Having created the Verenti website for Wiggle, we were proud to hear that they recently won the 2011 Oracle “Product Innovation of the Year” award. They were competing against big name companies such as Boots, Waitrose, Tesco and Asda. Verenti are a dedicated bicycle brand that sell premium engineered road bikes and are sold exclusively online via their parent company, Wiggle (the largest bike retailer in the UK).

So although the product itself should be praised for its design innovation, so should the brand’s official website, which is responsible for establishing and maintaining Verenti’s online presence. As well as providing customers with somewhere to research the products and brand outside of the Wiggle retail site.

This is why Wiggle asked us to develop and design a professional, informative, yet stylish website for their premium Verenti bikes back in 2010. The brief was to establish an online presence for the new Verenti brand that reflected the premium nature of the product, as well as provided customers with concise and detailed information. The site also needed to provide an outlet for communicating sportive events and the latest developments in products and accessories.

To achieve this we utilised AJAX and DHTML for the product pages, to provide an immersive and interactive experience with the high quality imagery. Also in order to push the existing product brand further to work online; we worked with the key stakeholders, as well as the product design team on a series of iterative concepts. As for the community aspect of the site, we incorporated a blog and events calendar as well as links through to retailers and purchase.

In the end the online presence combined with sponsoring some of the key national sportive events has led to a very rapid development of a previously un-established brand. Product sales and interest have risen significantly and the cycling press have provided high praise. A year later, who would have guessed that Verenti would beat global retail giants to win an innovation award? Just goes to show you what a strong product and an equally strong internet presence can achieve.