Friths Opticians
Friths Opticians
Overview
Robert Frith Optometrists — trading as Friths Opticians — is one of southern England's longest-established independent opticians, with twelve practices stretching from its head office in Gillingham, Dorset, to Twickenham. Friths has been a Motley client for eighteen years: one of our longest and closest partnerships.
Eighteen years, one trusted partner
Most agency relationships are measured in months. This one's measured in decades. We've evolved the Friths site through redesign after redesign — and they've never needed to look elsewhere.
The challenge
Friths came to us with a site that existed mainly so the business could say it had one — it wasn't working for them, and search visibility was almost non-existent. They needed a site that looked the part of a respected regional optician and actually brought patients through the door.
What we built
A bespoke website from the ground up — its own content management system, an online shop, and online appointment booking, rather than an off-the-shelf template. A practice finder makes it easy to reach the nearest of their twelve branches, with the full range of care laid out clearly: NHS and private eye examinations, contact lenses, children's eyecare, hearing services and advanced retinal imaging.
Everyone knows a serious business needs a web site to be credible, but not everyone knows or understands the importance of Search Engine Optimisation. Our Old site was a classic attempt at getting a web site up there so we can say we have one, without it actually working for us. Working with Motley was a revelation, Jamie's direct approach and ability to explain in easy to understand terms resulted in a new, far more professional looking site coupled with a hit rate that quickly took the number of hits we used to get in year to a week! The site is stylishly contemporary and very easy to navigate around. Unlike many web designers Motley.co.uk is very easy to work with. With an innate understanding of business as well as being designers this helps make them very intuitive when it comes to finding out exactly what we required. I have other companies whose web sites will certainly be getting the "Motley" treatment.
The results
The redesign transformed their search performance — traffic that once took a year to accumulate started arriving within a week. Eighteen years and several evolutions on, the site is still doing its job, and Friths are still with us.
