Case Studies

Godfrey DIY

Who is Godfrey DIY?

Godfrey DIY is East Anglia's leading independent DIY and garden store.

The company has 6 retail outlets as well as a strong online presence.

Their Web application was developed in-house in December 2006 and serves two objectives; firstly to provide an additional means for existing regional customers to find information (to enhance press and TV advertising) and secondly to create additional sales UK-wide.

Why did they come to us?

When the Website was migrated from a third party to their in-house management, they sacrificed address lookups initially but quickly realised how essential address verification was. The main concern was failed deliveries due to incorrectly addressed parcels. This was costing them time and money, as well as inconveniencing customers unnecessarily.

What are the benefits?

Excellent Support

"We found Allies Computing's PostCoder Web SOAP service using a Google search. Allies' response was so prompt and positive that we felt we didn't need or want to talk to anyone else! Using SOAP, the Web service uses a protocol that is very easy for our developers to integrate into our PHP application. We also received some very helpful technical advice from Allies®." Barry Godfrey, Managing Director.

Barry continues about our service and technical support and he said it was "...incredibly helpful and prompt. I was surprised at the extent you were willing to help us. We have been using the PostCoder® address lookup service from Allies® on our Website and we are very impressed by the ease with which it slotted into our application. With their very helpful support team, Allies® made the whole process as painless as possible. Now we have address lookup functionality added to our site I am very confident that we have minimised the possibility of customer drop-off at the checkout. The service is very realistically priced, and I regard it as a very effective tool in protecting us against failed deliveries due to addressing errors."

Reliable data

Since adding address lookup back into the Website, Godfrey's Web Despatch team have more confidence in the reliability of the address data.

Simple order process, increasing sales

Another benefit of address lookup software is it has speeded up the checkout process considerably and made it much simpler and quicker for customers to place an order.

Along with adding the address lookup to the checkout stages, some other modifications were also made. Since then, there has been a marked reduction in the 'drop out' rate at the various stages of the checkout.