Congratulations on winning Website of the Year! Can you tell us more about why you entered the awards for 2024?

Having spent last year developing our website and our dream dress quiz, we felt compelled to share it and hope we were good enough to win the best website award. We were up against some brilliant sites! Check out our website here: elliesanderson.co.uk

Tell us more about the entry process.

Writing your entry really is fun and thought-provoking. I love the entry process for awards - it really makes you consider why you think you should win and more often than not, we end up critiquing ourselves and create a brand-new job list!

Why do you believe your boutique was crowned?

I feel there are a few elements of our site that gave us the edge: the dream dress quiz lead magnet and our dress finder, the aesthetics of the site, and the biggest thing with having two shops is being able to navigate it easily. Those were all key build factors that I really feel we achieved and the judges probably identified.

How do you think it will impact your business over the next 12 months?

It is always great for businesses to win awards - our brides love to see that we are award-winning as it piques their interest from social onto the site.

What are your top tips for boutiques who want to increase their digital presence?

In 2022, we lost our Instagram account. It was hacked and we never recovered it. During that awful time I realised that I don’t actually own any of my digital platforms other than my website. Feeling slightly bitter about the lack of support from META, I decided to invest my efforts into my website which has paid off enormously. The site has to be aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, be able to capture data to market to future brides and always have a strong call to action on every page.

And finally, what does this recognition mean to you and your team?

Winning is always a real buzz! We worked with an incredible team of web designers and digital geeks on the key elements of the site, and my stylist team were involved in the site build. We also had customer focus teams too that helped us understand how a bride shops - I never take it for granted that I know all the answers and this feedback is vital to ensure that the end user gets the right experience. My teams feedback and involvement was central to the project. Winning for them makes all the work, effort and energy invested worthwhile. It’s a great recognition of a job well done and they are all buzzing.