It's a year since Mumford & Wood - an Essex-based manufacturer of high-quality wooden windows and doors - launched its new web site. And congratulations are very much in order - not just on the site's first birthday, but because of its spectacular success.

Developed by A Recipe For Success, the site was carefully designed to meet the needs of Mumford & Wood's principal clients - architects, building contractors and property developers, some of whom come from as far afield as the West Indies.

Thanks to the site's advanced on-line ordering facilities, Mumford & Wood has been able to reduce the time it takes for clients to get quotations significantly and achieve a 30 per cent increase in turnover.

By downloading computer-aided design (CAD) drawings of windows and doors, clients can create accurate building designs and eliminate costly 'last-minute' design changes on the construction site. Use of the 'FastrackCAD' drawings also allows Mumford & Wood to reduce the time it takes to manufacture and deliver the client's order - typically by several weeks.

Alternatively, clients can use an online 'Get a Quote' service that guides users through the wide range of windows and doors on offer, allowing them to select the accessories, paint finishes, and mouldings they require. Once the client's shopping list is complete, a quotation is prepared offline and returned by email. Because the web site checks that all the required details have been supplied and presents the client's shopping list to the company's staff in a consistently structured format, the time taken to produce quotations has been considerably reduced.

Of course, the site also includes a comprehensive product catalogue and other information about the company, all presented in a style consistent with the company's reputation for quality, craftsmanship and attention to detail. Together with pay-per-click advertising and careful design of web pages to improve the company's visibility on Google and other search engines, this has helped Mumford & Wood increase the number of unique visitors to its web site to 8,000 a month - a significant achievement for a specialist business-to-business supplier.

Of course, getting people to visit a web site is just a start - the important thing is to convert their interest into sales, and that's where Mumford & Wood's site has been a real success. By designing the online services to meet the specialist needs of architects, building contractors and property developers, A Recipe For Success has helped the company enhance its relationship with its principal clients, grow its business significantly, and increase the share of its orders that is client-specified to 90 per cent.

It all shows that attention to detail and quality engineering can lead to some very happy returns.

Stop press!
It has just been announced that Mumford & Wood's website has won the "Best Sales & Marketing Online" category in the East of England round of the 2005 DTI/InterForum E-Commerce Awards. The company will now be entered for national finals, which include the "e-Champion 2005" award. Chris Wood, sales director at Mumford & Wood, said: "We're delighted that the success of our online business has been recognised in these awards. Being online is quite different from the traditional way of doing business.

There are all sorts of opportunities to improve customer service and you have to be careful to pick the right ones. That's where A Recipe For Success have been such a help - they've helped us match what's possible to what's wanted, enhance our offer and achieve a great result."

MumfordWood.com at a glance


Launched in August 2004
8,000 unique visitors a month - a lot for a highly-specialist company
60-80 online 'Get A Quote' requests a month, generating 10 per cent of turnover
Time to quote has been significantly reduced
Registered users download 500 'FastrackCAD' drawings a month
Users of the 'FastrackCAD' service benefit from reductions in delivery times of up to several weeks