ITWales.com
HealthLeads UK: An e-commerce success story
By Basheera Khan
If you're a retailer, chances are you've already heard the schpiel; e-commerce is the way of the future. Selling online opens up markets that you never dreamed existed. Double, treble, quadruple your
revenue, expand your business, export around the world - all through the magic of e-commerce.
If you're having difficulty swallowing that, try swallowing this - it's packaged in an organic capsule, so it should go down a treat. Health Leads UK, a provider of dietary supplements and electronic
devices to aid healthier living, has experienced similar levels of growth, and it really is all thanks to the business benefits of the Internet.
The company started out as a sideline for engineer John Doyle nearly seven years ago. He'd sustained a back injury through work, and was off for about three
months. His wife, a herbal practitioner, recommended he find something less physical to do, and thus was Health Leads conceived.
"I was looking for a change in career, and as I say I'd injured myself; my back is fine now and doesn't bother me at
all, but it was quite serious at the time, and so we thought it would be a good move.
We started out in a part-time way just for a month to see how it would go, then we set up the limited company and started full time after about six months. That was just a little exploratory pilot really, and
then we started the company proper, so Health Leads has been trading as a limited company for 7 years this June," says Doyle.
In that time, Health Leads has grown from a sole trader's pilot project to a very healthy business indeed, with 16 fulltime staff and 3 part-time contributors on the payroll.
Doyle explains, "The mix of our business is around about 50/50 with supplements and non-supplements. We are the sole UK agents for some of the devices and non-supplements; for example, the
German company Rayonex, which manufactures products to protect against 'electro-smog' and geopathic stress. Their products range from a few pounds in price, up to about £7,000."
"We import ozone generators from China, we import supplements from Japan, from America, lots of herbs and that of course we purchase from wholesalers in Britain, and they'll all do the importing in
bulk."
Establishing the supplier network for his business initially took the form of making lots of telephone calls at odd hours of the morning, in the days before the company had begun to use e-mail for regular
business communication. The first website came along four years ago, and Doyle recalls, "We've always had a computer and we've done a lot of work on that from the very start; we kept records
electronically, and we were also producing a lot of instruction sheets and various documents by computer. Now we have eight computers networked together."
Although the company enjoyed success in its early years, the Internet was the phenomenon that fuelled Health Leads' international sales. Doyle says that while first-time customers find Health Leads
online, they return time and again to place larger orders by phone or fax.
"We have a couple of factors going for us, I mean we've always tried to really focus on customer service, I think a lot of SMEs do this because it's the one advantage that really sticks out above the
big companies, that you're able to do this, you know to respond well to customers. If you can do that, it results in a lot of referrals and a lot of word of mouth business. So that's one thing we've had
going for us.
"The other thing is our products; some of them are very unique and hard to find, so that sort of translates to a lot of unusual referrals if you like, with people's friends and family in far-flung parts, you
know people are very mobile these days, and even before we had the website we were getting orders from 8 or 10 countries around the world, just on the basis of referrals and the fact that our
products were unusual. But when the website came online, that did start to grow quite rapidly."
The Health Leads website was designed from day one to support e-commerce. The front end has undergone a redesign recently, which will be launched in the next few weeks. It will be the fourth
incarnation of Health Leads online, Doyle says, but the back end has remained consistent throughout, give or take the time spent evaluating the BT Storefront product, which didn't quite cut the
mustard.
The company uses Actinic software to power its e-commerce functionality; the next step is to fully integrate the ordering process with the accounts package, freeing up a lot of administration time in the
process.
Another great step has been to move to online banking, he says, which helps the company no end in keeping up with the finances - a must for a business which brings in the bulk of its revenue through
online sales.
After that, the technological ladder will probably lead to broadband, he says. "At the moment we have three ISDN2 lines, which is OK, but everybody in the company is getting more and more use out of
the Internet for research, and e-mail for communications - so, we could do with a broadband connection here."
Then, Doyle says, the plan is to bring content management in-house as well, to keep pace with the developments.
"As times move on, and the business gets more complex, there's things that need to go on the website at an ever-increasing rate. For example, this year we've become licensed credit brokers, and
we've managed to obtain zero-rated VAT supplies for disabled people on certain products. We're taking it in house so that we can take better control and be there when we need to with news and
announcements for our customers."
Health Leads has also just started a Google Ad-word campaign, which it is managing in-house, and the results, says Doyle, are dramatic. It's boosted the number of unique visitors significantly; on
average, the company is expecting three times as many visitors this month as it can normally expect month-on-month.
Although the order numbers fluctuate month-on-month, the average revenue has also been boosted, albeit indirectly, by the Internet.
"For instance we have a customer in Sweden, who we do commercial work for. We supply them big orders; every six to eight weeks, we get an e-mail order of about £1100 worth of products. That
doesn't go towards our stats, but it's due to the website because that's how he found us. And there's several like that."
Health Leads is currently shortlisted for an export award sponsored by the Welsh Development Agency - no surprise when you discover this St. Clears company exports to 56 countries. The company
also has a Spanish language website, which has helped in driving in sales from South America. Additionally, the English language website has links to helpful information posted on the front page in
French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Japanese.
The company deals with all this international trade by having a fluent Spanish speaker in-house and a handy little translation application which Doyle picked up at Lidl for £6.95.
The company is also shortlisted for an e-commerce award, even though Doyle didn't intend to apply for either.
"I've been nagged for a couple of years by people to enter, and I got what I thought was a survey from WalesTrade International, and I thought, they've given us such a lot of help, I'd better fill in this
survey. It was only when I got halfway through that I realised it was an entry form for the competition, but by that time I was quite enjoying myself, so I thought I'll finish off the application now and we
entered it for the competition. It's good for staff morale, it's a team effort."
Contacts
Health Leads UK
Tel:
0845 345 8880
E-mail:
Enquire@HealthLeadsUK.com
Web:
http://www.HealthLeadsUK.com
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