Albas, France – Voile d’Ombrage France are authorised retailers of the Sail Shade World product range. Sail Shade World are an Australian company and the world’s largest supplier of shade sails, with over 80,000 units sold.

Since 2010, Voile d’Ombrage France have been promoting shade sails in the French market and the majority of their business comes through their e-commerce website: http://voiledombragefrance.fr . A new version of the site has just been launched using a mobile first, responsive design approach.

Marketing manager Dan Murray has more details:

“Our on-line business has grown rapidly over the last few years as shade sails continue to grow in popularity with our style conscious French customers. Previous generations of our website have used a fixed width design with no mobile option which has meant that customers accessing the site from mobile devices have needed to pinch and scroll to fully view the site. Our website visitor figures show an increasing trend of mobile usage to access the site and we believe this is set to continue. It was therefore important for us to commission a new design to take account of this important trend.”

Anais Giraud was the lead web developer for this new project and she explains some more of the technical details:

“Adopting a ‘mobile first’ design philosophy meant that we had to completely revise the existing design to ensure that a mobile user would be able to access the full functionality of the site and shopping cart without zooming or scrolling. We have added a limited amount of progressive enhancement so that users with larger screens can see some additional content. The site was built and validated using html5 and is compatible with all modern browsers and ie8+. For the website framework we chose Kraken ( http://cferdinandi.github.io/kraken/ ) by Chris Ferdinandi as a comprehensive and light weight solution. This has proved an ideal base and allowed us to achieve very fast page loading times – another essential element for a mobile first design.”

The new website includes an on-line instant quote system. The customer simply enters the dimensions of the sail that they require, which can be a 3, 4, 5 or even 6 sided shape. The system then calculates the actual sail dimensions and provides an instant quotation on screen which can also be sent to the customer by email. Quotes are valid for 7 days. When entering the required dimensions the customer can either enter the exact dimensions of the sail or, as an alternative, they can enter the dimensions between the mounting points and the system will make an allowance for the tensioner fittings required at each corner of the sail.

Three types of shade sail material are offered – 230 g/m2 for most residential applications up to 30 m2, 340 g/m2 for heavy duty or professional applications in larger sizes and third option in a fire retardant material for special applications.

Initial reception to the site has been very encouraging with a reduction in bounce rate and increased time on the site. As the number of mobile users continues to grow Voile d’Ombrage France now have a website that is well placed to take advantage of this trend in the run up to the 2015 shade sail season.

Voile d’Ombrage France is owned by French Vie Ltd – a UK registered company.

Company Contact Information
French Vie Ltd
Colin LAWRENCE
Hauts Du Brel
46140 ALBAS
France
+33 565 31 39 57
http://voiledombragefrance.fr