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Company: National Numbers
Project: Personalised Number Plate Web Site

http://www.nationalnumbers.co.uk

Dates: Dec 2007 to Dec 2007

How did the project start?

Our website, www.nationalnumbers.co.uk, started life in November 2005 and was created by a talented web designer and developer, Martin Little. From its humble beginnings as a static website, now, in 2008, it hosts the 30 million registrations we hold on record, and is always amongst the first to give visitors new and advanced features to buy, sell, transfer, and value number plates.

Following a major revamp in 2006, we decided to benchmark our website against the rest of the industry. The outcome of this research indicated that no particular firm excelled in displaying number plate results on their website.

This led us to believe that if we improved the layout of the results, we could make the process of buying registrations online far easier, and position ourselves as market leaders in terms of selling cherished number plates.

The current version of the website, as a project, was completed in February 2007, however the website benefits from a cycle of continuous evaluation, improvement and change.

What options did you consider?

We have considered many features and technologies, and have never shied away from being the first in our industry to take the lead.

In fact, we are always surprised at how quickly our competitors catch onto our ideas and plagiarise them, which shows how innovative they really are!

Most options we’ve considered have comprised features and improvements for the website. For example, we are the only number plate dealer to offer an online valuation service that is powerful enough to apply an instant value to any number plate - totally free of charge, all on the web and within 30 seconds. Following the valuation they can advertise their registration, adjusting its selling price as and when they choose.

We have always liked to give our customers a variety of options. To this end we led the way in the creation of “The Big Picture” – an innovative number plate layout system that allows quick cross-referencing of prefix letters and numbers. We offer our customers a variety of ways to pay and have always stayed on top of the latest finance options from providers to incorporate into our website.

Recently, as part our of search engine optimisation strategy, we have undertaken innovative new approaches to online marketing via Blogging, Facebook, MySpace, and social bookmarking tools such as Digg.

What help and expertise did you receive?

Most expertise was generated within the business, with Martin Little carrying out all of the complex programming and finer details of the web site as part of his daily work.

We have also worked with highly recommended companies in the North East. For instance, some of the features on our web site were generated through discussions with Visual Soft, a local statistics company.

Did you face any challenges or learn any lessons?

The largest challenge we have faced has to be the sheer complex approach to reprogramming the website. What was originally envisaged as a 4 to 6 week job actually took a full 6 months to implement.

Our second largest challenge has been to gain better natural rankings through the search engine Google. This need for improvement has led us to constantly monitor and evaluate the content of our web site - we are constantly looking for ways to improve the quality of our content, improving visitor experience, and gaining better rankings.

What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?

I believe our functionality and display results are probably the best available, and to date no other dealer has copied them, which indicates just how difficult this must be to do.

Yet, a cycle of constant improvement has been absolutely essential for us to stay at or near the top of the industry.

We believe our greatest outcome is evident in our vastly improved customer experience – through additional functionality, greater ease-of-use, and more and better ways to find what they are looking for.

The timing of our website revamp in 2006 also provided a particularly relevant outcome. As previously mentioned, the site went live in February 2006. In July of the same year, the entire number plate industry went into a price war situation, with the majority of our products being reduced in price by up to 70% to keep in line with competition. Without the newly redesigned website and its new functionality, we would no doubt be in a serious financial position today. So, one of the most relevant outcomes is that, due the website and other factors, we have managed to maintain our income stream at the same level since 2005.

What are your plans for the future?

As previously mentioned the largest hurdle we must overcome with our website comes in increasing our natural rankings.

We have worked on the problem with two SEO firms, with limited success. For us to maintain our position in the industry, it is critical that we improve these rankings. We are working on increasing the quality and organisation of our content. This will involve rewriting and improving our online “knowledge base”, a collection of some 200 number plate related articles.

We would also like to involve our users in studies and online questionnaires in order to improve our service. We believe this is the most important way in which we can evaluate and improve our website.

With the new digital age upon us, the user is more than ever becoming the creator of the content we see online – we would like to get involved in allowing customers to form communities, share opinions and voice critiques online, to further increase our knowledge within our market.