ESPA International
ESPA is recognized as a world leader in all aspects of the Spa industry including concept, design, operations, products and treatments. In addition to creating and consulting to Spas in 4, 5 and 6 star markets the company also produces a unique range of Spa developed natural skincare. The ESPA philosophy combines the best of ancient and modern therapies with the finest quality ingredients and skin care advances. The result is an unusual combination of Spa inspired products, treatments and services that harness the best of aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, thalassotherapy, and phytotherapy.
At a Glance
URL - www.espaonline.com
Business Challenges
Create sophisticated customer centric site that appeals to both retail and B2B customers. Create easily maintained eStore that staff can manage themselves.
Solution
Shado CMS Content Management System and Shado CMS eStore.
Business Benefits
Creation of compelling new component to global brand strategy. Superior customer service levels achieved from efficient user-friendly e-commerce functionality.
Challenge
"Quality, purity, integrity and nothing else…" That's how ÉSPA markets its beauty products and services to a discerning global clientele. To maximize the effectiveness of its online marketing strategy, ÉSPA decided to design, develop and launch a new website.
The key objectives of the project included:
- promoting the brand and product range
- providing a useful information resource on Spa-related products and services
- showcasing ESPA's consultancy galleries for Spa Design, and
- generating revenue through a customer-centric e-commerce solution
ESPA already had a "out the box" e-commerce site but were frustrated by the lack of flexibility the system offered.
Complete integration - The creation of ÉSPA's new site involved the complete integration of a clean and intuitive design based on Macromedia Flash animation, and the customized development of a new underlying Web technology infrastructure using Shado CMS. This design incorporated the ability for ÉSPA's marketing team to manage content and e-commerce applications, as well as integrating with ESPA's shipping, order tracking and accounting systems.
"Spa design is a very important component of our business, therefore we needed to demonstrate what we can do in this area," said Charlotte Stolper, marketing executive responsible for ÉSPA's online marketing. "On the e-commerce side of the site, we wanted to create an easy-to-navigate site for customers to buy online. It was important to get the balance right."
Shado CMS provides ÉSPA's marketing team with a fast, effective way of updating content as and when required. "We realized that we could easily create banners that could be targeted at certain groups of visitors to the site, such as registered users, creating a more personal and relevant online experience for them," said Stolper. "For example, with Shado CMS I can change a banner on the home page in just a few minutes."
New content management system. A fundamental requirement was that ÉSPA's marketing team would be able to manage and update web content themselves via a new content management system (CMS), rather than rely on costly and time-consuming external resources. To make the new web site a reality, ÉSPA selected design agency Chaos for front-end design of the site, Monochrome Interactive for web development work and, following extensive evaluation of various software vendors, ShadoCMS from Straker Interactive as the Content Management System.
Solution
Shado CMS Content Management System and Shado CMS eStore.
Stolper cited the two key reasons for selecting Shado CMS as cost-effectiveness and flexibility. "All CMS packages enable you to edit text for websites, but Shado enables you to do a lot more. For example, we use images extensively for marketing our products and services, and Shado has an extensive image file library that we can use. It's also very easy to use - it's no more difficult than using a word processing package once you get to know it. The flexibility of Shado CMS means we can easily add more functionality to the site. Also being able to develop other web-based applications beyond a CMS is a real advantage."
The website project started in January 2004 and went live in May, on schedule. Stolper concluded "what we have today is a new customer-centric, e-commerce-driven website. Using Shado CMS we can change content as and when we want to, add new products easily, target our marketing campaigns specifically to certain types of people, and derive business benefits from our new online store capabilities."
Results
The result is website that successfully reflects EPSA sophisticated image and showcases their unusual combination of Spa inspired products, treatments and services.
The site is customer centric with a very clean intuitive design and extensive use of macromedia flash animation. The Shado CMS framework allows EPSA to easily update the site and manage their own banner ad campaigns. Charlotte Stolper, explained the thinking behind the strategy: "Previously, we couldn't update content ourselves, it was integrated into a large agency license and we were paying each time we wanted to edit anything on the site. We wanted to implement a CMS so we could manage content in-house, we concluded that it would be more cost-effective and give us a lot more flexibility."
The custom written store-based application enables the company to manage their product range themselves, track orders and survey shipping options. The flexible export order area ensures EPSA can integrate orders seamlessly into their back-end in-house accounting system.
ESPA now have a flexible Shado CMS driven site, with bespoke areas that are core to their business model. The Shado CMS application framework allowed Straker partner Monochrome to seamlessly integrate a bespoke store application and showcase ESPA 's unique consultancy gallery area.
