Showing Plenty of Flair

Passionate baker and crafter Rachel Clark has always been inspired by handmade products. Initially venturing into business as a cake-maker - both online and via a pop-up store in London - she quickly earned a superb reputation for her wedding and celebration cakes.

As demand increased, so did Rachel's need to adapt. So, to help cater for an ever-increasing influx of orders, she decided to explore the world of stencilling. She actually hoped to find existing products to help her to work more efficiently, but it became evident that limited designs and unrealistic prices were going to send her back to the drawing board.

Interestingly, Rachel's answer to the predicament was to create her own stencil collection. This turned out to be a wise decision and she hasn't looked back since. Having gone on to create her own range of stencils to sell to fellow bakers, she has since combined these with her other passion - art - to add a further craft range of stencils to her offering.

Along the way, Artistic Flair was formed to sell the products. This has now developed into a hugely popular business. As a result of the success the company has enjoyed, Rachel felt it was time to enhance their established online presence. Recognising our own eye for bespoke design, she approached our team at Evoluted for assistance.

After taking the time to understand exactly what the client were seeking, we begun crafting together a new site that would improve their existing offering in every way.

An immediate priority was to ensure that the design would be crisp, clean and refreshingly modern. We felt this would help to enhance Artistic Flair's visually-impressive products and encourage purchases.

Alongside the front-end appearance, there were then many technical considerations for the site, including delivery, pricing and a customer loyalty scheme.

Each of the features we ultimately integrated have been designed to enhance the customer experience:

• Flair points: To help encourage loyalty amongst Artistic Flair's customers, it was essential to include a points-based system, with the incentivised feature dubbed 'Flair Points'. These allow regular customers to accumulate points based on their order history through the site. The points can be set per currency and used as collateral against future orders.
• Two-tier customer login system: With regards to customers logging into the site, we needed to create a two-tiered system. This was required as Artistic Flair deal with both regular and trade customers, so two sets of prices were needed. Minimum order prices and quantities also needed to be enforced for certain trade orders.
• Multi-currency: To help further the potential of the site, we built it so that it can be used in three different currencies (GBP, EUR and USD). For each of these, an up-to-date exchange rate is used to automatically update pricing.
• Delivery pricing: One of the more complicated features of the site was the delivery pricing. This needed to be developed so that it accounted for the total weight of ordered items, the value of the order, the location of the delivery and the delivery method chosen (such as tracked or next day).
• Stockists page: We also included a stockists section, which shows shops and online stores that stock Artistic Flair products.

Alongside the inclusion of our bespoke CMS (content management system) - which helps the client to easily track orders and maintain the content on the site - these features all left Artistic Flair delighted.

As a site that brought out our own creative side, we were also satisfied with the finished product:

"With the new website, it is now our hope that Artistic Flair are now able to grow to new heights," said Evoluted's MD Ash Young.

"With its polished finish, we feel it provides the stage the client deserves for their superb products. Given their previous growth, we fully expect them to now expand further and enjoy further interest from bakers and crafters alike," he finished.

You can follow Artistic Flair's ongoing progress via their blog here.