About Living the Life of Riley
Living the Life of Riley is made up of three separate companies; Rag-Fork, Pet Possessions and Eazitools.
Eazitools began in 1999 and have the aim of making difficult, labour intensive jobs easier on the user’s muscles. Run by Managing Director Becky Ball, Eazitools is a family run organisation based in Nottinghamshire. Their gardening range was nominated for entry in the Glee New Products Awards 2005.
Pet Posessions is run by husband and wife team Becky and Jon from their countryside base in Nottinghamshire. Their aim is to provide stylish and practical quality pet products. They pride themselves on customer service.
Rag-Fork is a product which was devised in 2000 by Derrick Marsden and is used to combat the danger that ragwort offers to horses and other livestock. 13 years later, Rag-Fork has become a well-known and highly respected brand and has achieved global success. In 2001, it was highly commended by BETA in their product awards. Rag-Fork constantly update their product in relation to customer feedback.
Project Detail
Living the Life of Riley commissioned Centurius to undertake work following a recommendation from a client we had previously worked with. The client had previously been running three independent WordPress ecommerce sites which they found difficult to maintain and manage. It was decided that the three sites should be brought together under an umbrella site which would then encourage cross site selling and highlight the synergy between the three sections of the business. Centurius suggested moving the company over to the Sellerdeck ecommerce platform where the in-built mega menu system could allow for three main sections which would act as the three independent microsites.
The site was therefore built in Sellerdeck V11 Business.
Centurius’ task was a complete design exercise, as well as the development of a new framework which would separate and also bring together the three sections of the business. The design that Centurius developed was based around having an ‘outdoor’ look and feel, or ‘urban-rustic’ to be more specific. This included footprints, masking tape and rough lines. We wanted the customer to feel like they were going into their garden shed when going to the Life of Riley umbrella site.
The whole site is based on a cork board, where post-it notes, photos and scribbles would be the links to the different sections. The three separate sites were given slight make-overs, to help maintain synergy but to also identify them as three separate sites.
The site was given a jQuery homepage advertisement rotator, specific to each microsite, to allow the client to highlight specific offers. Continuing on the theme of advertisement, Centurius designed a bespoke homepage which allowed for five key adverts to link around each of the three microsites.
To encourage the sale of certain items, and also help the customer choose the most appropriate items, the implementation of a tabular system which displayed best sellers and new arrivals was included.
Navigation was highly important for Living the Life of Riley, as this had to be simple for the customer to not only have ease of use on one site, but also to be able to navigate across the three microsites. To achieve this, Centurius implemented a mega menu system. It was also important to include a Search engine key word area, so that the customer could locate an item just by typing a key word into a search bar. Additional custom variables were created to allow H1 header tags to either take the default section title or be overwritten by the client for enhanced SEO keyword terms.
Centurius used a third party newsletter format, created by Mailchimp, to include a ‘sign up for further information’ section which encourages return customers and business-customer interaction. There was also the implementation of a social media plug in from ‘addthis.com’ which allows products to be highlighted within customer social media accounts.
Third party zoom image functionality was used to allow for additional zoom images to be used and a higher level of image visibility. This gives the customer more confidence in the product and client.
Centurius also implemented a third party ‘Tabber’ functionality which allows the client to enter multiple tabbed areas of content from one text editor. We also customised the code to allow for YouTube video media content to be available from within one of the specific microsites.
Testimonials
“We were introduced to Lee and Jonathan at Centurius through a third party and haven’t looked back since. We had had an online presence for over 10 years but wanted to significantly increase the amount of sales we generated online. From the very beginning we found them to be very knowledgeable and professional. Lee introduced us to Sellerdeck, a system that we hadn’t used before. It had all the features that we wanted and much more so was worth the investment. Lee provided training to get us started and Centurius offer great after sales support. Lee designed a great, fresh, modern looking site that we regularly get complimented on. We have seen a good steady rise in online sales as a direct result of the new site. The functionality of the site is much better. The customer experience is much slicker as is managing orders through Sellerdeck. We have regular review meetings with Centurius to discuss progress so far and improvements that we can make to the site. Lee’s knowledge here is great in advising us on what new features are available and the benefits to our company. If you are looking for a professional, serious online presence then look no further than Centurius to deliver that for you. “
Rebecca Ball – Director
Eazitools Limited t/a Living the Life of Riley
