after eight weeks, monthly online sales were up from £3million to £47million and 10,000 new customers used the site over this period - accounting for 50 per cent of online sales.
In October 2005, the number of monthly visits to the website hit one million and NS&I calculated the total increase of online sales since December 2004, the month before the site’s re-launch, was 3,840 per cent.
Latest available figures, meanwhile, show that online sales now account for 12.5 per cent of NS&I’s total sales - up from 2 per cent before the website’s re-launch.
NS&I is also evaluating the website using measures other than improved sales. Particularly important are average individual purchase value and the number of NS&I products held per customer as well as customer feedback, and industry recognition in the form of awards won, in particular for clarity, usability and accessibility.
The website received a Highly Commended at the 2005 Financial Services Forum Awards for Marketing Excellence and won the DBA’s Design Effectiveness Award for digital media in 2005.
‘Although the new site conforms to strict accessibility standards, it is also engaging and easy to use,’ Simpson says. ‘It puts consumers first.’
Do you work for a company facing similar challenges taking your brand online? Are you a design consultancy with equally inspring stories of design effectiveness? We'd like to hear from you...
