Chorlton Fireworks: Two years later

In early 2021, we launched a new bespoke site and brand identity for Chorlton Fireworks, a premium quality fireworks shop in Manchester, UK. 🎆

With its vision to become the leading online fireworks retailer, Chorlton Fireworks approached us to design a new brand identity system, eCommerce website and implement a new SEO strategy to coincide with its next phase of growth within the business. One (and a half) years later, we take a look back on it's impact and what we did...

The Brand

We worked on the overall brand strategy and direction, including logo, typography, colour, and key messaging. By championing a more accessible and playful approach, the new brand identity is designed to enable Chorlton Fireworks to bring exciting, bold, and affordable products to the industry. We took a pre-existing concept and modernised it to appeal to a wider audience with a new side of professionalism.

Expressing modernity, speed and confidence, the primary logo features uppercase typography with slanted type for added dynamism to mirror the speed and power of the fireworks themselves. Framed by a box, it neatly encapsulates a clean and forward-thinking brand.

The bold and expressive typography establishes a distinctive look for the brand as it is applied across the website, print and digital advertising.

Colour plays key part in Chorlton Firework's new identity and they required a palette that would be recognisable to its existing customers. Orange and Red form the primary colour palette, forming a gradient to create a fluid transition and sweet spot between the new and old, alongside black and white.

The Website

Part of the initial brief was also to redesign their eCommerce website, infusing it with the design and functionality of the refreshed identity. The updated website is simple, organised, and utilises a clear grid system to highlight the products and allow them to take centre stage. Users can now easily buy fireworks on the Chorlton Fireworks website.

We built the new Chorlton Fireworks website around our very own Craft CMS + Craft Commerce framework. This gives us the flexibility to design and build the site however we like, whilst also utilising our custom-built single-page checkout, which we have refined and continuously enhanced over the years.

A small addition that we made for Chorlton Fireworks was the option to include 'Click + Collect' during the checkout. This allows customers to select a date and time that suits them, to go into their store to collect and pay for their order.

We also added area code-specific shipping thresholds, which were very important to the business for shipping their products into different UK shipping zones. This was achieved within Craft Commerce using their Shipping Zone Postcode Condition Formula.

Go take at the live Chorlton Fireworks website yourself.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

We paired our design and development work with a sound SEO strategy to put Chorlton Fireworks on the map as the leading firework supplier in the North West. Our combined on-page and off-page SEO strategy resulted in 500% more visits to the website just one year later. 

The SEO team’s work involved strategic optimisation across the products, categories, and the blog for organic, relevant keywords based on a thoroughly researched content plan. As a result, the entire website was expanded and enriched with content promoting products and providing supporting information about fireworks.

The content optimisation results spoke for themselves within one year. The website ranks in the top 100 for 443% more keywords than it did at the same time last year when we had just begun our work. Not only this, but the number of keywords in the top three positions had more than doubled. Chorlton Fireworks is now observed at the top of page one for keywords it previously sat several pages down for. This is in addition to over 5,000 new keywords it didn’t rank for at all.

On-page optimisation was supported by an expert link building approach. This was designed to develop the backlink profile, raise the authority of the website, and create more channels of meaningful traffic that would result in conversions and brand awareness.

The SEO team sought websites with high domain ratings (DR) to build backlinks that would direct qualified traffic to chorltonfireworks.co.uk within the client's target audience. Referring domains include Broughton Park FC (DR: 64), Fireworks Magazine (DR 31), Kids in the House (DR 65), and West Didsbury and Chorlton AFC (DR 18).

The number of referring domains almost doubled in one year, from 48 to 94, while individual referring pages increased in number by 55%. This included a boost in links at the end of 2021, where referring domains rose from 65 to 87 in just one month. And now has over 250 referring domains.

Once of the main campaigns was to raise awareness of Gender Reveal Fireworks, as Chorlton Fireworks host a great range of of choice online. And our content team even created an article to target their specific audience, 35 Ideas and Inspiration to Create a Memorable Gender Reveal Party.