North East Shutters is an exciting new company that designs premium, made-to-measure window shutters for private and commercial clients across the North East of Scotland. LBD Studio was appointed to help the founders form a name and proposition for their new venture, focusing on inspirational design, quality materials and time-honed craftsmanship.
During the initial research stages, we identified a clear gap in the market for a bespoke shutter business that focused on craftsmanship and service. With years of experience in the industry, the founders of North East Shutters fit that mould perfectly and could bring significant credibility and value to the sector. By embracing a purpose-led approach, the team could focus their attention on one lucrative section of the market, tailoring all messaging and communications to their target audience while building a portfolio of partners, tradespeople and suppliers.
To help transition their approach towards a higher-income customer, we also developed a commercial B2B service to bring additional income and prospects. This arm of the business predominantly focuses on retail and hospitality businesses that need to make an impression on their customers — this brings significant appeal to architectural and interior design practices looking for trade partners that understand and specialise in premium window finishing.
After identifying the brand position and target audience, we focused on creating a brand name that would resonate with local and national audiences. Following several iterations and developments, the phrase ‘North East Shutters’ presented two clear benefits. Firstly, it embraces the heritage and artisanal craft synonymous with the North East of Scotland. Secondly, it roots the companies origins in the same region while indicating the areas served.
With the name and proposition defined, we then designed a visual identity system to communicate the service USPs. The resulting brand identity uses a confident logo with a subtle shutter motif, a restrained colour palette and aspirational product imagery. Together, these assets form a unique brand system that looks and feels premium while communicating value for money and quality service. From here, we created a range of materials to help build the brand — these include stationery, specification sheets and project folders.
The final step in the North East Shutters brand creation journey was to develop a new website to attract and convert new customers. The brief for the website was clear; it should be visually engaging, informative and representative of the service offering. To bring the service offer to life, we agreed that the website should showcase each variation of window shutter while explaining the design and installation services and visualising the critical locations targetted by the business. It was also essential to have a strong presence across all major search engines, so we included an on-page technical search engine optimisation and off-site profile building programme within the build phase.
As part of the website content strategy, we devised a plan that clearly explained the three content types; products, services and locations. The products ranged from six types of window shutters, nine variations of window blinds and a broad selection of bespoke exterior awnings. From here, we expanded upon the various material types and finishes, including wireless mechanisms, thermal coatings and printed fabrics.
The content strategy resulted in a website spanning over 50 pages, each optimised to draw traffic from Google, social media and beyond. For example, we clearly defined each service page’s optimisation strategy; this is also true of the ten location pages.
To build a technically excellent website, we included Technical SEO (on-page search engine optimisation) from the very start. The decision to optimise for search informed how we wrote and structured the content and page hierarchy, resulting in 50+ pages with unique, high-ranking content. The scope of the technical SEO also saw us benchmark the website against their main competitors — this helped us compare performance over time and helped determine new optimisation ideas.
For Google and other search engines to rank the new website efficiently, it was essential to establish the business profile across the wider internet. We helped manage this process through targetted listing and advertisement, including placements on Google My Business, Yell and many more.
Performance is essential to all websites — especially when they are new. To help meet and surpass established web standards, we used the latest Google Lighthouse system to track progress and meet all user experience and usability standards from the very start of the design process. The early adoption of this technology ensured that we efficiently coded every website section with no unnecessary resources or content. Working hand-in-hand with the website content strategy and the Technical SEO brief, this has resulted in a lightning-fast website that far surpasses the identified benchmarks and local industry competitors. With a Google PageSpeed score ranking in the high 90’s for mobile and a 100% score for desktop use at the time of writing, we are confident that the North East Shutters website will continue to thrive over the coming months and years.
We partner with ambitious businesses to breathe new life into their brands, products and services. If you have a vision for your business, we’d love to hear from you.
Email:
Tel:
Recent work