February’s Website of the Month winner was Paws and Purrs, a beautifully constructed website for a London-based pet shop with a difference! We caught up with founders Paul and Liz and creator Ed to find out more.

Hi guys, tell us a bit about yourselves and Paws and Purrs.

When we got our first pet together – Bobby a black rescue cat from Battersea – and Liz’s parents acquired a puppy at about the same time – Jenny the Border Terrier – we started to realise how poor many of the products were in traditional pet shops. In some shops, you’d have to blow a layer of dust off the toys and they would last two minutes once you got them home. Coats and collars tended to be on the tacky side whilst food was full of rubbish. Beds and bowls were so ugly they’d be tucked out of sight. Liz has always been a dog junkie and knew that there were stylish and practical products out there, but most online and not all in one place.

If you ask Liz why we set the business up, she’d say it’s because she’s always wanted a dog of her own but needed a job where we could take the dog to work – a dog shop being a perfect solution!

We started off with a stall at Broadway Market in Hackney which was a fantastic launch pad for us – exactly the right type of demographic and a healthy dog and cat community. We’d always had our eye on Stoke Newington so when a unit came up we decided to take the plunge and open our first shop.

What makes Paws and Purrs stand out from other pet shops?

We are not a traditional pet shop and neither do we want to be.All of our stock is carefully chosen with quality and durability in mind. Our toys are extra tough, our food is natural and healthy and our gifts are on the right side of kitsch. We aren’t into tacky clothes for pets or tat. Your dogs and cats won’t look silly in one of our coats or collars! All of the things we sell are tried and tested on Betty the terrier, Indie and Fizz the rescue cats and other four legged friends. We’ve even tried some of the Lily’s Kitchen dog food ourselves and can confirm that it is blooming delicious!

You offer an innovative local delivery service – by bike! Can you tell us a bit about it and the benefits?

It’s partly out of necessity – I can’t drive! – but also because being environmentally friendly is key to our ethos. Some of our products are made out of recycled materials and we try to source our stock mainly from this country – the only items we struggled to source in England were tough toys but the range we do stock are fully recyclable and have a replacement guarantee. In fact, many of our products are made in East London itself.

Your website was designed by OneFiftyNine. Why did you choose them to create your website and how did you find the process?

The look and feel was very important to us – we wanted to look clean and fresh and completely different to other pet sites which tend to be quite garish. We liked that OneFiftyNine offered design expertise as well as programming and development, I don’t think we would have ended up with such a fantastic site without that mix. Ed Toll heads up the team there they were so helpful and very patient with a time strapped start-up (we were both working full-time elsewhere when we started the site). They provided just the right amount of challenge and focused our attention on the customer experience as well as staying faithful to our vision for the design.

What kind of look and feel did you want your website to have, and how did OneFiftyNine achieve this?

Our friends designed our logo and illustrations, we were going for a Festival of Britain feel – nostalgic, wholesome but fun and celebratory. OneFiftyNine captured this perfectly with their final design, and added their own little touches including ‘Fetch’ for search and the little dog basket for the shopping trolley.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about having a website made for their business?

It’s an absolute must these days, even if it is simply a signposting mechanism as some of our fellow stall holders at Broadway Market had. Decide on a clear look and feel and roll it out across all of your channels online and offline. Marketing and promotion is key – don’t spend time, effort and money on a site without telling people it is there. And engage an expert team as we did with OneFiftyNine Marketing Communications.

You’re very active on social media. How do you use it and what benefits does it have for Paws and Purrs?

Liz has a marketing and PR background so has expertise in social media. In some ways, focusing on dogs and cats makes social networking fairly easy – people love talking about and sharing pictures of their pets. Instagram is a particularly helpful tool for e-commerce and we’ve had quite a few conversions from there. The Blog part of our website has been incredibly useful for SEO too. And we are just dipping our toe into Vine which, again, is an easy win with people who like dogs and cats.

How does your website complement your offline business?

We tend to take photos of customers and use these via our social media and our blog section of the site. Our reviews section is also really helpful and gives invaluable advice to would-be customers. These really help to show customers, before they get into the shop, a taste of what our shop experience is like.

Why did you choose to host your website with Heart Internet?

I’ve asked Ed Toll, Managing Director at OneFiftyNine to answer this one, over to you Ed:

We host all our client websites through Heart Internet and have done so for about 4 years now. We chose Heart on the back of some good third party reviews as part of the process we undertook when selecting our hosting partner. We work with a number of developers and all have told me that Heart’s backend systems are intuitive and easy to work with. But the most important thing from my point of view is the level of service offered. The support database is extensive but when we do need to contact the support team they’re always quick to respond and very helpful (which makes us look good).Absolutely invaluable when we need to get answers quickly, not just for us but often for our clients.

How would you like to see Paws and Purrs develop further in the future?

We are shortly opening a grooming salon in our shop and we’ve been delighted with the interest in this new service. Now the shop has established a customer base, we intend to shift our marketing focus back online to increase sales. That will mean more regular updating of the front page flashes and increased blogging and sign-posting from social networks.

We are keen to continue to expand our exclusive ranges – we have just added a range of leather collars, handknitted jumpers and cat baskets – to enable us to have a unique offer in a crowded online market. Messaging wise we want to push our commitment to products that are not only made in England but also very locally in London.