unLTD’s Mike Durham caught up with Fishtank to discover how they washed away BedWorld’s old online identity in favour of a digital makeover that put all their website worries to sleep and helped them sail through the pandemic
Honesty and trust – two values that digital agency Fishtank believes are key to building a successful relationship with clients.
It’s exactly this sort of transparency that brought director Yusuf Zaman back to the digital agency two years ago for a reinvention of bed and mattress manufacturer BedWorld’s brand and website following previous work on their sister company, Chelsea Beds, back in 2015.
“BedWorld was a successful brand, but Yusuf knew it was time to take it to the next level.” said Gemma Curry, Fishtank’s head of client services.
While there were many challenges involved in modernising the look and feel of BedWorld, particularly ensuring a cohesive style that would work both online and within the business’ showrooms across the UK, the real difficulties involved the website.
This was because the site, which at the time was the biggest B2B e-commerce platform Fishtank had ever encountered, was developed using Magento 1 – which was being phased out in favour of Magento 2.
Ola Tambor, Fishtank’s head of digital, said: “It was more than just building a website. It was transferring 6000 products from one system to another, with two systems speaking two different languages.”
It quickly became a huge task for head of development, Mike Garlick, who spent many months getting the site ready for an overnight launch just weeks away from Black Friday that thankfully all went according to plan.
Over time, a great working relationship formed between Mike and Yusuf which has been key to BedWorld’s swimmingly successful digital presence. Once Mike even picked up the phone at 3am after a glitch caused the website to go down.
Gemma added: “Mike was under no obligation to pick that phone up and jump into action, which just demonstrates his dedication to BedWorld and the affinity between him and Yusuf.
“It’s also a clear example of how no one is off limits to our clients. Sometimes in an agency environment you’ll only speak to an account manager, but we’re happy for clients to speak to our designers and developers. Everyone adds something to a project.”
It should come as no surprise that Yusuf had the confidence in Fishtank to ask them to turn their attention to sister companies like AAA Beds.
At the time, Yusuf already had to manage thousands of products on BedWorld alone, and was looking for a way to streamline the way he regularly updates several websites.
This led Mike to design a bespoke multi-site solution which housed them all within one convenient platform.
Yusuf also entrusted Ola to take a look at AAA Beds digital marketing, and encountered a Google Ads strategy unlike anything she’d seen before.
Ola said: “It was one of the most peculiar things I’ve ever seen. They basically had an ad group for every single product, and there were thousands of them, and every ad group had just one key word in it. However, every ad was exactly the same, so they didn’t differ at all between themselves.”
With the help of a Google strategist, Ola made the campaign more logical and focused, and saw a boost to revenue of 66 per cent within just one month.
Gemma said: “Yusuf trusted us to build these bespoke solutions that ultimately streamlined things from a business point of view and helped aid internal processes.
“Our developers want to be challenged and thrive on identifying new technical solutions which help clients to achieve their potential and ultimately create more profit as, at the end of the day, they are businesses.”
According to Ola, the scale and challenge of Fishtank’s long relationship with BedWorld has also helped to take the digital agency to newfound heights.
“Yusuf understands the statistics, understands the user journey, and is very much aware that an additional click in the journey might be costing him money. It’s great to work with someone like that as you learn yourself.
“Over the years I was lucky enough to learn a lot about marketing, and have built up a lot of degree and agency experience, but collaborating with someone who runs very successful e-commerce platforms – and who is keen to develop and invest in them – is invaluable. It has definitely helped to elevate us as an agency.”
It should come as no surprise that the pair are eager to continue working together, especially when you factor in the fact that Bedworld’s monthly revenue more than tripled over the past 12 months with Fishtank’s support.
The digital agency is set to return to the sister company where the relationship first began, Chelsea Beds, which is in the early stages of a digital revamp set to highlight its unique boutique feel.
“We’re not afraid to take on new, complicated things. We don’t limit ourselves and say, ‘We’ll build you a website and that’s it’. We don’t say, ‘We won’t do this for you because it’ll take our head of development for six months’.
“As an agency it’s our duty to stay at the forefront of digital marketing, and do whatever is necessary to assist our clients on their way to success.”
You can learn more about Fishtank by heading to: www.fishtankagency.com
