H S Walsh & Sons Ltd
A Case Study in E-commerce Modernisation and Sales Growth
H S Walsh & Sons are a leading supplier of tools, equipment, clock and watch materials to the jewellery and horological trades. They have been serving clients for over 75 years, from individual designer makers and independent retailers to large industry groups. H S Walsh & Sons are proud holders of a Royal Warrant of Appointment.
H S Walsh & Sons, who have 2 branches in prime locations in both London’s Hatton Garden and Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, recognised their e-commerce offering required modernisation to accelerate sales and growth.
“We were looking for an e-commerce partner to take our online store to the next level, to redesign the site and improve the functionality and conversion rates.”
Patrick Sheehan - HS Walsh & Sons Ltd. CEO
There were a number of challenges identified by H S Walsh & Sons to better integrate their online presence with their internal systems. Walsh approached Webselect as they had a proven track record within the jewellery & horological market, supporting businesses with multiple categories, products and SKUs. With their expertise in working with a company as a partner to craft and bend the right solution around them, the partnership was set.
The previous system was built on Drupal and was not satisfying the business on a number of levels as Walsh had grown. As the version of Drupal was approaching removal of support, Walsh took the opportunity to replatform.
H S Walsh & Sons were looking for a robust system that could handle the complexity of their business which has a very large number of products and SKUs across a complicated category structure including hazardous materials and multiple discount levels. The Drupal site was not integrated with Walsh’s accounting and stock systems so considerable time was required in the back office to manually transfer data between other systems within the business, including updating pricing and applying customer discounts. This made processing online orders very time consuming with increased phone calls and email correspondence with customers. Overall it was an unsatisfactory customer experience tolerated by everyone but holding the business back.
In entering into a new rebuild and redesign of the H S Walsh & Sons e-commerce site the business leaders naturally had some concerns over cost, payback, disruption to business operation and could Webselect be trusted to deliver?
“We are really pleased that we chose Webselect, as the project to re-platform to SelectCommerce effectively managed the translation of our complex, organically grown, former site and the team advised us and were straightforward to deal with.”
Patrick Sheehan - HS Walsh & Sons Ltd. CEO
From the start Webselect wrapped a team around the project to understand all the pinch points and unique practices in the business and advise on the best solutions, where to spend money and where to hold back. Webselect have a reputation of having long partnerships with brands averaging 10+ years and this provided reassurance that both parties were in this to succeed together.
Some of the business and technical challenges to overcome that has led to a more efficient service offering for H S Walsh & Sons and a doubling of the site conversion rate.
The Benefits and Outcomes
Working with the team at H S Walsh & Sons we architected a solution that fitted their bespoke requirements using SelectCommerce. This fits their business, their existing business applications and supports ways of working that are preferred by staff and customers. What’s more, Webselect offered a team to support the new service with UK based 24/7, in service SLA support and this provided the reassurance needed when investing further into online retail.
“The functionality of the CMS and the site is a huge improvement in UX, and for us to administer.”
Patrick Sheehan - HS Walsh & Sons Ltd. CEO
Webselect handled a complex data migration, SelectCommerce automatically synchronises with H S Walsh & Sons’ on-premise Sage system, the stock is instantly and automatically allocated for web orders, and the site stock levels now accurately account for stock sold through multi-channels - telephone, retail and e-commerce.
Trade customers can now accurately place an order, apply their trade code and in real time account for the accurate number of stock available and cost of the order placed. Since onboarding to SelectCommerce and working with Webselect the new e-commerce site has seen an almost instant increase in their conversion rate + 143.35% to be exact, that's more sales and happy customers
SelectCommerce also integrated Nice Payments, Webselects own payment gateway which has saved H S Walsh & Sons 0.78% on their existing card fees - an annual saving in excess of 10's of thousands of pounds on the previous gateway which has massively improved security and reduced failed transactions due to bolt on module inconsistencies.
“Since launching, our conversion rates have doubled and along with implementing Nice Payments, it has been a hit for both our customers and ourselves.”
Patrick Sheehan - HS Walsh & Sons Ltd. CEO