THINGS are certainly looking bright for Bury-based Shade Station which is consolidating its reputation as the UK's largest online designer sunglasses, watches and prescription glasses retailer.

For thanks to a newShadestation.co.uk website, the company has seen conversion rates on the site soar by 50 per cent.

The rate is based on the number of people who visit the website and who subsequently make a purchase.

Following last year’s huge expansion with the creation of a series of international versions of the UK website, Shade Station has recently launched its new look website.

The new design is going live in all 50 countries that the company operates in, including South Africa, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Denmark, Poland, Canada and India. Shade Station expects to see further metric improvements once the rollout is complete.

Prestwich man David Allen, joint managing director, said: “Online shoppers still currently find the intricacies of a prescription daunting, so we endeavoured to ‘simplify’ this process for the user, which was an essential but not easy task. The development of this area of the new site was time-consuming and involved many hours of head scratching.

"But we like to think we now have a solution that fits both the customer who just wants to keep it simple and the customer who wants the highest bespoke product from both Essilor or Zeiss, two of the world’s biggest names in optics.”

Further developments to the new site include it being entirely responsive, meaning it finds the optimum browsing experience for the device being used to browse on, be it desktop, tablet, or mobile.

Since its opening in 2013, Shade Station has doubled the capacity of its on site optical glazing lab, and now offers both varifocal and single vision prescription lenses in more than 6,000 designer glasses across 120 brands on a next working day service.

Jocelyn Anders, joint managing director, added: "The key aim for Shadestation.co.uk has always been to be the very best online destination for designer accessories. The business has seen year on year growth every year and for 2015-2016 the continued aim is to grow the business."