B&Q launches new e-commerce site

Monday, October 20, 2014 - 09:22 by David Aiken

This month DIY retailer, B&Q, unveiled its brand new website, having spent £60 million to completely overhaul the look and feel of its digital storefront. Its aim is to attract more customers from the UK to carry out safe shopping online, rather than looking to rivals.

£60 million is a significant amount of cash to spend on revamping an e-commerce site and much of the money has been plumbed into making it mobile-friendly. This is achieved through responsive design, which is something that shoppers will have seen cropping up in more and more places.

Basically, it is now possible for retailers to use clever coding to make mobile and desktop sites one and the same, with pages adapting to suit the device from which they are being accessed. So whether you visit B&Q’s site from a desktop computer or a smartphone, you should have access to the same shopping opportunities.

While in the past it was necessary for separate mobile sites to handle visitors using portable devices to carry out safe shopping online, the responsive approach results in a much more cohesive experience.

The site now has an improved search function to compliment its revised design, making it easy to find items you are looking for quickly, even if you are using a generic search term to seek them out. There are still some tweaks and improvements that can be made, but the responsive nature of the site’s design means that it should be a little cheaper for B&Q to enact any other adaptations further down the line.

With a lot of money on the line, B&Q will be hoping to see a real boost in sales following the launch of this new site, so it will be interesting to see how it fares going forwards.