Web and Editorial Strategy for David Duggan Watches
David Duggan Watches is an independent luxury pre-owned and vintage watch dealer with more than three decades’ experience. Since 2002, David and his expert team have been based at their prestigious showroom in Mayfair’s Burlington Arcade in London. In that time, they have earned an outstanding reputation for their horological expertise and the quality of their customer service.
Digital Potion has worked with David Duggan Watches for the past five years, developing and executing the company’s digital marketing strategy, including website and editorial management, search engine optimisation (SEO) consultancy and social media support.
walk-through
If you want passion, total commitment and great expertise look no further than Ed Davison and his team at Digital Potion.
David Duggan - Founder
It’s good practice to refresh your website every few years to keep it up to date with changes in digital technology and design. But as a long-standing, well-established brand it was imperative that any update remained loyal to David’s history, while adding new contemporary touches.
The need for this update coincided with the 35th anniversary of David’s business, so we decided to help the team celebrate this milestone by making sure the new-look site was ready in time.
THE TECHNICAL
SSL certificate renewal
An SSL certificate is essentially a digital pass that allows secure connections between a web server and a web browser, authenticating the site and encrypting any information that is sent to the server. It’s important to keep SSL certificates up to date so that prospective clients know your website is a trusted source of information.
While David’s site is not an ecommerce destination, placing his entire site under SSL encryption was a key first step in making sure the trust that he has carefully built with clients in his showroom continues through to his website.
High mobile usage rate catering to audience preferences
An investigation into David’s site via Google Analytics showed us that an increasing number of his prospective online clients access his website via their mobile phones. So, creating a modern, fully responsive design that worked on mobile and tablet devices as well as desktops was imperative. To achieve that, we set up a Google framework called the accelerated mobile project (AMP) for key blog posts and pages and ensured that the search experience on mobile was as streamlined and sleek as possible.
Video integration
David had commissioned a series of mini videos featuring interviews in which he shared his experience on issues such as watch repairs, how often a watch should be serviced and how to prepare a watch for sale, etc…. Video is one of the most effective tools you can use in a digital marketing strategy, so to make the most of these high-quality shorts we introduced video carousel functionality into key watch brand pages and embedded new video functionality for blog post page headers.
THE VISUALS
Design
Any design work needed to fit seamlessly within David’s well-established luxury brand and continue to reflect his deep knowledge of the industry and his care for clients. But it also needed to feel fresh and inviting. So, our design team took a stripped back approach, working with a minimalist monochrome palette and letting new photography take centre stage.
To create a feeling of simplicity, we added elegant lines and accents to guide prospective clients through David’s website, with more white space to allow each timepiece the room to breathe within a page.
To add to the contemporary feel, we introduced two new typefaces and established a secondary colour palette of neutral colours to offset the monochrome
Finally we also created a new ‘DD’ monogram, echoing the handwritten font of his existing logo and introduced into key site elements such as the hover/rollover state for blog promos. It can also be used for social media graphics and other promotional material.
Photography
David’s watches are the heroes of his site, but in order to add more depth to the beautiful product shots, we commissioned a professional photographer to shoot a series of editorial images, using textured, brightly coloured – and sometimes even neon – backdrops, in an explicit move away from the more traditional feel of a second-hand watch dealer.
Instagram feed functionality
User generated content continues to dominate social media. To support this, we developed a sleek Instagram gallery plugin that means David can now showcase new watches online as soon as they arrive in the showroom.
THE EDITORIAL
Downloadable PDF guide to horological complications
As well as providing day-to-day editorial support, we wanted to help David celebrate his business’s 35th birthday in style. To do that properly, we wanted to create something that highlighted his credentials as an expert in his field and that could be shared widely, for free, with watch enthusiasts.
Watch complications are one of David’s biggest horological passions and we quickly hit upon the idea of creating a luxurious guide to this fascinating world. These mechanisms – such as a dual time zone, alarm or moonphase – add interest and functionality to a watch and some models are highly prized in the watch collecting community.
A comprehensive Watch Complications Guide was the perfect way to demonstrate David’s knowledge as well as sharing some of his favourite watch-selling stories from the past three decades. To help us promote the guide we created a year-long editorial campaign with each complication featured in a more in-depth post via the One To Watch online magazine. As well as delving into the history of this fascinating world each article gave us the chance to share some of David’s favourite models featuring that complication. We also printed a limited run of 50 glossy versions of the guide for media use and display in the showroom.
If you have a luxury brand in need of some fresh content ideas and some technical wizardy, please get in touch.
