Elizabeth’s Bookshop are an institution in Western Australia, with a visit to their warehouse Fremantle store almost a rite of passage for book lovers. They offer a unique range of new & pre-loved books, with stores in Perth, Fremantle, and Newtown in Sydney’s inner west.
They are also one of PerthWeb’s longest clients, with their first web site launched by us way back in 2000, and their second site winning a WA Web Industry award. We must be doing something right…
The retail book industry has seen enormous changes since the Internet arrived on the scene, with the competition now mostly large online sellers.
To remain relevant, the new Elizabeth’s Bookshop website needed to focus on their strengths, such as their unique branding, stores & range of books, whilst also delivering a slick online retail experience.
It was also crucially important that any new e-commerce platform continued to power their book listings on the ABE Books marketplace, and that a greater emphasis was placed on making the website and its catalog as search engine friendly as possible.
The Outcomes
The decision was made for Elizabeth’s Bookshop to upgrade to the popular & powerful WooCommerce platform, leaving behind PerthWeb’s own venerable but aged CMS/eCommerce solution, which is no longer offered.
WooCommerce is an amazingly flexible & extensible e-commerce platform, with the ability to work with multiple shipping providers & accounting platforms, and with support for multiple languages & currencies.
PerthWeb developed a unique vintage feel for the website, which promotes the Elizabeth’s Bookshop brand & its store experience, whilst also delivering a great online retail experience. Online sales are now on the increase. Sometimes something old, trusted, & true, can still be improved.