Wedding Planner

Idea

Introduction

World of Wedmin is an online platform that enables brides and grooms to find and compare wedding suppliers across the UK.

We believe the site’s functionality, displaying suppliers’ prices, availability and customer reviews in a single click, makes World of Wedmin stand out from its older directory competitors, whether online or traditional publishers.

The site is free for couples or wedding planners to use. Suppliers (other than venues) pay on a pay-per-enquiry or a pay-per click basis, with the option of moving to an all inclusive monthly subscription if they prefer.

Intended impact

We believe the wedding supplier industry to be a large but still very fragmented market. For brides and grooms, the result is that it is hard to see the range of available services and suppliers, and to compare based on values that are important to them, be it style, price, previous recommendation. For suppliers, it can be hard to be found and to present services in the best way. With marketing budgets often tight, the site helps suppliers manage their budget more effectively.

World of Wedmin is designed to solve these market problems by displaying relevant content that is easily available and comparable, saving both time and money for couples and suppliers.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Currently, World of Wedmin has over 600 suppliers registered on the website across 22 categories. All suppliers currently pay for enquiries and URL clicks they receive through the site.

The site received approximately 10,000 unique visitors in the most recent quarter and generated almost 60,000 page views for that period.

World of Wedmin is currently able to manage marketing the site and the supplier relationships with two full time employees.

World of Wedmin has had coverage in major newspapers and blogs including The Daily Mail and The Sun. World of Wedmin has also featured at major wedding shows including the Wedding Fair at Excel London. Such shows offer an opportunity to build the brand and get user feedback, which helps shape our designs for the latest version of the website.

Monetisation strategy

Suppliers (other than venues) are currently charged £3.50 for every valid enquiry they receive and £0.45 for every URL click-through, with the intention to further increase the prices in the future. Suppliers are also offered the option to pay a recurring monthly fee for unlimited clicks and enquiries.

Suppliers receive enquiries only for counties they cover and dates they have chosen to mark as available. If they believe the enquiry is not genuine, they have 48 hours to query the enquiry. All enquiries are sent directly to the Supplier’s email; suppliers can also view the enquiries through their dashboard.

The Supplier can then contact the couple directly. At this time, bookings are not made through the site. Suppliers are free to join and leave the site at any point with no notice period. From feedback from suppliers, we understand that they can typically expect to convert approximately 1 in 4 enquiries into a sale.

Currently, the venue listings are on a free trial until April 2015. From that point, we plan to charge venues £150 a year for their profile. The number of venues per county is carefully monitored to ensure we promote those venues we feel are particularly special in each county. World of Wedmin intends to open up further revenue models through advertising on its growing blog.

Use of proceeds

World of Wedmin intends to spend the investment on the following:

- New website to support additional business models and improve conversion
- Employment of full-time web developer to react quicker to market needs
- Search Engine Optimisation to drive organic traffic
- More extensive marketing campaigns through Facebook Ads and Google Adwords to drive enquiries
- Sponsorship and presence at major wedding trade shows and industry competitions to boost brand awareness and develop partnerships