F Hinds Ecommerce Case Study - Red Technology UK

Leading high-street jeweller solve their Click & Reserve conundrum using tradeit

One of the UK's leading high-street jewellers solve their Click & Reserve conundrum with the tradeit ecommerce platform. Established in 1856, F.Hinds are an independent, family owned chain of UK jewellers with over 115 branches in England and Wales. Having traded online since 1996, they have always been at the forefront of UK retailing and understand the importance of continually improving their service, particularly online.

"A change of EPoS system presented the opportunity to update the site. Rather than do the mere basics we presented Red with the challenge to pretty much start from scratch, reinventing what Click & Reserve can be and really embracing omni-channel retailing. We've a positive ROI on all of the work within six months so people are pretty happy around here at the moment."

Ecommerce Manager, F.Hinds

Project Highlights

Click & Reserve
Advanced Click & Reserve service with movement of stock between stores and warehouse, controlled & calculated in tradeit
Seamless checkout
New and improved checkout process specifically designed to increase conversions and reduce the bounce rate
Multiple sites
Multiple brand sites running from a single back office for simple management
Store locator
Built-in store locator with postcode lookup and individual store details like opening hours and range of services available at each
Promotions
Sophisticated promotions capabilities including new offer types built exclusively for the new site
Stock checker
Integrated store stock checker means the quantity of stock at each store can be checked based on nearest location
Rich imagery
Products brought to life through enhanced imagery, zoom and 360 degree rotation to give customers a perfect look of things before they buy
Advanced filtering
Highly sophisticated search tools and facetted navigation to help users find exactly what they are looking for, quickly and easily
Search
Advanced on-site search configuration drives significant improvements to both the speed and accuracy of search results

Project Integrations

Project Overview

F.Hinds, a Red Technology customer since 2006, aimed to unify their online and in-store experience with enhanced omni-channel functionality, focusing on streamlining the checkout and significantly improving their Click & Reserve service for both staff and customers.

The Click & Reserve conundrum

Despite the obvious advantages of having over 115 retail stores, the distribution and movement of their stock makes the fulfilment of online orders more tricky than for many other retailers. Not all products are held at a central warehouse due to the high value of many items, and the fact that sitting in a warehouse means they are not in front of customers, who usually prefer to see and touch them in store anyway. Many purchases are one-offs like engagement or wedding rings, or gift items, so holding vast stocks doesn't make business sense. This means that some online orders may well need to be pulled from one of the physical stores if they are not available for delivery from their central warehouse, but this brings complications.

If an item is only available in a few stores and not from the main warehouse, one of those items will need to be sent back to the warehouse and redistributed to the customer's nearest store for collection, or delivered by post. Due to the time and cost involved in doing this, that service is only offered on products over £50, so some products may only be available for collection from certain stores and may not be available for delivery at all. This also affects the availability of items for collection with those in stock being ready in 2 hours whilst others may take several days due to the movement of stock. Other items are held solely by the supplier so these can only be purchased online too.

Due to the limitations of their EPoS system, this entire piece of complex functionality had to be built into the tradeit ecommerce platform meaning exact stock levels of every product, in every store, are kept in tradeit and updated through integration to their back end systems in almost real time, ensuring what is shown to the customer online is as accurate as possible. Stock buffer levels are also built into the system to cater for any sudden in-store purchases.

Checkout

In spite of all the complexity around fulfilment and their Click & Reserve service, the website has to still ensure the smoothest possible customer experience. The checkout pages are now closed, with minimal form fields to enter and Loqate for fast address auto-complete meaning the customer can get from adding the item to their basket to completing their order as quickly as possible. They've also introduced a number of additional payment options on top of debit and credit cards such as Klarna and Apple Pay to give customers more choice and flexibility.

There are many other new features across the site aimed at improving the UX, such as a new responsive design with four breakpoints optimised for all devices, infinite scrolling on category pages, improved promotions options and enhanced imagery on product pages giving users a perfect view of the products before they buy. They have also configured Elasticsearch as the search provider which has immediately driven an increase in incremental revenue from customers who use on-site search.

RECOGNISED BY THE INDUSTRY

Award-winning

Resources

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

F.HINDS

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SOLUTIONS DATASHEET

RETAIL ECOMMERCE

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SOLUTIONS DATASHEET

OMNI-CHANNEL RETAIL

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SOLUTIONS DATASHEET

MULTI-CHANNEL ECOMMERCE

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WEBINAR

How F.Hinds reinvented Click & Reserve to deliver their fulfil from anywhere solution

Learn more about our work for F.Hinds

F.Hinds News

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Red nominated for European Ecommerce Award

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Red shortlisted for two ecommerce awards 2022

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Red shortlisted for Retail Systems Award 2022

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F.Hinds launch Klarna payments online

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How F.Hinds reinvented Click & Reserve to deliver their fulfil from anywhere solution

We showcase how one of the UK's leading jewellers delivers excellence in fulfilment through tradeit...

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Red Technology & F.Hinds shortlisted for Retail Systems Awards 2018

We’re delighted to have been shortlisted for the prestigious Retail Systems Awards 2018 for our work alongside F.Hinds the jewellers...

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National Technology Award 2017 nomination

We've been shortlisted for the 2017 National Technology Awards in the category 'Retailing Technology of the Year' for our work with F.Hinds...

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Ecommerce Webinar Registration

We talk through our award-wining project with F. Hinds in which we reinvented Click & Reserve to deliver their fulfil from anywhere solution

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Leading high-street jeweller solve their Click & Reserve conundrum using tradeit

Project Highlights

Project Integrations

Project Overview

The Click & Reserve conundrum

Checkout

RECOGNISED BY THE INDUSTRY

Award-winning

Resources

F.Hinds News

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