E-Commerce Handbook Case Study: Ruby & Oscar
Give me a brief description of your business
Ruby & Oscar was established in 2018. We offer lab created and natural, semi precious stones set within a selection of silver and gold designs. Operating solely online, we are able to pass on excellent savings directly to our customers.
What is your current ecommerce set up?
Ruby & Oscar is operated in-house, with a team of experienced marketers, developers, creatives and customer service representatives working alongside qualified jewellers to combine fine jewellery sales with effective ecommerce. Utilising a close relationship with the Edinburgh Assay Office, the team at Ruby & Oscar pioneered a revolutionary fulfillment model which has drastically reduced lead times.
Why do you feel your e-commerce business has been a success
As well as keeping all operations for Ruby & Oscar in-house, various aspects of the business have contributed to our success. Our team of experts are truly passionate about the jewellery we offer and our customer service team consistently provide excellent service for our customers. The increasing number of returning customers to Ruby & Oscar is a testament to the high quality of our jewellery designs as well as our knowledgeable and friendly customer service representatives.
R&O’s creative, marketing and social media team work closely to create stunning content across the site and on our social media channels. This has given the brand a strong identity alongside exciting seasonal campaigns.
What has been your biggest e-commerce accomplishment so far?
We recently celebrated our first year of trade where we hit £1 million turnover. This alone was an amazing achievement , made even better as this milestone was achieved way ahead of our financial forecasting. We knew we had something special when launching Ruby & Oscar but even our predictions couldn’t prepare us for the unprecedented success we’ve had over the last 12 months.
Tell me about the design of your website?
Stunning product photography, first class graphic design and thoughtful planning and evaluation are the cornerstones of our website design. We constantly evaluate the effectiveness of our website through user testing. This allows us to establish our customer’s goals as well as any pain points that they encounter. We have refined the end-to-end user journey in order to provide the most enjoyable and rewarding experience for R&O customers.
How do you engage with your customers?
From a customer service point of view, we use Zendesk technology to streamline customer contact and to monitor response rate using detailed data and statistics to help reduce average handling times.
We also encourage Ruby & Oscar customers to share personal photos of them wearing our designs. This is a great way to engage with our customers and to share real life images of our jewellery and how it can be worn. We encourage this through review requests which have consistently remained at 5 star since launching.
Customer photos and product photography also feature on our social media platforms where we engage with many of our customers. Using Instagram and through our blog we are able to provide a lifestyle outlet for our customers, offering added value.
What’s your plan for the next year?
We have recently acquired additional office space so that, as of next month, an extra 1,600 sq ft of office space will accommodate a purpose-built studio for exciting new photography projects, further helping to expand our in-house creative efforts.
R&O’s creative and development team are currently working on a website redesign to keep the site looking fresh and exciting to new and returning customers. Looking ahead, we have new jewellery designs and hand picked collections ready to launch which we know our customers will love.
