Welcome to the launch of the new flooringsupplies.co.uk web site. Our new site has been in development now for what seems like years, but is finally here and looking great! Before I talk about the new site, and as we have never written a blog before, I just want to give our customers (old and new) an idea of who we really are.

flooringsupplies.co.uk or Keswick Flooring Ltd has been trading over 20 years since 1984 successfully in the east of England. With our ambition, and drive to succeed, we’ve looked into ways of increasing and extending our customer base as far as possible. After a great deal of head scratching we decided the most cost effective way to achieve growth was to advertise to a larger audience and, as a result, www.flooringsupplies.co.uk was born in 1998 as a dedicated nationwide retailer of a complete range of flooring products direct to the customer.

Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine this simple, honest and informative website would have had such an impact on our business. Whilst writing this blog I have felt a strong sense of nostalgia and have just browsed to a website called Way Back Machine (a fantastic site that archives websites over the years and shows their former states). Here I typed in our website address URL, which hasn’t changed over the years, and took a short trip down Memory Lane. It doesn’t show our very first site (which may be for the best) but it does bring back some good memories. Of course, one day I shall be looking at this new website on the Way Back Machine with fond memories but, for now, our new site represents the pinnacle of our achievements so far.

Anyway, as a result of this new marketing campaign, founded back in the day, we can now confidently say it worked and can now boast to be one of the leading independent wooden flooring retailers in Europe today - with over £1million worth of available stock and over 40,000 visitors to our store (the website of course) every single day!

Ok, enough of our history as I’m sure it’s boring you. Let us concentrate on the future now. We have, over the development of our new website, invested a lot of time and effort into researching every aspect we could think of to ensure our customers have an easy to use and informative shopping experience. We believe there is a whole lot of extremely useful information on the site too. Not only can you shop, but you can also research the products and find technical information too. There are a surprising number of considerations for purchasing floors and we have aimed to cover all angles and questions.

During our research it become apparent that our customers wanted a simple, back-to-basics guide to the types of flooring to help them make an informed decision. Not everyone is an experienced flooring fitter and we wanted to ensure all our customers, regardless of experience, could find an answer to any questions they may have without any difficulty. Another point raised was that most first time buyers didn’t know which questions to ask when they started out often leaving them confused from the outset. Therefore, to help our customers, we have compiled a comprehensive FAQ and written all content with ‘back-to-basics’ information in mind.

During the initial brainstorming stage of our new website we asked ourselves a very simple question, and this was “Why would anyone buy flooring online?” We came to the conclusion that there were four important answers to this question and realised these to be objectives that needed to be incorporated and/or portrayed online. The four answers were these:-

• Good choice on products and brands with fast availability.
• ‘Back-to-basics’ information therefore maintaining customer trust and loyalty.
• Strong customer pre-purchase advice and after-service levels
• Competitively priced options – of course!

These questions become the very foundation behind the build of the new site, taking into account ease of use and navigation.

One of the major new features on our site is the search filters, or facets, appearing on the left hand side of the product summary pages. The use of this feature is very simple but effective. There are eight general headings all of which need to be decided upon when buying a floor, these are; colour, type, species, finish, grain, design, price, and brands. These headings are explained online and are designed to help break down the customer’s decision process for buying flooring by filtering out any products that are not relevant to the customer’s requirements. Simply select which sub-heading you require and the results displayed show the desired selection. The unique aspect to these filters is that you can easily mix and match your requests between the headings. For example, you want a solid oak floor, lacquered, micro-bevelled, and between the price range of £15 to £20 - but after looking at the available options you may decide you do not like your choice and can simply change the finish heading to ‘Oiled’ and the results display all previously selected categories, except for the finish. The results now display solid oak floors, oiled, micro-bevelled, between the price range of £15 to £20 - and so on, and so on until you find the perfect floor. Research is an important factor in choosing a suitable flooring, and these filters go a long way to making this research as painless as possible.

As my last point we are all very excited and proud of the new website and are confident it will perform well for both our customers’ needs and subsequently help with the future success of our business.

If you have any comments to make about our website which you believe may help us make improvements please do not hesitate to contact us via email at feedback@flooringsupplies.co.uk

Thank you for taking the time to read our first blog of many. The Team at flooringsupplies.co.uk