West of England
Case studies
PRide Award Entry
West of England
Category 19. Best Website or Microsite
British Asparagus Growers Association – www.british-asparagus.co.uk
Pam Lloyd PR
The aim of www.british-asparagus.co.uk
The British Asparagus website has been in existence for since 2001 and was initially a listing site for members of the Asparagus Growers Association. While the site was enhanced in 2003 to provide consumers with access to recipes and background information to support the PR campaign it retained a trade website look and feel.
In order to make the site more consumer focussed, Pam Lloyd PR implemented a complete redesign and rewrite in 2007. Building on the success of the media relations campaign over the preceding 3 years, the aims were:
- To use the web to promote British Asparagus and its key messages to key target audiences:
- British Asparagus is the best. It has a short season so get it while you can!
- Summer is on the way – time to buy British Asparagus.
- British Asparagus is for everyone, for any occasion
- British Asparagus is versatile, healthy and quick & easy to prepare
- To provide a more informative, resource rich website.
- For consumers – To provide the destination to visit for information about British Asparagus that was a more enjoyable site to visit than the previous site.
- For Consumer and Trade Media – To provide an easily accessible, constantly available resource for British Asparagus resources, product and recipes images and background information.
- For Asparagus Association Member Growers – To provide resources that help them to promote their businesses.
- To refresh the site for the 2007 British Asparagus season and to have a website that could be actively promoted in advance of the 2008 season.
How www.british-asparagus.co.uk met its target audience’s needs
The website had to meet the diverse needs of consumers, trade & consumer media and member growers while retaining a consumer facing feel. Our redevelopment of the website therefore, delivered:
- A focus on consumers and put their needs to the fore (easy navigation, accessible information, bright, interesting design and content). Content included the following:
- Cooking instructions, recipes, occasion led meal ideas in ‘Cooking Quarter’
- Promoting British Asparagus’ versatility and healthy credentials through the ‘Good for you’ section.
- Providing information about how to get hold of British Asparagus outside multiple retailers ‘How to buy’ section.
- A media section that was one click away from the home page to allow easy access to all resources for journalists likely to be under pressure and short on patience. Website content included the following:
- Downloadable press centre information for consumer and trade media
- New for 2007
- British Asparagus
- Cooking quarter
- The 2 week asparagus diet
- Health Benefit
- Pam Lloyd PR promoted the Press Centre section to journalists with a postcard counting down to the season mimicking the countdown on the website home page.
105 Days to Go – Long Lead Media
c. HTML email follow up we then followed up the mailings
With an HTML email reminder as the season approached.
The email provided journalists with one click access to the media centre on
www.british-asparagus.co.uk
- Grower resources positioned on the home page to allow for one click navigation to
- Downloadable posters to promote their crop
- Download recipe leaflet to help them to add value to their consumers
Design and Creativity – what makes your work stand out?
Fresh produce marketing has become increasingly competitive with many different crops now pursuing a variety of campaigns using different marketing channels to target consumers. Almost all campaigns use the web to varying degrees which makes it vital that www.british-asparagus.co.uk continues to lead the way.
In addition to creating the highly relevant content for the British Asparagus website we focussed on 4 key aspects of design and creativity:
- Colour - Bright, fresh design using colours from the brand palette to reflect the colours of the product itself, its freshness and being synonymous with the start of summer.
- Great photography – bright and eye catching making asparagus the focus of attention
- Copy – Straightforward, friendly copy, no jargon and recipes that are easy to follow.
- Simple navigation – easy to find information
Evaluation and feedback
British Asparagus continues to be a market leader in consumer focussed fresh produce marketing using PR and the web. As a result of its marketing campaign implemented by Pam Lloyd PR, British Asparagus has continued to enjoy strong growth, an increase of 500% in UK household penetration between 2003 and 2008, despite poor weather in both the 2007 and 2008 seasons.
Website usage has increased significantly in the 2007 and 2008 seasons as a result of the website redevelopment work conducted by Pam Lloyd PR. This is shown in the table and charts below:
|
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
|||||
May |
June |
April |
May |
June |
April |
May |
June |
|
Visits* |
4617 |
2731 |
2033 |
5109 |
2934 |
7974 |
11245 |
7400 |
Pages* viewed |
8420 |
4272 |
3402 |
9011 |
4643 |
22016 |
33945 |
19448 |
Data* download |
1.7GB |
0.7GB |
1.4GB |
3.2GB |
1.8GB |
2.6GB |
6.5GB |
3.2GB |
*NB figures unavailable for April 2006
During May and June, the key months of the season, visits to the website increased by:
- 10% from 2006 to 2007
- 132% from 2007 to 2008
Number of pages viewed increased by
- 8% from 2006 to 2007
- 210% from 2007 to 2008
The average number of pages per visit went up from:
- 1.7 pages per visit in 2007
- 2.9 pages per visit in 2008
The redesigned site also improved visitor numbers out of season between July 2007 and March 2008 with average visitor numbers up by 82% and pages viewed up by 162%.
The media found the site especially useful with significant increases in data (images and background documents) downloaded between 2006 and 2008.
Finally, the www.british-asparagus.co.uk Google ranking for organic search remains high for a very niche crop and website.
For the search term ‘Asparagus’ the website is the number 1 for organic search results of UK sites and number 2 (below Wikipedia) for organic search results from the worldwide web. Such high google rankings mean that the website is well optimised for its most relevant consumer search terms.
The budgetary band for this project was a) 0 – £100,000 including all costs and agency time.