Opticians are a well networked lot! We did a job for an optician a few years back, who referred us to Nichola Kennedy, who has also referred us on to another optician, Margaret Barrett.

Nichola came to us at the end of 2014 in need of the classic package: responsive website design + search engine ranking.

Driver

Nichola Kennedy has run her success business for several years, but she knew she needed to update her website to keep it relevant and hopefully encourage new customers to make bookings:

Having  a website for my optometry practice has been on my “to-do” list for a long time.  I did set up a free website with Blacknight and Getting Business Online a few years ago but I felt it wasn’t fulfilling the requirements I needed and so I let it expire.  I had a WordPress blog also, however I always felt that without a professional website to drive traffic to, I was wasting my time.

– Nichola Kennedy, Founder of Kilcullen Opticians

After receiving funding from Kildare Local Enterprise Office, she did her research on website designers who could deliver, and she chose Brightspark.

Challenge

We knew that the website had to reflect the professional and warm nature of the team at Kilcullen Opticians. It also needed to position Kilcullen Optician as the leading destination of eye care in Kildare – and this meant search engine optimisation.

At the end of 2014, when so many people use mobiles to access websites, this meant that the site had to be responsive.  Brightspark has been designing mobile first since 2009, so this was part and parcel of what we offer.  By April 2015, when Google changed its algorithm to place mobile sites first, this was indeed a good thing.

Design

Nichola Kennedy’s site uses a WordPress theme with custom plugins, which helps to drive down costs.

The design is clean and white, with different pops of colour. The blue and pinks are bright and mark a huge change from the more muted tones of the old site.

Every Brightspark website is persona driven.This means we take a little time at the start to work out who the target audience is, and what are their key content needs.  It makes it easier for these potential customers to find what they need quickly when they get to the site.

Kilcullen Optician offers the full range of optometry services to its customers, who hail from Kildare and surrounding areas. A trio of customers is used in our website design. Instead of the stock shot people, we trawled Creative Commons to find interesting pics of real live people – my favourite is the cool older dude!

Aren’t these three captivating?

Nichola had already run a blog before, so this would feature in the new site. Nichola is good at updating her customers with news and offers.

Delivering On SEO

It isn’t all pretty colours and killer content you know! Kilcullen Optician also had to compete with the larger chain optometrists and local businesses to be the number 1 for optometry in Kildare.

We followed the launch with 6 months SEO and Brightspark got 8 out of our 15 keywords ranking for us on page 1!

– Nichola Kennedy, Kilcullen Optician

While SEO got new potential customers onto the site, a cool pop-up plugin helps them to stick around. Nichola does a great email newsletter with highlights from the blog and other interesting things.

The pop-up encourages these email opt-ins without being too intrusive.

Our Process Works!

Throughout the process, Maryrose and her team responded quickly to all my requests and I found them to be efficient, trustworthy and focused.

– Nichola Kennedy

The Result? A Happy Client!

The last six months have seen Kilcullen Optician thrive with the new website and SEO kicking in. In the words of our favourite Kilcullen client:

I now have a website that I am extremely proud of, as it represents my business in a unique and personal way. We have seen a definite increase in footfall since the website launch and work that Brightspark did on SEO.

– Nichola Kennedy, Founder of Kilcullen Opticians

Sure isn’t that what it’s all about?

New site, with search engine, brings new customers.

If you think your website could do with an update and you’d like us to inject some energy into your business, then give us a call! We’re experts at what we do, and we can create a beautiful, functional site for you, with the minimum fuss that is cost-effective.

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We’ll always get back to you within one business day.