Cucina Direct
Catalogue companies are finding that they can do significant business online. Cucina Direct came to us to improve the effectiveness of an existing "first generation" site. Now owned by Scotts of Stowe, Cucina is a destination to buy all things for the kitchen and food preparation.
What Cucina Direct needed
Cucina had two main objectives: to increase revenue and to support existing catalogue customers. They had an existing site which suffered from poor navigation, poor graphical design and limited integration.
What the OTHER media did
Our task was to redesign the site from scratch, integrate with their order processing system, Mailtrax, and provide them with the tools that would let them merchandise and promote their products.
Our designers went for a clean modern design that reflected the look and feel of the printed catalogues and the site was then built using our OTHERcommerce software components and OTHERobjects CMS, our powerful content management system.
The navigation challenge
The main challenge for this project was improving the navigation. Although existing customers know their range well, new visitors to the site would have to hunt around to find glassware, knives or kitchen appliances. The existing site had hierarchical menus that needed to be fully explored. Our usuability expert, Tom Smith, preferred an approach that exposed more of the product categories clearly on the front page.
The results
The immediate effect was remarkable with over three times sales over the first six months and the site has continued to grow, year on year.
