Case Study - Shirley Aquatics
Bringing 80 years of in-store expertise online.
Client:
Shirley Aquatics
Year:
2020–2023
Work:
Strategy, Design, Development, Retainer
Shirley Aquatics is a family-owned aquatics centre in Worcestershire, and one of the largest and best-known aquatic stores in Europe. Since 1939 they’ve been helping people achieve their fish and reptile keeping goals, built on quality brands and the kind of customer service only a family business sustains for eight decades.
The challenge.
After moving their bricks-and-mortar store to the much-loved Becketts Farm retail site in 2016, the Shirley Aquatics website needed a similar overhaul.
The brief was bigger than just a redesign. It involved developing the whole online presence, persuading already-loyal customers to treat the website as an extension of the shop they trusted, growing nationwide online sales, and, hardest of all, bringing the in-store expertise online.
Anyone can sell fish food on the internet, but Shirley Aquatics’ difference has always been that their people know things.
The strategy came first.
This was a full strategic engagement, before the website changed at all.
I undertook market research into the business’s loyal customer base and built ideal client personas for each area of the business, aquarium keepers, pond owners, reptile keepers, so decisions could be made about real customers rather than assumed ones.
Discovery meetings and in-depth brand questionnaires established what the Shirley Aquatics name actually stands for, and customer journeys were mapped from first search to repeat purchase.
All of that thinking became a complete digital marketing plan including a social media strategy, a content plan, and a website redesign, sequenced together so each part supported the others, ambitious enough to matter and realistic enough to deliver.
It’s the way I still work today: understand first, plan second, build third.
The build.
With over 3,000 products in the shop, findability was everything.
I redesigned the site around a world-class search function and easy-to-use category pages with simple filters, keeping enough of the existing site’s character that loyal customers felt at home.
A full knowledge base with filterable articles and downloadable Animal Care Sheets brought the staff’s expertise online, doing for the website what the shop floor conversation does in person, and a simplified checkout cut down on abandoned carts.
Beautiful, original imagery recreated the offline experience throughout.
The partnership.
Strategy only counts if it compounds, so the plan included ongoing SEO and conversion rate optimisation alongside website maintenance.
Traffic grew through optimised category and product content and knowledge base articles, existing customers were brought back through social media engagement and eNewsletters, and every part of the journey was steadily tuned to make purchasing easier.
The results.
Website conversions up 66% after relaunch, with time on site per user up 12%. Google Business Profile click-throughs more than quadrupled.
Facebook organic reach up 146% in six months, with post reach up 105%. Instagram reach up 6000%, and YouTube views and watch time doubled.
Our work together ran until 2023, three years of a website and marketing system pulling in the same direction as the shop floor.
“As a company looking to grow their online business, it can be difficult to know what‘s important. I was paying £500 per month for an SEO agency. I could see we were getting some results, but this wasn’t translating to an increase in turnover. I also had our website rebuilt at an eye-watering cost. I found the whole process really stressful, and it was clear the company just wanted to get me out of the door and onto the next project. With both of these companies there was a real gulf between my business and theirs. I was never going to have the time to completely understand online marketing, and they never really had the time to totally understand our business. By the time Kate started working with us, I was quite jaded about my past experiences with everything online. It was nice to know that we were all excited to see where the website would go next, and not to simply have a handshake and a bill after launch day. I genuinely felt like she was part of our team and got excited about the things that excited us. I also learned more about digital marketing than I ever expected to, and it wasn’t a painful experience! She took the time and effort to get to know us and our business in a unique yet thorough way.”
Richard Cook
Managing Director, Shirley Aquatics
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