Before starting to do promotional work for eDecks, I wanted to see what the competitors are doing to help bring in more customers and inspire me for my work.
The first competitor I looked at was ‘Lakes Decking’ (1) which is a deck building company. Their focus for the business is to install decking for holiday homes. Whereas this does not align with eDecks selling kits approach the style that the website for ‘Lakes Decking’ is done is very inspiring to me. When looking at eDecks website, it’s quite busy and there’s a lot of cramped products at once, with a lot of different fonts and colours used that makes it hard for the customers to navigate through it and it might put them off of buying due to how difficult the website is to navigate. However, when looking at ‘Lakes Decking’ website its clean and minimal, with one font and a clear hierarchy and composition used to make it easy for the customers to navigate and this clean and easy understanding style is what I want my work to resemble.
For the second competitor I looked at the ‘Deck Supermarket.co.uk’ (2) which is closer to what eDecks sell, different gardening and decking materials that customers can buy to then do the decking or gardening work by themselves. Deck Supermarket also has a lot of variety of lighting, tools and advice. The part that made me use this specific business as a competitor was the advice tab on the top of their website. That is because, even though both eDecks and Deck Supermarket are selling and giving customers similar things the main difference is the advice tab that Deck Supermarket has. On that tab customers can check ‘how to look after decking in winter’ this is something that eDecks doesn’t offer on their website. This made me think that eDecks could increase their sales if there was maybe a helping tip in their advertising, like how this business has inspired me to put in a tip or advice in my work for eDecks to show customers that decks aren’t only for summer.
For the third and final competitor that I looked at was ‘Cladco Decking’ (3) which is once again like eDecks a seller to customers rather than going to build it. The reason why this competitor grabbed my attention was the layout of the website. When going to the decking page and scrolling down a little bit there is a table of the different kinds of decking that can be bought from them with what finish, price from and length categories under each of them among other things. This clean, composed style is something that I want to incorporate into my work for eDecks.
1 – Lakes Decking (2011.) Lakes Decking main website page. Available at: Lakes Decking | Bespoke Holiday Home Decking [Accessed 05 May 2025]
2 – Deck Supermarket.co.uk. How to Look After Decking In Winter. Available at: Looking after your decking in winter | Deck Supermarket – Deck Supermarket [Accessed 05 May 2025]
3 – Cladco Decking (2004.) Decking Comparison. Available at: Garden Decking | Timber, Composite, PVC & Bamboo | Cladco [Accessed 05 May 2025]