Background
An already-successful e-commerce site, with mentions in the Evening Standard, Daily Express, Heat and a whole host of beauty and fashion magazines, HQhair.com was ripe for a makeover itself in 2002. The retail concept had matured, the user base was far larger than ever envisaged and the order and stocktaking process was in need of an overhaul. And that's where we came in…

Aims
To redesign the site, improving on the ordering processes to make the whole operation as slick as possible.

Design
Our first task was to agree a new creative design approach from a range of ideas presented to the client. It needed to be fast to download and easy to manage. We kept the best bits of the old design, and made the rest better.

Features
We built the e-commerce and stocktaking engine as a totally bespoke plugin. This was based around the client's exact specifications - both new ideas and existing concepts that they wanted to keep. It's almost fully automatic - the 'human time' spent processing orders is absolutely minimal, and includes order picking, label printing, a discount scheme, tracking, a membership system and much much more.
Half-way through the project the client re-thought the specifications, realising what else could be achieved on-line, and our flexible approach and ideas were key to this.

Conclusion
HQ Hair has a site that befits its product - glossy, attractive and always up-to-date.

In all, the site has evolved far more than originally envisaged, but the new site has attracted the highest praise and raised the profile of HQhair significantly.