A new website for event hire specialists Crystal Hire.

We were thrilled to work on the new website for long-time client Crystal Hire. The Hampshire based event hire specialists wanted a complete overhaul of their online experience to showcase the stunning collection of glassware, cutlery, china and linen they offer to venues, restaurants and private clients across London and the Home Counties.

Helping Crystal Hire to showcase their huge portfolio in style.

With a wide range of items available for hire, one of the first tasks was to agree how to categorise and display the breadth of items on offer while maintaining a stunning, simple and enjoyable user experience. Rather than feature endless images of popular and necessary but nonetheless uninspiring stalwarts of the catering hire portfolio, such as pint glasses, gas bbqs and coat rails, in a move less common within their industry, the decision was made to focus on the most engaging and inspiring collections to show them off to their fullest.

By building the creative around the stunning Crystal Hire collections, we achieved the aspirational and lifestyle look and feel that was key to successful delivery of the brief. Clear messaging throughout reminds users that, as a specialist in event hire, Crystal Hire had everything needed to make an event perfect – including the basics – even if there isn’t a picture of it on the website!

Imagery, trends and content planning.

Having provided their glassware and cutlery to an array of stunning venues across the South East, such as Somerley House and Old Greens Barn, we were in an enviable position of having an excellent selection of professional photography available for the project. After assisting in creating an online shared folder system to more efficiently manage the photography for the site now and in the future, we set about selecting the very best images to showcase the products in beautiful, lifestyle settings, perfectly framed by the new website.

The design of the website aims to showcase not only the products, but also to provide a constant source of inspiration to the visitor. Imagery and content throughout the site features the latest items to hire from Crystal Hire, and also table settings and styling trends too. This combination was established as a key thread in the content and social media plan we have created to support the site going forward.

What do you recommend?

A key part of the website experience is to ensure visitors are aware of the full range of products available from Crystal Hire, enabling them to explore with ease the large and growing portfolio. When designing the website, we included a ‘works well with’ section for every individual product page, typical of ecommerce sites, to help the visitor to navigate around the site and find products which are complementary to those they are browsing, building the look and feel for their event in the process. Although gone are the days of everything matching perfectly – in fact, as we discovered whilst working on this project, an eclectic mix of colours and styles is very on trend!

Helping Crystal Hire to build relationships.

For Crystal Hire, the relationship with the client and understanding of the event requirements are paramount to providing a first-class service, so effective calls to action and readily available contact mechanisms were essential. Visitors are directed to contact Crystal Hire’s team of event specialists to discuss their event, via easy to use links and calls to action throughout the site.

A happy client.

The website launched in time for the start of the key wedding season and has been a big hit.

Initial analysis of web traffic and the levels of enquiries arising from the site in the period since launch are really encouraging:

Organic Traffic: +355% vs LY

Session duration: +113% vs LY

Bounce rate: -6%

James from Crystal Hire said; “We are getting lots of enquiries from the new site! Its working very well! Thanks so much to all the Mzuri team”

To find out more about Crystal Hires services visit: crystalhire.com