L.K. Bennett – Study
“The timelines for this project were exceptionally tight, so it took absolute commitment from all the teams involved to produce the final high quality site. The response has been incredible from the increases we’ve seen in trading to the feedback from our customers. As an eCommerce team, we have been really thrilled with how straight forward the platform is to use and we are really benefiting from the management we now have over our online presence.”
Kate Smyth, Head of eCommerce, LK Bennett
About the client:
Founded in London in 1990, luxury British fashion house L.K. Bennett is a luxury high street retailer, renowned for it’s sophisticated collections of shoes, womenswear and accessories.
In addition to it’s online business, L.K. Bennett enjoys a successful retail presence with 115 stores and concessions across the UK, Ireland and France.
The Brief:
L.K. Bennett came to Portaltech Reply because they wanted:
- To re-platform in a 12 week time frame, for a go live date of January 27th 2010.
- A flexible content management system that they could update and manage internally
- The ability to create and manage powerful promotions internally
- A platform that would support multi channel retailing
- A platform that was robust, flexible and scalable
- A future proof solution that could be easily expanded to include multi language and currency
- To provide an improved user experience
- To improve the way product and brand was displayed
- A platform that loaded images quickly
The Solution:
L.K. Bennett selected Portaltech Reply in October 2009 and immediately established a collaborative style of leadership with Portaltech Reply; with both partners taking a best of breed approach to utilising the very best skills, services and innovations from a range of technology service suppliers, to support and achieve L.K. Bennett’s brief.
The project was determined by the go-live date of January 27th and the 12 week time frame. With this in mind, Portaltech Reply recommended L.K. Bennett use the QuickLive platform, powered by a hybris core. This platform would not only deliver the flexibility and functionality that L.K. Bennett requested, but would also allow them to manage their existing online, catalogue and retail channels. It also provided the ongoing scalability and multi-currency capabilities that the company required for the long term.
Because of the challenging time frames involved, Portaltech Reply & L.K. Bennett conducted a highly detailed ‘Discovery Phase’ early on, to establish and determine the key business objectives, critical functional specifications and deliverables for the website and platform.
“The functional specification looks great, one of the best I’ve ever seen, especially considering the timeframe it was produced in.”
Kate Smyth, Head of eCommerce, L.K. Bennett
Measurable benefits since launch:
- The website went live, on budget, on 27th January 2010.
- Net retail sales increased 103% YOY, in the first 5 weeks since launch and by 70% on the previous season
- Customer conversion rates increased 100% YOY, in the first 5 weeks since launch and by 40% on the previous season
- L.K. Bennett are trading 70% up against forecast, to date
- The QuickLive platform has empowered LK Bennett to manage their brand, build their business and drive their trading in a way that was impossible before.
- The rich media capability provided by 10CMS, enables the L.K. Bennett team to manage their brand image, marketing communication and improve consumer usability. L.K. Bennett can use stunning aspirational lifestyle shots, with hot spot overlays, that not only cross sells a total outfit look, but also provides product information faster, reducing the number of clicks customers have to make to find products they like and add to the basket.
- Winner of the IMRG Awards for excellence 2010, for ‘Best website re-brand/re-launch’
- Winner of Retail Systems 2010 ‘ Best SME Online Retailer’
L.K. Bennett home screen
