Brintons

Brintons are the world's largest manufacturer of high-quality woven Axminster carpets. A long established company with traditional values their clients include the Kremlin, 10 Downing Street, the White House and the Queen.

In 2002 Brintons web presence was far behind that of their competitors. Together with Getme, Brintons established a long-term web strategy to change this, better promoting themselves via the world wide web, and providing their visitors with the new ways to experience their carpet and services.

In 2008, Brintons web presence is stronger than ever. With more than 35,000 unique visitors a month and a website that far exceeds that of their competitors both in accessibility and features.

Brintons continue to innovate through their website and since 2002 have seen an increase in visitors and carpet sample requests every month (compared with the previous year).

A Tale of Two Markets

Brintons has two distinct markets, the residential market and commercial market. To accommodate these the website is split into two sub-sites, one for each market.

The residential website is aimed at the home market, visitors are provided with a multitude of features for; choosing their perfect carpet, finding a retailer, and supporting customers after their purchase.

The commerical website is aimed at providing inspiration for a broad spectrum of business customers globally, providing information on Brintons capability to produce bespoke solutions including; the design process, technology, and sector case studies.

Choice, choices...

Brintons stocked carpet range includes over 400 carpets, and their design archive contains tens of thousands of inspiring bespoke designs collected since the business first started.

To help visitors find the carpet or design they're looking for Brintons and Getme worked closely together when developing the look and feel of the new website.

Numerous tools make it easy for customers to find carpets such as,

• selecting by design area & range,
• selecting by colour,
• coordinating carpets can be viewed for each carpet,
• the residential website highlights carpets with colours & patterns for this seasons trends,
• and the search can also be used to find carpets by code, name and colour.

Both websites have now moved away from using paging when displaying large carpet selections, instead choosing to allow the customer to view all the carpets within the selection without the need to navigate back and forth.

Within the commercial website visitors can take advantage of the trend for modern wide-screen displays, allowing the page contents and designs to spread wide across the screen.

Many of the commercial website features are aimed at show casing Brintons abilities in the commercial sector including,

• an active news archive providing information on Brintons latest projects and innovations,
• a gallery of case studies where visitors can experience many of Brintons largest projects,
• upcoming events (such as exhibitions and seminars) can be viewed in an events diary,
• and a dedicated design section which includes limited access to the design archive and covers everything from inspiration to implementation.

Virtual carpet

As a product, carpet presents several problems to an on-line visitor. The texture can't be touched or felt, visualising a room from a single swatch is very difficult, and allowing for colour variations between various media devices such as monitors and printers is impossible!

To solve this problem Brintons provide a set of on-line tools for visitors to help them better experience there carpet via the website, including:

Visualisation

Visitors can preview any of the carpets in Brintons extensive range using the view in a room service.

When viewing a carpet, visitors can choose to view the carpet in an existing room photograph. A gallery of room photography allows visitors to choose from a variety of scenes to best match their requirements.

Once a visitor has selected one or more carpets and a room photograph they are able to try their selected carpets on any viable surface within the room (e.g floors, stairs, etc.) Walls can also be recoloured from a selection of predetermined coordinating colours.

Using the view in a room tool visitors can:

• view an accurate depiction of a carpet's pattern repeat,
• view a carpet within a realistic environment (including complex surface shapes such as stairs),
• and compare various carpets in the same room side by side.

Why not try view in a room for yourself? The visualistation tool view in a room works in all leading browsers and does not require users to download additional software and/or plugins. View in a room uses Getme's 3D visualisation software Visualistic.

Touch and feel

As a luxury brand, Brintons believe in producing the best quality products possible. New media can't yet (if ever) replace the real thing and allowing visitors to see, touch and feel a real carpet sample is a crucial part of Brintons marketing.

Visitors can order samples of their favorite carpets from the website in a similar way to ordering products from a traditional ecommerce website (though they are limited to 8 samples at a time).

Requesting samples is free and orders are usually dispatched next day.

The service has proved extremely popular and to cope with the demand for samples the website now exports orders automatically to Brintons internal CRM systems.

Where to buy?

As a supplier, Brintons themselves have no retail outlets, instead they support over 1800 retailers selling Brintons carpets throughout the UK and Ireland.

A key feature of the residential website is the ability for visitors to find directions to their nearest Brintons retailer(s). Brintons selected the Multimap system to provide the distance and direction information required. The Air systems supports integration with several mapping systems including Multimap and Google Maps via their XML API.

Visitors enter their postal code or town initially and are then shown a map and list of Brintons retailers nearest to them (at most the nearest 25 are shown).

On the map each retailer appears as a numbered marker with the number representing which is the closest retailer.

By selecting one of the numbered tabs on the map visitors can review the retailers details and request directions.

When a visitor requests directions to a retailer an interactive map and route are displayed. Each step on the route is highlighted by a numbered tab which can be selected to view the details such as, turn left on to A1, take the 3rd exit at the round-about on to B4542, etc.

The page has a modified CSS style for print, so if the directions are printed by a visitor all unnecessary page elements are removed leaving only the step-by-step directions.

Why not find your nearest Brintons retailer?

On the commercial website, visitors can find their nearest Brintons office or agent via their Region, Country and State in the World Wide Contacts section.

Conclusion

The Brintons website is an example of how a multitude of technologies can, with careful planning, provide visitors with a richer experience via the web. Brintons continue to refine and innovate through their website, investing time in reviewing visitor feedback and reacting to it, ensuring they continue to set the standard for their industry.

Looking to the future Brintons plan to provide more community features such as forums, podcasts, and multilingual content, the Air framework provides a robust and flexible base for Brintons to develop on.

Brintons residential website

Brintons commercial website