Boadicea the Victorious, whose uniquely British scents retail in Harrods and other high-end global emporiums, provides customers with an experience that reflects the prestige and exclusivity of the brand. Its newly revamped VIP website, created by Si digital, ensures that those purchasing online receive a similarly ‘boutique’ and luxurious encounter. 

With fragrances available through only a handful of highly exclusive global retailers, Boadicea’s website is of crucial importance for sales. However, its existing site provided a slow and frustrating buying journey, which contradicted the company’s reputation for impeccable service. This luxury brand needed an e-commerce website which both improved user experience and reflected the quality of Boadicea, whilst enabling increased sales.

As a client for some time now and knowing the kinds of fantastical things we can create, Boadicea approached us with the seed of an idea which, through some interesting ideation sessions, grew into an exciting ecommerce project: a perfume bottle configurator. 

Each of Boadicea’s scents are supplied in a beautiful hand-crafted glass bottle, featuring intricate front and back shields and matching stopper. They are designed to compliment the particular fragrance within and, according to the brand, to ‘champion British heritage and values’. Recognising the individuality of its sophisticated clientele, it was agreed that many might love the opportunity to customise a totally one-of-a-kind bottle.

Much like ordering a new car and choosing the added extras that makes it unmistakably yours, the configurator would allow users to select from among several glass colours and hundreds of shields and stoppers, with an engraving option for the ultimate personal touch. 

This was going to be a challenge; something we hadn’t done before. The sheer number of combinations to consider was mind-blowing and would faze most developers. However, this is the kind of work we love and do best at Si digital. When the requirement is for something uncharted, special and a little bit mad, we thrive. 

The existing Boadicea website is built on the Magento e-commerce platform, which while great for shopping, has a degree of rigidity when it comes to more interesting additions. This was, by far, not a standard build and the idea was definitely one which most agencies would think impossible, but that’s exactly the kind of challenge we relish. 

Basic Magento tends to be slated for its complexity and lack of innovation, but it’s a platform that many businesses use and as such, is generally left to chug along as is, despite its sometimes awkward UX. It’s also something which requires a high level of developer expertise, another reason why it’s not often poked about and changed. But not on our watch.

For us to create a successful platform using Magento, the only way forward was to transform it using clever techniques, our skills and a little experimentation. We knew we’d have to stretch Magento to its limits to make it do the intelligent things required for the project to work. 

Taking this off-the-shelf software, we developed and added our own code on top of the platform, extending it to incorporate custom-designed modifications for Boadicea. Usually pretty slow, we fixed site speed. We optimised the platform for search purposes…..

Following successful testing, the bottle configurator went live on Boadicea’s website. We also created an animated landing page to attract and engage users. 

What’s more, with built-in links to social media, users have the option to share their design on Instagram - a feature which will no doubt serve as a rewarding marketing tool for the brand.