A Round Of Applause For Mr Fothergill’s New Website, Just In Time For Christmas!

Mr Fothergill’s has been a client for many years and so we were absolutely thrilled when they asked us to help them with the redesign of their website. The new site has just been launched with a fresh and revitalised look-and-feel, and a tidied site architecture ahead of 2022 and the new growing season.

We’ve helped Mr Fothergill’s to establish a social media presence in the UK and have enjoyed every step of our journey with this giant in the gardening industry. Mr Fothergill’s have an extensive presence across the world, making them one of the biggest independent packeted seed companies, and they have a solid reputation for quality and honesty – always a bonus when you are working on the front-line of social media for a brand!

In step with guiding the company in developing a social media presence, what began as pure social media marketing activity, has morphed over the years. We have increasingly taken on a first line customer service role to help the brand field enquiries in both the retail and mail order sides of the business. We have also acted as a conduit for international enquiries to help the company to continue to extend its reach across dozens of countries across the world. We have also found ourselves liaising with press and partnerships and dealing with all manner of inbound enquiries. You could say that we’ve seen it all over the years, through the medium of social media!

Social media has become a key part of people’s day-to-day lives with access to social in the back pockets of millions as smart phones have taken off. More and more people have turned to social as a first touch point with the Mr Fothergill’s brand and to make a personal connection with it. In step with this we have also seen the website audience turning from desktop to tablet (one Christmas a few years ago in particular was a significant turning point for tablet take up!), and then turn from tablet to smart phone access as the technology has become more ubiquitous.

The year that was 2020, with Covid19, lockdowns and Brexit, provided a perfect storm of activity for Mr Fothergill’s, seeing them generating record-breaking sales figures online as the high street was shut down during the height of the first UK lockdown. We’ve observed younger gardeners and first-timers getting into gardening as a result, which has required a shift in social media messaging once more to talk to this new less-experienced audience.

The Mr Fothergill’s website has had a very long life serving up millions of page impressions and serving tens of thousands of customers day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out. With advancements in technology it had become outdated over the years, needing a revamp to become a responsively designed website that is mobile friendly to capture increasingly larger audiences on mobile devices. Being such a workhorse of an ecommerce website with a strong digital footprint, a redesign has been a technical balancing act to revitalise the interface design whilst not upsetting the apple cart with its standing on Google.

The development team at Mr Fothergills have done an excellent job of putting the new designs in place, and we’ve already had streams of positive feedback on social media channels and directly from customers who are loving finding their way around the new website. If ever there was a reason to pop the champagne bottle at the weekend, this would be it for sure!

This investment in their website will help them further build upon the new demographic of gardeners that got into home gardening for the very first time whilst stuck in a government enforced lockdown during the pandemic, and hopefully as the succession of lockdowns we’ve experienced continues to lift further and people start living life as normal again, their newfound love of gardening will remain with them.

We’re sure that you will love the new website as much as we do. You can take a look right here: www.mr-fothergills.co.uk

Contact us

If you’d like help with your digital marketing email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199 for a quick chat.