Just when you thought buying a bathroom couldn’t get any easier, Victoria Plumb, a leading UK online bathroom retailer, has launched an adaptive version of its website tailored towards mobile users who are watching TV, shopping in bricks and mortar bathroom stores and the building trade.
Designed to capitalise on Victoria Plumb’s extensive TV campaign by offering a quality shopping experience to the second-screening TV audience, the site makes it easy for bathroom shoppers to “showroom” and compare Victoria Plumb’s range while browsing in-store at its bricks and mortar competitors. You could even buy a new bathroom while sitting on your existing ageing toilet…
The site is also aimed at the busy trade sector, giving them the ability to access bathroom products while working on a construction site. In a recent survey carried out by Victoria Plumb, 74% of its trade account holders said the new mobile site would help them and their business.
Rather than a separate mobile site or cut down version of the desktop site, the brand has gone for an overall adaptive design approach – using the same web address. This use of responsive design technologies such as media queries provides the best possible layout and performance for the wide variety of smartphones available. This means that the shopper’s experience is precisely tailored to their mobile device.
Instead of presenting information in lists, as many mobile sites do, Victoria Plumb has opted for a much more visually-pleasing representation of its categories and product ranges. The new one page checkout process keeps things as simple as possible, with only a few steps needed to get from product selection to sale confirmation.
The new mobile layout takes full advantage of its adaptive design by presenting all the product information you would expect from a desktop site while remaining lightweight and quick to load, allowing for smoother, faster product filtering.
Victoria Plumb’s Marketing Manager Sam Jenkinson explains: “The new mobile experience is part of a joined-up approach to driving sales. All our visitors can enjoy quick and simple purchasing whether on desktop, tablet or smartphone. We know that online shopping is carried out across several devices, especially in a market where the purchase decision takes weeks, if not months. It makes sense to ensure every stage in buying a bathroom from Victoria Plumb is made as easy as possible.”