Independent beds retailer Linthorpe Beds has announced the launch of its new Mattresses365 website, aimed to boost its national reach.

The new website, mattresses365.co.uk, is still part of Linthorpe Beds but the business believed a second identify with a ‘more internet friendly’ domain could help grow its customer network nationwide.

Commenting on the launch and initial success, Keith Humble, Director at Linthorpe Beds, said: “We’re delighted to have our new Mattresses365 site up and running and we’re very pleased with the response that we’ve received about it so far, with month-on-month gains in both visitor numbers and conversions.

“Although we have a successful bricks and mortar business with its own website, successfully rolling that website out nationally presents big challenges, particularly as the website is supposed to be supporting a ‘local’ business.

“We’ve been doing OK on the nationwide side of things, but nowhere near the potential that we believe is available, so we took the decision to create an alternative site that is still part of Linthorpe Beds but has a much more ‘internet friendly’ domain name to the customer that has never heard of our shops and local reputation. Our Linthorpe Beds site has now taken on a look and feel that reflects our family business and heritage (we hope).”

Keith added that the hope with Mattresses365 is that the platform is easy to use, friendly, and a quality orientated website, but with pricing that is competitive against its rivals. “We’re not out to carve anyone up or create price wars but we will work to give the best prices that we can to our customers and as long as we provide a great service to them, a large proportion of people will pay just a little bit more for a product,” Keith said.

“We believe that our early Trustpilot rating confirms that we’re on the right track. We’re still continuously working on the site of course and we have a great team that works on both websites as well as some superb external partners.

“We don’t expect overnight success and we haven’t gone overboard with ad words and marketing, preferring to grow the site generically to start with, although it’s obvious that if we’re going to get to the top of the market, money talks.

“We’re confident that we can become a key player in the market but we’re realistic enough to know that getting there is medium term even though the last three months have seen the business progress in leaps and bounds.”

Read more about Linthorpe Beds in our previous Retail Focus feature.