Ken's Yard

"X402 have worked with us each step of the way in developing our ecommerce website. They have guided us through the process of customer usability and effective e-commerce trading underpinned by sound commercial awareness. The site developed by X402 has also been built such that we can administer it internally with only basic PC skills - making what we feared would be a complex process a very simple one."

Ken McLelland - Managing Director, www.kensyard.co.uk

Ken's Yard, based in Grangemouth, has been launched by several key players in the building supplies market. Aimed at project and self-builders, plus smaller merchants, the site has a range of more than 30,000 products with plans to increase the range to 45,000 in the very near future.

Ken's Yard enables building professionals to reduce procurement costs by taking full advantage of the reach and power of the internet without compromising quality or choice of products. The company saw that the market place was made up of some specialist operators which were mostly in very narrow product sectors and one or two well-known, established operators offering a wider, but more DIY-orientated range. The gap was seen as combining the credibility associated with a specialist site with the wider appeal of the generalist site. Essentially Ken's Yard was positioned to appeal to the professional who now sees the benefits of e-commerce while being accessible to the competent project builder who is quite comfortable researching and sourcing online.

To address the market opportunities Ken's Yard appointed X402 to fully develop their extensive online e-commerce system with the challenges associated with a large product range. Additionally X402 developed an in-store point of sale system to be used at depot level as well as backend systems which provides customer management with stock control, purchase order management, reporting and full site content management. In addition X402 worked on implementation of consultant's Search Engine Optimisation recommendations. The system also integrated all e-commerce and point of sales systems to the company's Sage accounting system.